Feature Friday: Beaded Bird

This week's featured seller is actually a group of 3 talented ladies, known together as Beaded Bird Design.  It was very interesting to hear about how they got started selling their beautiful jewelry on Etsy together - read on to learn more (ps-they have free shipping ALL THE TIME!)

First and foremost, what is it that you make/sell?

Actually there are three of us in Beaded Bird Design LLC, Barbara, Tara and me, Patti. I had two close friends who both created beautiful and well-made jewelry. One of them approached me about the idea of going into business mostly so she could start to pay for her hobby. I thought about the other friend and well, as they say, the rest is history.

So to answer your question, we make one-of-a-kind jewelry, no two pieces are ever exactly alike. Tara is a graphic designer and makes jewelry from found objects, keys, old baby pajama buttons and stuff like that. She works with mostly darkened chains such as Vintage brass or antiqued sterling and natural stones such as amazonite and jade. Barbara uses her attention to detail as an RN and applies it to metal work. She weaves chain maille, hand-forges sterling, hammers copper, solders her own chain designs and is at times concerned she might burn her house down!

I will eventually also design jewelry, but for now I am busy doing the photography for our site, the marketing and book work.


What do you most enjoy about your craft?

All of us love the creative outlet. Tara loves the design aspect of jewelry making. She would love to set up ideas and have the Assembly Fairy appear and “poof” - done! Barbara loves the nuts and bolts of assembling her elegant and modernistic designs. Give her a tiny hammer and a piece of metal and she is in her element. I enjoy coming up with the names for the pieces of jewelry and trying to write an engaging story about each piece.


How has your experience on Etsy been?

It has been surprising. We intended to have our own web site, but etsy has made it so easy to sell through their site that we have focused our energies there. We have made some sales, which we are happy with since we mainly want to sell in craft shows and to friends. So overall we are thrilled. It is easy to use and fun!

What would you like to see from the CNY Etsy Group in the future?

We loved getting together and meeting the other local artisans. We would like to be involved in more face to face interactions and are also looking forward to the craft show season and working together to promote the hand-made lifestyle.

To see more of Beaded Bird Designs jewelry, visit their Etsy shop!

If you have any more questions for the girls, just ask them here on the blog in a comment!