In the course of making several dozen Cornflower Mandalas yesterday, I happened upon a disk made of the embossing metal I’ve been using for decades, now, and duly made a Cornfield Mandala upon it and packed it into a dollar-sized cardboard “flip” coin holder, so-called because to look at the other side of a coin, you flip the flip over with an easy practiced move.
Boy, the key word there is surely “practiced”, and “practiced moves” is what metal embossing and coin-carving is all about, and that goes double for gem-setting and ring-making and painting and sculpting and video gaming and hopscotch and just about anything else you endeavor to do well.
The “right moves” is a Big Number in Buddhism, meaning that it’s important.
“Right Action” means making the right moves at the right time in the right place with the right intention, nice and smooth, making no sudden moves, no ripples in the Firmament or Force.
In short, “Right Action” is grace and movement in relating to the universe and other Beings, and is and was a big subject with Picasso, Matisse, Dali and Stravinski.
You think conducting an orchestra is just waving a baton around in the air in time to the music? Try actually conducting an orchestra, and see what a mess you make, if you don’t know what you’re doing, and even if you DO happen to know, a mess can be the result of sloppy, careless or inattentive conducting, if such a thing is possible.
The Deepest Secret in leading an orchestra is LEADING. You have to be there first, not following the orchestra or supposing that they’re keeping the time and coming in and out and holding for three beats or 13 bars and on and on — there are many things of which to keep track when leading an orchestra, not the least problematic of which is yourself.
So the bottom line is, when I had stuck the mandala on the old “14k Gold Color” foil into the flip, I put it alongside the others that I had been making with the new “24k Gold Color” embossing foil that came several days ago from my new supplier, whom I’ve told you all about in the workshop and on the workshop video, which is available as a set of DVDs, if you weren’t able to attend the workshop live. Price of DVD set? Dunno, but that reminds me that there is now, as of a few days ago, an instructional DVD on the Linking Rings, and I have received six sets of rings, if anyone’s interested. I’ve shipped out the four sets that had been ordered, so you’ll be receiving them in the next few days.
The Linking Rings are the Four-Ring Set Variety, perfect for the hilarious routine I have in mind.
Okay, so back to the new embossing foil… I put the two Cornfield Mandalas down side by each, as the Pennsylvania Dutch family I worked for in the “Farm Cadets” back in 1957 used to say.
Looking at both mandalas sitting side by side, without more than a glance, there was no comparison. The new foil looked crisper, cleaner, more “real”, and definitely held much more detail, without crumbling and creasing, a common problem with embossing foils.
This foil stays crisp. Its surface remains neat and clean, like the surface of an etching plate — I might be tempted to try printing from one of the heavier gauges, when it arrives — I’ve already send for a set of samples of everything they make.
Impressed? I’ll say!
I’m planning to order plenty of this stuff, now that I have THREE different ways of packaging and selling them!
Yes, three ways to present them:
- IN A COIN FLIP — Your cost in the product in this form is a mere half a buck, fifty cents per item. If you can’t make money from that, you need to seriously re-examine your life-skills, communication skills and people skills.
- IN AN ACRYLIC CAPSULE — Your cost in each item in this simple, great-looking and inexpensive form is only $2.00 per, when ordered in kit form. You can bring your cost down to as little as $1.61 by ordering in vast quantities direct from the manufacturer.
- IN A PLAIN OR FANCY BEZEL — The cost will vary. A plain coin-edged silver bezel will typically cost about $10-$12, while a fancy rope-edged bezel will now cost around $35-$85, depending on the size, style and finish. Gold and gold-filled bezels must be quoted on the day needed; their price is based on the daily gold and silver market, but they run anywhere from $85-$450 wholesale, depending on style & finish & size.
With those ways to present, you can easily see how an entire shop could be outfitted — even a portable shop, by mounting pieces in wearable jewelry and other fashion items, such as hairclips, pins, dangles, hats and more.
You WEAR your main items, and SHOW your lead item, which will be the Cornfield Mandala or the Skull or whatever feels right and best to you at the moment. Instinct will not fail you.
How can you wear these things?
I probably don’t have to remind you of the thousands of belt-buckles that hold a silver dollar in them, right? I can find a way to mount just about anything that takes a coin, although some things might not work well.
How about a bolo tie with a skull coin or metal embossing in coin form? Hats, especially cowboy hats, really need something in front to set it off, and a coin-based design could work wonders.
Rings, pendants, earrings, pocket pals and so many other applications await your creative talents, and you will be amazed at how many household items and items of daily use you’ll be able to make.
Don’t neglect magnets. You can easily obtain magnets for the backs of your creations and you can make kitchen magnets and all sorts of clip-ons and snap-ons for all sorts of uses, limited only by YOUR imagination.
What’s the toughest gifts to find at Christmas time? Right. Stocking-stuffers that are cheap but look expensive, fun and long-lasting, well-made and useful, but mostly fun, fun, fun, right?
With a little ingenuity, YOU can make the perfect stocking-stuffers, and get your friends to help you sell them, for profit or for charity or a percentage for each, as you prefer — it’s your money, do with it as you wish.
In case you wondered, it’s harder to sell for charity than it is for profit — ask any merchant. Why? Because people instantly understand the profit motive without any explanation needed, that’s why.
Someone who isn’t in it for themselves is always suspicious to robots, who assume that everyone else is like themselves, and they’re mostly right, but that doesn’t happen to include you, but go tell it to the Marines.
You’ll have to dance and jump through a lot of hoops to sell something for charity — “what charity, how long have they been around, with whom are they associated, what do they do, where is it, do they help children and dogs, and can I see some pictures???”
At one point, even if you’re raising money 100% for charity, you’ll refrain from mentioning it, except at Christmas time, and then you’d better be wearing a Santa suit and ringing a little bell over a brightly painted box with sparkly snowflakes scattered on the top and sides and smiling like you’ve just been goosed by a duck.
The new embossing foil is thicker, about .36 gauge, and it has the look and feel of an actual coin-ish surface. Back-to-back in a bezel, this looks terrific and can sell for very little, because your actual cost is very, very low, even for a piece in a sterling silver bezel, if you do it right.
I’ll help you with kits at first, but I’m hoping to NOT be your one-stop shop for arts & crafts supplies. Naturally, you don’t want to order tens of thousands of things just to have them accumulate in the attic, garage or storage unit, and that’s why I’m making the intro kits, to help you decide whether you want to actually commit to making these things full-time or not.
“Commit” is, I think, the right word here.
There is serious argument in favor of commitment for those who seek and choose this Path. Few are called, many are chosen. I might have that backwards.
The new embossing metal is flatter, too. I can’t prove that, of course, but it SEEMS a lot flatter, a lot more substantial, and a lot less likely to pick up wrinkles and crinkles along the way as it gets embossed.
The reflective surface is profoundly superior, and the lacquer used in this product is also very clear and very scratch-resistant, an element I like in an embossing metal, ancient OR modern.
Your ability to create almost any image on the metal will help immensely in the sale of said embossed metal stuff. Of course, you’ll instantly go to “I’m no artist” or some such fear-induced exclamation, in the course of finding another reason other than laziness that you don’t intend to venture into this unexplored realm anytime soon.
Oh, eventually, you’ll find yourself out there on safari with gun in hand wondering how in the world you got there, but right now, the jungle is quiet and it ain’t rainin’, so why fix the roof?
Just wait until one of those Dark Nights of the Soul, and see how much you appreciate having something mindlessly simple to do, and worthwhile, and useful to others, and wonderful and amazing, yet easy and simple.
There are those times when you just can’t do ANYTHING.
Sometimes you just breathe from moment to moment, wondering how long THAT can go on. You might just barely be able to move your hand to hold a stylus, and maybe you can just barely make the circles for the mandala.
Once you start in, the process takes over, and you become immersed in the procedures, the routine, the precise moves, the ritual of the creation of a simple, easy to make “Cornfield Mandala”.
You can do it.
Yes, even YOU can do it, even feeling lousy, at the bottom of the well, emotionally drained and scared and agitated and unable to catch a breath, and dizzy and feeling weird and dazed and confused and feeling pain from head to toe, even then, you can do it.
And as you work, the magic of the Cornfield Mandala does its work on YOU, and little by little, hour by hour, the breath becomes easier and more regular, the pulse of the universe once again becomes your heartbeat, and you expand outward into Cosmic Consciousness, and pain is no more.
At the same time, you’re making something not for your own benefit. It’s something that someone will be able to use for their Being, for their Livingness, for their Spirit, and YOU were instrumental in that by making the item for them in your studio or at your booth.
But you’re lousy at selling.
You couldn’t sell your way out of a paper bag, as they say, and you’re scared to death of people and you don’t make friends easily and you don’t know what to say or how to make a sale.
I know that.
It’s something we can either fix or ignore. If you’re really tense about selling or about being around others, something can be arranged.
Either you can sell your stuff on eBay and Etsy and other online outlets, or you can find someone willing to sell your stuff for you, either at a swap meet, craft show, street fair, county fair or trunk show.
Some folks specialize in selling items for you on eBay. They take a percentage, and you ship to the customer directly, which is called “drop shipping”. It’s not considered cricket to steal a customer just because you shipped to them, so don’t consider that client to be “your” customer — they don’t go on your promotions list.
If you make things and can’t sell things very well, there’s a remedy, called “communication”, meaning that you learn the basic lesson of the American Book of the Dead, which is to learn to ask for help when you need it.
The corollary to that is, of course, “don’t ask for help when you don’t actually need it”, which is exemplified by the story of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, about a kid who cried “Wolf!” when there wasn’t one, and he cried “Wolf” just once too many times.
There’s nothing so sad as seeing someone clearly in trouble who is too proud to ask for help. Many gas station attendants watch many male drivers drive by, obviously lost, too proud to stop and ask directions.
Men don’t ask directions, which is why the GPS — Global Positioning System — was developed from the original concept, the ADF or Automatic Direction Finder, which requires an operator with some mental skills, which are typically hard to find among robots of any kind, whether carbon or silicon based.
I’m eagerly awaiting my first Big Order of metal foil, which should arrive today or tomorrow, and from which I’ll start cutting the disks for your kit orders. With any luck, you’ll be receiving them before the end of next week.
The tool kit is more uncertain. We’re negotiating now, but we’re still playing “phone tag” with the people who make and distribute them. We’re working on it hour by hour.
The bezels are another issue. Let me tell you once again that the crystals are generally more expensive than the sterling silver bezel itself, especially in the case of the super-small ones, which are harder to make and which must be made by their more experienced craftspeople.
As a result, we get a weird number like $35 for a Maximilian Mini-Bezel in sterling, and $30 for a larger, quarter-sized, sterling silver bezel — both with large wide fancy bail loops for hanging on a chain.
I gotta tell ya, the acrylic capsule is easily overlooked, but could be a fantastic way for you to present and sell your embossed metal creations. It costs $2 bucks to make a finished product with two sides in gold color, and even less if you buy everything in large quantity, so there’s a ton of room to move on the retail price.
You can start out by asking $35 for the finished product, but be prepared to come down from there. Always ask twice as much as you really want, or more, under certain conditions.
For instance, in a small country-style fair or swap-meet, I’d just ask what I wanted, and be ready to knock a couple of bucks off the top, or offer to pay the tax.
I like to pay the tax for my customer, making it come out to EXACTLY the size bill they’ve got in their pocket or purse — $5 bucks, $10 bucks, $20 bucks.
After a twenty dollar bill, it doesn’t matter what you ask, you’re going to get plastic, or hundred dollar bills, if you sell to a lot of local growers or, if you’re in a tourist area, growers on vacation.
Speaking of agriculture, let’s get back to the Maize Mandala, shall we??? I’ll be making more of them tonight, to send out per your orders. How much are they? It’s strictly a free-will donation of $1 or more.
Your Cornfield Maize Mandala comes to you in a flip. The Mandala is signed in the metal, and the flip is also signed, making it a very saleable item in the collectibles market. I will make them for those who want to market my work along with their own, and I’ll set a price of $17.50 per mandala in the gold-colored foil, signed and wrapped in a flip.
If you want a selection with variety, you might consider a pageful of mandalas and other stuff on embossing foil. I sell pages of 20 units in flips at only $10 per item, $200 per page.
My suggestion is to try your own stuff first and see how it does, then add my stuff if you feel you need to. You can trade between yourselves and create a multi-store by using collab in that way.
You might want to set up a shop with the products from several work-circle friends, and you might also want to set up some classes.
I can easily see classes every day, with six to eight students per class. I’d charge $3 for the class or make it free. You won’t make your money from the classes, but from the fallout from the classes.
You can talk to someone who does this for a living. They’ll explain how it works. The real key to classes is to get the students to hold quarterly arts & crafts shows, to which they invite their friends and families.
It’s pretty much the same as a ballet school, theatrical company or choir — it’s about the parents, grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts, friends and acquaintances of the participants.
The General Public NEVER shows up at anything they haven’t been instructed or programmed to see.
That’s a feature, when selling these products. The robots will walk past your booth as if you didn’t exist, and for them, you don’t.
Then there are those who seem to be drawn to your booth like an iron object to a powerful magnet. Those are the people who need what you have to offer; your only job is to not do anything to scare them away.
I know that’s hard, but it’s something worth learning.
If you are one of those who will never sell the things and never make them either, none of this will make any sense.
See You At The Top!!!
gorby