Art components

I’d like to do a little more collaborative work…making jewellery (hairsticks and so on) using components made by other artists.   I’ve done it before…David Christensen cane glass is available for purchase, even in bulk, and it’s beautiful stuff, and though expensive it is still affordable enough to use without having to raise your prices right out of their bracket.  I also have a few artist friends, one of whom gave me a bunch of her beautiful hand-carved, -shaped, -painted leather leaves.  I’ve mentioned her before…on Etsy she’s Merimask.  With her beautiful leaves I made Amazon and Tree Treasure…thumbnails of which you can see here (Tree Treasure is available for sale at my Etsy Shop, which you can get to by clicking any of the links on this blog, or simply by typing www.thefargrove.etsy.com into your browser):

Since the leaves were GIVEN to me, I was able to price the items I made with them as usual.  But if I were buying them, I’d have to raise the price about $10.  A lot of work goes into those leaves!  And you’re using a piece of art to make your own piece of art…more and more time goes into the making when you add the time it took to make the components to the time it takes to make the finished product.  I’d love to use some really fancy glass pieces in my jewellery, such as this item by Infinite Cosmos Girl:

Isn’t it pretty?  Blue and purple!  Two of my my favourite three-colour combo.  But if you bought an item of a similiar size and function from a supply place, it would be machine or mass produced, not nearly as gorgeous…and it’d be 3 or 4 dollars.  This piece is $20.  It totally deserves to be $20, but that still means I’d have to smack an extra $16 on top of my own pricing once I finished the item.  Most people don’t see the value there, so it isn’t practical.  I may have to make a few for my own satisfaction, and keep them as showpieces, like Sokanon and Venom (see thumbnails below) which are TECHNICALLY for sale, but have been set at an obviously high price in order to prevent them from being purchased as ordinary sticks.  (Because I can’t replace them, and they are prototypes, I would only sell them if given quite a bit of money to compensate for their loss.)

I haven’t completely made up my mind about making jewellery with handmade components by other artists.  In theory, it’s a fabulous idea, but…how practical IS it to make items that might need to be priced in a bracket that will force them to remain as mere showpieces?

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