Brexit, dollars, lampwork beads and me

The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union. I am very surprised, it never seriously occurred to me that this would be the actual outcome so I didn't really think through what my shop's currency being in dollars would mean to my beadmaking income. I wanted to stay IN.

I found myself awake in the early hours and so got up at 3.30am to see how things were going on the referendum. With the result looking cut and dried and the pound falling alarmingly against the dollar, I shut my Etsy shop temporarily until I could figure out how it would affect me.

Now I'm up (and far more awake), I realise that this makes no difference to my customers in the United States, they can continue to buy at the same prices (to them) as my shop's currency is set to dollars. A little over half of my customers are the US and so I can hope to continue to enjoy their patronage and one upside is that the exchange rate means I will get more sterling from those transactions.

The downside is that the rest of my customers are in the UK, with a small percentage in other countries in the EU. To them, my prices have increased significantly (10% at the time of typing). I imagine this will mean some of those customers may choose not to buy from me. I have considered lowering my prices or changing the currency of my shop but I haven't increased bead prices in three years, if I decrease them and things settle down again, well, I'm just not willing to make beads for a lower price. I'm not exactly getting rich out of self-employment! I hope that the two sets of customers will balance themselves out and I can continue making lampwork beads for all of my lovely customers.

With apologies to those it adversely affects, I've decided I will be rolling my sleeves up and just getting on with things as they are. It's out of my control, it's pointless to get all stressed about it. I will continue to monitor and make decisions accordingly. Watch this space for news.

Less hazardous selling conditions this week

The weather on Saturday for the craft market was much calmer ... a truly lovely early autumn day. The week before we had wind that was so gusty, we considered putting up a sign saying "Beware - low flying earrings!"

I'm pleased to report that I sold two pairs of earrings and a bracelet from the pink camouflage range and that means a donation of £30.50 to go to Cancer Research UK.

Pink camouflage jewellery

I've named the jewellery that I'll be selling for Cancer Research UK as pink camouflage - this is the name of the latest design for their ribbon. I've made all the beads up into jewellery, photographed them and made a new Cancer Research charity page on my website. Here is a selection of a few of the items on offer:

I've also been making black and white stripes beads very similar to last week's red stripes. I sold all but one of the items made with red striped beads last week so am hoping for a similar result with the black and white ones! The full range of black and white striped jewellery can be viewed on my Lampwork > Lampwork Jewellery page.

I hope everyone has a great weekend, don't forget to visit me on the Art & Craft Market in Cambridge if you're about on Saturday!