Featured

My First Blog Post

And so it begins!

Let’s start from the beginning: Hi, my name is Kayla.

To establish some credentials, I have a B.S. in chemistry from Lehigh University. I went on to graduate from Rutgers University with a Masters in Business and Science, where I took courses in creating start-ups, digital marketing, finance & accounting, and more. The science portion of my background has been focused on creating cosmetic products. Business and makeup are two of my passions.

I am married to my husband, Mike, who is much cooler than me, and recently, I became a cat mom to my tuxedo kitten, Cortez. I cannot (in good conscience) pass up an opportunity to show you how cute he is (I am probably biased but that’s okay).

Anyway, moving on to why you’re probably here. I own a business called Evrything Beachy, which has the simple goal of bringing everything you love about the beach to your everyday life.

It all started with finding my first piece of sea glass, I was instantly addicted! There is nothing quite like the thrill of finding a gorgeous, perfectly frosted piece of sea glass (especially the extra butterflies when it’s a rare color)! As fun as it was for me to collect, I noticed how sad I was to just put the beautiful sea glass into a jar or a bag and barely look at it.

Thus, the idea for Evrything Beachy was born (not that I had decided on a name yet)! I wanted to start making jewelry with the sea glass, so I could bring the warm sun-sandy toes-salty air happiness with me everywhere I go, while also being cute and ~trendy~!

I was so passionate about the idea that I could NOT wait to get started. With a million thoughts and ideas racing through my head, I realized I had two main issues that I needed to tackle first:

I didn’t know how to start a business.
I didn’t know how to make jewelry.

You are probably thinking that those are two pretty big issues that might discourage me from creating a handmade jewelry business, but one thing to know about me is that I am very dedicated.

Shortly after this realization, I was non-stop researching both areas, taking meticulous notes and gathering supplies.

Not long after that, I was a jewelry-making machine, and I had a to do list of steps I needed to accomplish in order to create a business. Within a few short weeks of knowing nothing, I developed a new, super fabulous hobby of jewelry-making and learned everything I needed to know about creating a business.

One of my favorite pieces featuring lavender sea glass https://etsy.me/2PSbuqA

I can’t wait to share everything I’ve learned along the way about sea glass, businesses, Etsy, jewelry making, and more (cats), hopefully making your handmade business journey a little bit easier!

I could ramble on forever, but I will stop here. For now, welcome to Evrything Beachy’s blog!

Sea Glass Colors

There are 14 colors listed on my color wheel, and the craziest part is this is just a small snippet. I am missing some lime green, black, orange, yellow, milk glass, etc. The list goes on. Sea glass is so unique in that way!

Sea glass color is dependent on the source of the sea glass. This is the fascinating historical context. This is also highly dependent on location!

Because of that, sea glass color rarity can be personal. For example, I do most of my beach combing in New Jersey. These are the colors I typically find from most to least:

Brown
White
Green
Sea Foam
Light Blue
Dark Blue

I have found approximately 1 purple, 1 marble, 1 white milk glass, and 1 orange piece in New Jersey. My mother-in-law has found 1 red. This may seem like only a few colors, but remember, there is infinite variation in the shades of each color due to the thickness and shape of the piece, as seen in the following photo!

On my honeymoon, I was beach combing all throughout the destinations of my cruise, where I found multiple black pieces, 1 pink, 1 aqua, and 1 teal. AND THERE WAS TONS!!! It was MADNESS. I dream about going back to those beaches to find more rare colors (literally). Just throwing in a casual photo so you understand why I was so excited!!!

Because of the various rarities of sea glass colors, this is a big driver of price. You can look up the various rarity and go back to my pricing strategy article to understand price differentiation between rarity levels, but as I have been saying, there is the personal component. If the blue piece you are using is 1 out of the 5 that you have found in your lifetime versus the hundreds of green or brown, you can add some extra cost even if it is not considered the most rare.

These are your pieces and you determine their value!! Sometimes the sentimental aspect is more important. What is the coolest sea glass find you have? Can’t wait to hear about it!

JEWELRY TIP: REMOVING WIRE MARKS

Real talk: I have been doing this trick for about as long as I have been making sea glass jewelry, and it finally dawned on me that not everyone may know it! If you already know how to get those pesky marks that transfer from the wire to your sea glass off, then you’re amazing!!

The best part about this tip, it only requires two items: paper towels and baby oil. I purchased baby oil from the Dollar Store (for $1). The baby oil will seriously last you forever because you only need a few drops for cleaning sea glass.

Here is everything you need to know:

Comment below or send me a message if you tried this or have another method! Let me know your thoughts on if you want more jewelry tips like this.

Business Planning: Monthly Goals

Evrything Beachy is a top priority for me, but even so, it can be easy to procrastinate on the business goals I have when my business is a side project. Work, family, life, and simply being tired all impact how much I can dedicate to the business on any given day.

One strategy that I read about was setting short term goals for the business to help keep you on track. I have implemented this idea for Evrything Beachy and wanted to share it with you all in hopes that in might help each of you with your side projects, whatever they may be.

When I develop my short term business goals, I typically map out what I would like to achieve that month. I ask myself the following questions to help guide my thinking:

1) What do I want to achieve in terms of social media?
2) What can I being doing more of to promote my business?
3) What are some areas that I would like to improve?
4) What is something I keep putting off doing for the business but I need to do?
5) Where have I succeeded these past few months?

After I answer these questions, I develop some monthly goals. For April, these are the answers I came up with:

1) I want to increase my Instagram following to 1000 followers, blog more consistently, and be more active on Pinterest.
2) I have not been utilizing Etsy’s Teams feature as regularly as I would like to and want to see how consistent engagement impacts sales, if at all.
3) I want to improve my page’s photos and increase my photography skills overall as well as be more consistent in posting new items.
4) I need to update the search terms for each of my listings.
5) My Instagram has been consistently growing, and I have been taking pictures whenever I have the time.

These answers turn into the goals I set for April! In order to keep a schedule, I create a calendar for the month with the different tasks. The template I used here is from Canva, which is a great site for free templates that are cute and user-friendly! If you are looking for something with less design that is more utilitarian, Microsoft word also has a calendar template that is very easy to fill in. Finally, you could always just write your goals down on actual paper, and post it on your fridge. Whatever works for you!

This calendar has my weekly goals mapped out on the left, which also serves as a legend for the calendar.

Starting with Instagram, my goal is to post every day for the Month of April. To help with consistency and planning, I have mapped out an idea of different posting categories.

Each day of the month has its own image corresponding to a different type of post: lifestyle, sea glass, or products. My Instagram account started with posting pictures of sea glass, but as my business opened, I wanted to incorporate product photos. I also believe in including some photos of other things to add a personal touch to your social media and humanize your business. For example, I typically will post photos of my cat.

I also have noted on the calendar which days I want to post blogs with the blue sea shell and which days I want to set aside for photography with the camera.

My social media goal for the month is placed on the last day, to ensure I keep working towards it the whole month. I also have some weekly goals, such as post 3 listings, not listed on the calendar itself and that’s okay too!!

It’s all about finding what works for you. If having a daily schedule as opposed to weekly or monthly works for you, then do it!

Please comment any strategies that work for you, I would love to chat about it!

Part of a Statistic: Coronavirus Layoffs

“I’d like to provide an update on your role in light of COVID-19. Thanks for making the time.” -HR

At approximately 1:30 pm, I received the above email from my HR representative. I knew immediately that my 3 pm meeting would not be good. As a person who typically enjoys being right, I was hoping that I was wrong.

As it turns out, I was not wrong. In fact, I was laid off effective 3 business days from that date.

Even though I had my suspicions, it was still a shock followed by a small pity party I threw for myself with only my cat in attendance (thanks, Cortez)!

As a recent grad and newer (naive) member of the working community, I never considered that I would be laid off. Writing this a few days after the fact, I am not faulting the company for having to make tough decisions, especially considering that I had a junior role and had been with the company for under a year. I am simply sharing the realty for many people right now.

So, as my last day ended, I had to ask myself, “Self, what should I do with all of my free time? I already had more of it because of working from home…but now?”

I feel fortunate because I have Evrything Beachy, which I am so passionate about.

To put a positive spin on this situation I find myself in, I am excited to direct my energy and undivided attention to my business until a time at which I can apply for a job again.

Because admittedly, it’s challenging to devote time to all the things I would like to. For example, I haven’t written blogs as consistently as I would like to (oops).

So if you are looking for things to do or ways to fill your time, especially if you have a small business, I have some suggestions that I have been looking into and implementing, and would love to hear your thoughts as well.

1. Revamp your social media

Whether it’s your personal social media or your business’s. You can change up your Instagram theme for example or take on a new social media, such as TikTok. I am planning a more rigorous posting schedule and committing to using my Nikon camera as opposed to my phone camera to snap my photos.

2. Get creative

As a jewelry designer, I am excited to take the opportunity to get creative with some new pieces. I have more time to play around with different looks and experiment with some new ideas.

3. Join some teams

If you have an Etsy and have not been using the Teams feature, I would recommend giving it a try! It is a community forum where you can support and be supported by other Etsy shop owners (shop and item favorites, boosted traffic, more views).

As a final note, I wanted to say that if you have experienced a layoff or are being negatively impacted by the coronavirus in any way, I want you to know that you are not alone. I empathize with your situation and know that it can be difficult to navigate. Try to make the best of the situation by devoting your time to something you love!

How To Price Sea Glass in Jewelry Part 1

Saying that sea glass is unique is both a cliche and an understatement. There are multiple features of sea glass that contribute to its individuality, making price calculations challenging.

I am going to take you through the different aspects of sea glass to consider, and a guide on how I price the pieces I use in my jewelry. There are, of course, many other ways to do this, so take my methods as a starting point, and add your own spin to make it work for you! If you have ideas for improvements or have other strategies for pricing that really work for you, please comment those below! This is a place to learn after all.

The main sea glass features that impact its quality and therefore its price are:

Color
Frostiness
Thickness
Pattern
Shape

I am going to do a deep dive into each of these topics, giving advice on how to evaluate these elements and determine their value. Today, I am going to go over the way I price my pieces.

Before I officially launched my Etsy, I have to admit, that I was pricing my sea glass “willy-nilly”, just by looking at them and deciding what felt “right.” After some thought, I realized there should be a consistent pricing strategy to ensure my prices were fair. As it turns out, each of the sea glass features listed above goes into pricing sea glass, but there are also a few other considerations.

Overhead: Also known as fixed costs or operating expenses; any cost not directly associated with the manufacturing of your product.

While in your head you’re probably thinking, “I love beach combing, so why would I need to charge for it?” The answer is because those costs can add up, and if your business grows and you need to make more frequent trips to the beach, it could get pretty pricey (especially in my case since I live 60+ miles from the beach).

In the case of sea glass, these operating expenses would be the cost of gas, price of tolls, cost of parking, and beach pass costs. To calculate how much overhead to charge per piece, add up each of the costs listed above. For example, let’s say your trip cost $13 in gas, $2 in tolls, $5 to park, with no beach pass cost, your total expense was $20.

Gas	$13
Tolls	$2
Parking	$5
Total:	$20

After you collect, wash, and sort your sea glass, you determine you have 40 pieces you are planning to use in jewelry. Divide total expense by the number of pieces to get the price per piece. In this example that would be $20/40, giving $0.50 per piece of sea glass as your baseline cost per piece. Every piece of sea glass you price will be worth at least $0.50.

After overhead is calculated, you move on to the other five attributes, which are much less time-consuming to decipher.

First, you have frostiness. When I evaluate this, I choose between completely frosted or not completely frosted. You could have a larger scale and various costs associated with each level, but I like to keep this attribute fairly straight-forward. If the piece is perfectly frosted, I add $1.00 to the total, if it’s not, I add $0.50.

Next, I look at the thickness, which I divide into 3 tiers: thin, moderate, thick. Depending on the size, I add anywhere from $0.50 to $1.00.

Evaluating color is the best part to me, and this element has 4 price buckets: common, uncommon, less common, and rare. I will talk more about which colors fall into which category in one of my next few posts.

Finally, the last two things to check for while pricing your sea glass are patterns and interesting shapes. If the piece has either of these, you could add on an additional amount. I keep mine fairly uniform, but I could definitely see adding more of a range depending on what patterns or shapes you may find.

Okay, so after all that, here is the completed pricing guide!!!

I will finish off this post by going through an example with you. Let’s evaluate the price of this teal piece I found on my honeymoon:

You start with the baseline overhead cost, which we calculated to be $0.50. This piece happens to be completely frosted and relatively thick, so $1.00 for each of those. The color teal is rare for sea glass, adding on $3.00, which is the last cost as there is no pattern or unique shape.

Overhead	$0.50
Frostiness	$1.00
Thickness	$1.00
Color	$3.00
Pattern	–
Shape	–
Total:	$5.50

The total price for this piece would be $5.50.

Let me know how you think this pricing strategy would work for you, and I look forward to sharing more information on the various sea glass colors!