The real reason as to why I've been reluctant to put my stuff on Etsy.

So yeah, I have wanted to be able to post the best pictures possible for whatever I put on Etsy. I've also mentioned not being sure about how I should price stuff. These are small problems frankly and not what scares me the most. I've now discovered and decided to spell out what's been holding me back. Every time I feel gung-ho and think, "This time I'm gonna do it! I'm ready! Look out world, I'm coming atcha!" I then read stuff on needing a seller's permit, collecting sales tax, keeping records, etc. and I want to curl up into a ball and hide under the nearest rock. It's all really daunting. It really is. …or is it just me?

I have so many questions such as: I have to keep receipts and keep records of all the supplies and stuff I buy for the "business" but what about all the supplies I have from when I began as a hobby. I mean really, I think that when someone starts to sell their crafts, it's not usually that they start out saying, "You know what? I don't have any supplies right now nor have I ever done it before, but I'm going to go buy all this stuff to make [insert craft here] and start a business selling it." So magically they'll have all their receipts all nice and neat and be able to keep track of everything.

I think most of the time, people get interested in making something, they do so for themselves and if they think they are good enough, for family and friends. Eventually, with proper feedback, they think, "maybe I can make a bit of money selling these…" or they frequently hear from others, "hey, you oughta sell these!" Sometimes, in the case of jewelry, someone will want to buy something right off of your body (it hasn't happened to me but I've heard about it happening on many occasions). They then bring their wares into the office, maybe have a home show, go beyond just friends and sell to friends of friends. Their stuff is popular and so they decide that maybe they can make a business out of it and eventually make a living out of it, one hopes, fingers crossed, wishing on a star…

This is how I imagine it happens a great majority of the time. So then it evolves from a hobby into a business. This is where it gets sticky. All of a sudden you are obliged to keep pristine records of everything you buy, everything you sell, all before you know if you're even going to be successful or not. You think, "what if I only sell 2 things in a year, and those things only cost 5 bucks?" …or whatever measly amount. There are also other things to consider such as what do you do with the profits? You don't put it ALL back into the business do you? You have to pay yourself. How do you pay yourself? What percentage of the profits. If you bought all this stuff while it was still a hobby, how do you report it? If you don't have record of the cost of all the stuff you bought, how do you even know if you are making a profit? Another big question on my mind personally is that I am a full time student who gets financial aid. What effect will that be on my getting financial aid? And aside from the already daunting task of filing taxes for the business what effect will it have on filing personal taxes? I feel like I have to hire a freaking CPA just to make sure I'm doing everything correctly, because I'm sure there's going to be some rule that I missed while reading tomes of regulations for all this stuff that's going to result in my being in seriously hot water.

I was feeling confident earlier today and then tonight I read an article on Etsy entitled, "Everything you need to know about sales tax". Um, no it's not. How can it be when every state and county has different rules and regulations? You can't possibly have all the answers in one short article. But it was all the comments that I read that really got my brain throbbing and freaked out. Aside from the glib "thanks for the info" responses, there were comments from many confused people. Seeing so many confused people struck a hard blow to my confidence as I realized that I was having the same questions and not seeing any real answers. That article led me to look up other articles and sources of information which just led to more questions. For now though I'm going to put the topic to bed for the night in hopes that my brain can stop hurting and I can get some sleep.

Using the new crimping tool.

So I finally got the chance to use my new "toy" yesterday... the 1-Step Crimper. I had a bit of trial and error but I found out that it works great as long as you have the right size crimp beads for the beading wire you are using. Once I had the hang of it, things went along speedily and the only dilemma I had after that was choosing which beads to use to finish off my braided bracelets.

This isn't one that I recently worked on but I realized that I hadn't posted any of my braided bracelets on my blog yet so here ya go. If the weather continues to be fairly well, I'll get one or two pictures of the new ones up. Most of the pictures will go in my Facebook album. Anyway I posted this to show the part that I worked on on the new ones. I had the braided seed bead parts all done and what I worked on are the end beads and the clasps. Hopefully tomorrow I will work on more of my triple moon bracelets.