Custom Order for a Friend

A friend of mine asked me to make a necklace, bracelet, and earring set for her a few months ago. I didn't start it until the other day because I wanted to make sure she knew what type of necklace and bracelet she was going to be getting. When I showed her the set that I was going to use as the "pattern" for the set, she liked it a lot, with the exception of asking that the necklace be made longer, which I obliged her with.

She also requested that I shorten a bracelet that she liked & switch the  matching earrings from pierced to clip-on as she doesn't have pierced ears. I used an old pair of really neat clip-on earrings that had a little hold at the bottoms to make the earrings for that bracelet and they turned out really cool - and one of a kind. :)

These are the earrings that I made to match the bracelet. I think they came out really well.

This is the bracelet that I shortened for my friend. I just took two of the turquoise/quartz blend beads off and two of the obsidian beads off.

This is the bookmark that my friend requested. She wanted the December birthstone crystals with a butterfly on the end.

These are the earrings to the set I made for her. Tiger Eye on the bottom, Turquoise dyed Jasper in the middle, and Lt. Colorado Brilliance crystals on clip-on earrings.

Same beads as above, only for the bracelet.

The necklace - same beads as the bracelet and earrings. I had to loop the necklace around the stand twice because it was too long otherwise! :)

So that is my custom order that I will be delivering to my friend tomorrow at lunch.
Any custom orders come your way recently?

Custom Orders

I was perusing the Etsy forums tonight and came upon a post that for any artisan who does custom work would be heartbreaking. The seller was talking about having started a custom order only to find that the person went ahead and had someone else on Etsy make the items they wanted.

This seller was talking about making sure to get the money for the order up front. Other people piped in that they use a 50% non-refundable deposit for custom orders. Of course, they also mentioned that the deposit should be listed in your shop policies and that when they pay you, if they do so by PayPal, then it needs to be listed as a service, because PayPal does not allow refunds for services.

So now I find myself wanting to go through and look at my custom order policy and see if I need to make changes to them. Fun fun. :)

I don't know how other artisans feel about it, but to be honest, I find it extremely disrespectful to contact an artisan about a custom order, find out that yes, it is possible for what you want to be done, and then find someone else to do the job for you. While it is nice to see that someone respects your professional opinion on something, it isn't so nice when that person that respects your professional opinion so much decides to have someone else make the item for you. But that might just be me. :)