Design Studio 504

Etsy Shop Name: Design Studio 504

What you sell: Jewelry and beaded and bejeweled home decor

Tell us about your featured item: Opal Crop Circle Earrings--the personal favorite from my Birthstone Crop Circle line. Being born in October and having Opal as my birthstone I know how hard it is to find modern looking opal jewelry. For some reason 95% of opals seem to be marquis or teardrop cuts. To make matters worse there is some strange compulsion by jewelers to put this stone in "fruit" settings—I personally have a pear pendant that I was given years ago. My lifelong desperation to find contemporary opal jewelry was the inspiration for these earrings and the Birthstone Crop Circle line. (Okay, maybe "lifelong desperation" is a little over the top, but I was really, really frustrated).

Is your Etsy shop a full-time job, part-time job, or hobby?

At the current time my Etsy shop is a merely a hobby as I only have about 10-15 hours a week total to dedicate to jewelry design & production, photographing & listing, marketing, record keeping, sourcing materials, and any other details that need to be dealt with. This time restriction is born out of the unreal living situation that I have right now, I hope to have this resolved and have my jewelry business and my Etsy shop as a full-time endeavor by the end of this year.

Do you enjoy, loathe, or simply accept the necessity of record keeping for your business? Why?

A little bit of all three I suppose. I inherited fabulous combination obsessive compulsive/attention deficit disorder tendencies from my father which basically makes me a compulsive list maker with a short attention span. It can make for interesting and arduous record keeping at times. I battle through these organizational glitches though because I realize that without accurate records, determining pricing and profit is nearly impossible.