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Tips, Techniques, and Questions -- Technical questions or tips

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  #31  
Old 2007-01-22, 3:18pm
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Dennis, for beadmakers even the most expensive retail price for glass is a negligible contributor to the materials cost. It's a completely different economy from stained glass. The least expensive glass is going to contribute less than a penny to the materials cost of a smallish bead, while the most expensive glass (which is handmixed by small vendors and not available wholesale) is going to contribute about forty cents. That may sound like a huge difference, but it certainly doesn't come close to accounting for the bulk of your investment. The bulk of your investment is your time spent making that bead. Because of that, you must either make exceptional beads that can command a premium, or you must make good beads quickly. As a beadmaker, whether you buy wholesale vs. retail, or cheap vs. premium, is not going to make or break you, and in fact, overbuying and tying up too much of your profit in raw materials in order to get the lowest price could have a big negative effect on your bottom line. It's not making you any money sitting on the shelf. My advice to beadmakers wanting to treat their craft as a business is to avoid glass hoarding at all costs... buy it, use it, sell the beads. If a premium-priced color will help you make more beautiful, salable beads in less time, buy it, and then USE IT. And then, with any color you buy, make enough beads for it to pay for itself as soon as it arrives.
In business there is no such thing as a negligible expense. Everything matters.

I've been in the glass business for 25 years and in all that time the ONLY individuals I've EVER heard suggest that artisans shouldn't be concerned about the cost of glass are those selling it retail.

My advice to people wanting to treat their craft as a business is the same advice I've been repeating for years:

Don't ask people to buy what you like to make.
Make what people ask to buy.


If you do that, there's an exceptional chance you can make a good living from your work. If you don't do that, there's an equal chance you'll create a large collection of your own work.
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  #32  
Old 2007-01-22, 3:25pm
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I agree with this to a point. Sooner or later, you are melting glass as fast an anyone possibly can. You can only go as fast as the torch will let you - believe me I have tried.
Then it's time to get a bigger torch.


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I'm all for efficiency, no matter if it's melting glass, cutting glass or anything else. When I sewed mass production, I had those seams lined up one after the other to keep from clipping threads and moving stuff around. I couldn't make that sewing machine go as fast as I could feed it in.
Efficiency isn't just about working fast - it's also about minizing all non-productive effort. Compare it with typing. The way to type quicker isn't to try to move your fingers quicker, but to reduce the time between the finger movements.

Quote:
There comes a time when it just won't go any faster. I used to price plain beads without a lot of decoration way, way cheaper thinking that it would be wrong to charge for the lack of design and originality in them. Then I realized, heck it took me time to wrap that plain glass around the mandrel. I still charge less for plainer beads but the gap has narrowed.
The first stage is to get as quick as you can with a design that works. The next stage is to specifically design things that take less time to make. Design efficiency is more important then work efficiency.
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  #33  
Old 2007-01-22, 4:08pm
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BTW, Dennis, your work is fascinating and how cool that your sons are in business with you!
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  #34  
Old 2007-01-22, 4:40pm
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I used to manage a store for Tandy Leather Co. In fact during my couple years with Tandy I was awarder the "manager of the year" award.
Anyway I learned inventory control when I worked for Tandy. Each store was allowed so many dollars for inventory. It was not very much. A store could have more inventory if the store's monthly sales were equal to that amount. To stock everything that was in the catalog one could not stock up on any item. The secret to having everything in stock and staying under the dollar amount allowed was frequent orders. This kept the inventory low and prevented having a large inventory of items that did not sell. Lots of times items ordered were out of stock. Frequent orders allowed items that were shorted on previous orders to be reordered in a shorter time interval. In short order what you are going to use is a certain time period (weekly, biweekly, monthly). This will help you spread your precious dollars out where they are needed instead of being tied up in a few items that just set around and collect dust. Also you don't have to come up with a place and way to store all that extra stuff. You may pay a bit more in shipping and may not get the best prices, but you will still come out dollars ahead because you will have what you need and are selling.
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  #35  
Old 2007-01-22, 4:45pm
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[quote=Dennis Brady;955441]
My advice to people wanting to treat their craft as a business is the same advice I've been repeating for years:

Don't ask people to buy what you like to make.
Make what people ask to buy.


QUOTE]

Dennis, I did photography for awhile. A lady came by looked at my photographs and complimented me on my work. Just before she left she said "If you had a photograph of a Unicorn, I would buy it"
So much for giving the people what they want!
Jerry

Last edited by jesgen; 2007-01-22 at 4:46pm. Reason: spelling
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  #36  
Old 2007-01-22, 5:20pm
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BTW, Dennis, your work is fascinating and how cool that your sons are in business with you!
My sons Dane and Jason now own DeBrady Glassworks and Victorian Art Glass. I just hang around to help out and play with the tools.
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  #37  
Old 2007-01-22, 5:31pm
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I used to manage a store for Tandy Leather Co. In fact during my couple years with Tandy I was awarder the "manager of the year" award.
Anyway I learned inventory control when I worked for Tandy. Each store was allowed so many dollars for inventory. It was not very much. A store could have more inventory if the store's monthly sales were equal to that amount. To stock everything that was in the catalog one could not stock up on any item. The secret to having everything in stock and staying under the dollar amount allowed was frequent orders. This kept the inventory low and prevented having a large inventory of items that did not sell. Lots of times items ordered were out of stock. Frequent orders allowed items that were shorted on previous orders to be reordered in a shorter time interval. In short order what you are going to use is a certain time period (weekly, biweekly, monthly). This will help you spread your precious dollars out where they are needed instead of being tied up in a few items that just set around and collect dust. Also you don't have to come up with a place and way to store all that extra stuff. You may pay a bit more in shipping and may not get the best prices, but you will still come out dollars ahead because you will have what you need and are selling.
Jerry
There's no universal guideline that will always be applicable. It's usually best to minimize your inventory but how much to minimize depends on how much that either reduces costs or increases sales. Many pro artisans have learned that large infrequent orders allow them such significant savings that doing so is much better then frequent small orders. Assume nothing until you do the math. The currently incredibly low interest rates on credit line loans are such that it's not unreasonable to buy a year's supply ahead. Doesn't it make sense to pay 8% interest when it allows you to buy for 50% (or more) off? I supply several dozen artisans that routinely order 3 months supply each time. They tell me that it's not just the cost savings that's appealling, but as much the assurance that everything they need is available when they need it - not when their supplier can supply it.
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  #38  
Old 2007-01-22, 7:09pm
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Originally Posted by Dennis Brady View Post
There's no universal guideline that will always be applicable. It's usually best to minimize your inventory but how much to minimize depends on how much that either reduces costs or increases sales. Many pro artisans have learned that large infrequent orders allow them such significant savings that doing so is much better then frequent small orders. Assume nothing until you do the math. The currently incredibly low interest rates on credit line loans are such that it's not unreasonable to buy a year's supply ahead. Doesn't it make sense to pay 8% interest when it allows you to buy for 50% (or more) off? I supply several dozen artisans that routinely order 3 months supply each time. They tell me that it's not just the cost savings that's appealling, but as much the assurance that everything they need is available when they need it - not when their supplier can supply it.
Dennis Yes there is no universal guideline! The basic guide that I outlined is just that, a basic guide. There are always other factors to stir into the mix that really makes things messy. If a color of glass one uses a lot of is not always readily available it would be unwise to not stock up when it is. If one can get a very very very good price on items that are used a lot it should not be passed up. If shipping time is going to go from 5 days to 30 days that has to be taken into account. If there is a period of the year when suppliers are out of a lot of items all the time that has to be taken into account also. To invest lots of money in some merchandise and left too broke to buy other needed merchandise also is not wise. There is a line and a good inventory control person is always looking for that invisible line.
Jerry
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  #39  
Old 2007-01-22, 8:05pm
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Putting in my two cents here, or rather my $8.00 as that is usually my starting price per bead. The ebay market decides how much higher they go from there. Bead making is a hobby for me and I can't imagine sitting down and making a bazillion round spacer type beads, it would drive me insane, so I sure am glad that there are wonderful beadmakers out there that do this, and feel they are getting a fair price for their beads.
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  #40  
Old 2011-07-19, 9:16am
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Bump, just cause it hasn't been addressed in this thread since 2007.......
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  #41  
Old 2011-07-19, 9:45am
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Oh gawd, not a DB thread. Please bury it again.
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  #42  
Old 2011-07-19, 10:07am
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Oh gawd, not a DB thread. Please bury it again.
Oh I doubt he will be around to post again in here unless someone addresses him... but it's a good topic! Especially right now because since 2007 the economy took a dive off the deep end and many of us have changed our attitudes on pricing.

What has changed for me: I was still on ebay in 2007 with over 1300 feedback from selling beads, and right about then I could see that I was not getting bids above the starting bid. Then they started dwindling down to where I was having to relist. Waste of money over and over and really disheartened, I shifted over to Etsy to save on listing fees. In 2008 Etsy was getting better and better so I didn't regret leaving ebay...I celebrated it.

I raised my prices a little, but I'm still making the same beads that I made for ebay. My work and skill level has not really progressed much over the years, but that was by my choice. When you have to work really hard in the studio to make a living, there is not a lot of time for experimentation and learning how to use all those presses, new tools, the new silver glass, etc. All work and no play is just the way it is for me. If I had a partner in the studio, that person could make the "bread and butter" beads while I learn and create new things. That isn't the way it's going to be, so I will bake more bread and spread more butter to keep my customers happy.
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  #43  
Old 2011-07-19, 10:23am
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Things have changed a lot for me as well... I used to sell mostly in the $40-80 range, and now when I list on eBay I am finding that most stuff is capping out at $25-ish... so my challenge has been to develop sets I am happy to sell for $25. Its working pretty well, though.
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  #44  
Old 2011-07-19, 11:08am
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Keep the conversation going. What Lisi and Kalera noticed is exactly why I bumped this thread. Lisi, I am finding that I too want to experiment but then I can't get the value for the time I spend so I keep doing what I know works.

Oh and be the way. I've tossed almost all my presses...too much work for dollar returned. And as to tutorials...it's neat to see new techniques, but mostly they are not my personal style, and experimenting to change them to make them mine is just too time consuming.
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  #45  
Old 2011-07-19, 11:25am
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Oh gawd, not a DB thread. Please bury it again.
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  #46  
Old 2011-07-19, 11:59am
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Thanks for the bump Linda. I find it interesting that both the links in the OP's post are defunct now. To me that says this isn't an easy road. No matter how much you love glass marketing/making/selling is hard work and mentally challenging to figure out.
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  #47  
Old 2011-07-19, 12:07pm
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Thanks for bumping this thread, I'm always interested in how people price their work. Being completely new, I haven't really sold anything, yet. I do have a bowl at my local bead store, filled with my beads for $1/ea, which they can actually get for .60¢ each, with discounts. But the bead store gets a 30% commission, so my profit will be pretty low lol.

Lisi, I love your etsy shop! It's great to see how interesting and creative a round bead can be!
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  #48  
Old 2011-07-19, 4:13pm
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Crikies...looking back to 2007 hurts my brain.

I'd have jellyfish focals get bid up to $200 on eBay back then. Now I'm scrapping for $29 and lucky if I don't have to relist them.

Lisi...relieving stress is the whole point of annealing. If the bead survives the thermal shock of ramping up for a batch anneal---it ends up just as annealed as any other bead. It starts out the cycle with more stress than a garaged bead--but it should end up 'relaxed', which is what annealing is intended to do.

The larger and more elaborate a bead is, the more sensitive it will be to the added stress of rapid cooling in a fiber blanker, and the ramp up for a batch annealing cycle. Those are where people suffer the losses---thermal shock. I don't batch anneal because I make mostly sculptural work, huge focals, or I work long enough hours each day to warrant running the kiln. However, I would not consider a batch annealed bead less annealed than a garaged one.

Just wanted to reply to your comment from before. Don't mean to turn this into an annealing debate--there are already plenty of those here at LE. LOL Any newbies just finding this thread and you want to know about batch annealing---you should do a search here and Google it. There is plenty of info out there so you can make a decision.

~~Mary
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  #49  
Old 2011-07-19, 4:43pm
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One of the drawbacks to selling lower-priced sets is the extra work in photography and shipping. I used to ship several $300-$400 packages a week, now most of them contain a single $20 set so I'm spending WAY more time shipping, as well as taking pictures and listing!
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  #50  
Old 2011-07-19, 5:26pm
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One of the drawbacks to selling lower-priced sets is the extra work in photography and shipping. I used to ship several $300-$400 packages a week, now most of them contain a single $20 set so I'm spending WAY more time shipping, as well as taking pictures and listing!
Yup, there is that. Sorry, Kalera. That just sux.
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  #51  
Old 2011-07-19, 8:08pm
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Keep the conversation going. What Lisi and Kalera noticed is exactly why I bumped this thread. Lisi, I am finding that I too want to experiment but then I can't get the value for the time I spend so I keep doing what I know works.
Oh and be the way. I've tossed almost all my presses...too much work for dollar returned. And as to tutorials...it's neat to see new techniques, but mostly they are not my personal style, and experimenting to change them to make them mine is just too time consuming.
Wow, someone who understands exactly what I'm talking about! People have asked me why I don't do anything other than what I do, and sometimes that gets a little hard to explain. It's nice to know someone else who doesn't give in to keeping up with the "new wave".

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Lisi, I love your etsy shop! It's great to see how interesting and creative a round bead can be!
Thanks Laci! It becomes relaxing once you are used to working a certain way and especially with the problem-free glass. But I do have days when I want to just quit doing this because of silvered ivory getting yucky or bubbly teeny pitty frit problems, but I won't. I'll keep going until I'm unable to see and my hands shake way too much.

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Lisi...relieving stress is the whole point of annealing. If the bead survives the thermal shock of ramping up for a batch anneal---it ends up just as annealed as any other bead. It starts out the cycle with more stress than a garaged bead--but it should end up 'relaxed', which is what annealing is intended to do
Mary, that was a loooong time ago and I have since changed my mind about batch annealing! I had to batch anneal for four months when I moved back into my rental house and before I got my kiln set up in the same room as the torch. I used the "annealing bubbles" and never had a bead break, except Bullseye beads larger than 10mm. I ruined a lot with shoving them into vermiculite, so the ease of using the bubbles, I was very pleased with them. I still use them if I'm making a huge run of small spacers, like 8mm size, so I don't have to keep opening and closing the kiln door every minute. lol!

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One of the drawbacks to selling lower-priced sets is the extra work in photography and shipping. I used to ship several $300-$400 packages a week, now most of them contain a single $20 set so I'm spending WAY more time shipping, as well as taking pictures and listing!
Yep, this sux! I'm really looking forward to it when I have to take all new pictures of the ready to ship beads since I'm getting rid of most of the made to order. I forgot how much work it really is!
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  #52  
Old 2011-07-20, 5:23am
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I can't imagine glass without exploration. It sounds kind of interesting. It's hard to make decisions all day.
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  #53  
Old 2011-07-20, 5:44am
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I can't imagine glass without exploration. It sounds kind of interesting. It's hard to make decisions all day.
Oh I can imagine it! Back in my ebay days I was not doing made to order because you must sell the exact item in the pictures unless it's a multiple quantity of the same item. Those days were a lot of fun because I was always coming up with something new and only on occasion I would remake a set because it sold well. It was later that when I kept selling the same sets of beads over and over again and they all looked identical, that I decided to do mostly made to order. I wish I never started it and now I'm trying to get out.

I'm really excited about my future in lampworking which is to break free of what I've been having to do so we can survive and move on to what I really want to create for a change. It's really hard to explain why it is this way because most people would have to live the life to truly understand it.
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  #54  
Old 2011-07-20, 7:05am
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I'll be interested to see how your exploration goes. I bet you can beat most people on speed, patience, consistency, etc., and those things can definitely benefit your art. Maybe just start throwing an hour of exploration in and base your production off of the successful ones?
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Old 2011-07-20, 10:55am
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I'll be interested to see how your exploration goes. I bet you can beat most people on speed, patience, consistency, etc., and those things can definitely benefit your art. Maybe just start throwing an hour of exploration in and base your production off of the successful ones?
That's why I want to be free to make whatever comes to mind! I would love to be able to take an hour every other torching session or so to practice encasing or florals, something I never learned well. I'm very curious about where this freedom is going to take me. I have been talking about it for years. Well, about as long as beadmaking has been my day/night job.

Sort of like when my dad was in the advertising business in Chicago working for Leo Burnett and he did what they told him to do, and 10-12 hours days of that. He never had time to create what he wanted until he left that job, got married, and moved to the Florida Keys. But of course, after having kids he went back to the maddening production work to keep the bills paid. All these years later I understand why! hehe
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  #56  
Old 2011-07-21, 12:14pm
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This is a very interesting thread,

Just from my point of view, my brain goes on vacation if I can't play with the ideas roaming around in my head.

I have to be able to play or it's just not worth it for me to sit in front of the torch for hours a day. I started this as a hobby and if I try to look at it as a business (which it has become), I get bored and disinterested.

I start my beads out for .99 and let the bidders determine the price for me. It's a gamble sometimes because my beads can take up to half an hour to make, but at my skill level, I don't feel comfortable trying to demand high prices.

All I really care about is paying the bills by doing what I love to do. and doing that from home is a huge bonus for me because of where I live.
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Old 2011-07-22, 7:14am
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Lisi Lisi is offline
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This is a very interesting thread,

Just from my point of view, my brain goes on vacation if I can't play with the ideas roaming around in my head.

I have to be able to play or it's just not worth it for me to sit in front of the torch for hours a day. I started this as a hobby and if I try to look at it as a business (which it has become), I get bored and disinterested.

I start my beads out for .99 and let the bidders determine the price for me. It's a gamble sometimes because my beads can take up to half an hour to make, but at my skill level, I don't feel comfortable trying to demand high prices.

All I really care about is paying the bills by doing what I love to do. and doing that from home is a huge bonus for me because of where I live.
Nice focals, and you have a great following! The longer you stay on ebay the better and if the economy improves, you will be glad you did. So maybe ebay isn't dead after all. Maybe I'll give it a try again...I think about it.
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  #58  
Old 2011-07-22, 1:10pm
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Nice focals, and you have a great following! The longer you stay on ebay the better and if the economy improves, you will be glad you did. So maybe ebay isn't dead after all. Maybe I'll give it a try again...I think about it.
Thanks! I have noticed that prices go up and down and I have learned to never depend on a certian dollar amount, but it works for me. I love my customers and it's way easier than trying to drive 50+ miles each way for a job that I hate and less money.

I don't do any advertising or marketing, I need to think about doing that at some point.
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Old 2011-07-22, 5:57pm
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Sadie Mae Sadie Mae is offline
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Ok, so what are the prices today?? *smiles*

The way the economy is going we'll be using beads for trade again soon!!!
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Old 2011-07-22, 6:12pm
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Elizabeth Beads Elizabeth Beads is offline
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The way the economy is going we'll be using beads for trade again soon!!!
We'll be rich!
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