Regrets - I wish I'd never bought...

[Running_wild]

Following on from the "how much do you spend on beads" thread, what about things you have bought for jewellery making that turned out to be a mistake?

- One kilo of flower shaped glass beads from India. Thousands of beads and every one chipped! I still haven't thrown them out as I keep looking through the boxes hoping to find one that is ok.

[Seahorse]

Urgh that must have been so annoying with s many beads.

I bought some swarovski beads of ebay about a year ago, bigger than normal and they were all chipped too.
Luckily the lady gave me a refund but sooo blooming annoying.

Even more annoying is when I recieve a perfect swarovski pendant, then I chip it through my own clumsy hands leaving it completely unusable.!!

[BeadsbyLili]

I bought some ready-made necklace thongs as I thought it would save me some time making pendants but lordy me were they awful !! All shabby and the findings twisted & bent....still got them in the bottom of a drawer somewhere but will probably end up throwing them away:mad:

[mjbelkin]

Packs of polymer clay and all the gadgets to go with it - I'm just rubbish at anything that you have to practise, and yet every once in a while I go and buy more of the stuff and do nothing with it :pc:

I blame all those talented polymer clay artists who make it look so easy ;)

[JBJB]

I shall say this very quietly as I know lots of people on this forum sell these ....

memory wire necklaces

As soon as I put a pendant bead on they opened too much at the back, they needed to have balls glued on the ends which meant gettings strands of glue everywhere .. too darn fiddly for my needs. Still got a load somewhere. I now use the screw-ball type - much more secure and thicker.

Other than that - my biggest regrets are spending money on craft-fairs where I don't cover my costs!!!

[Poppy4lee]

my biggest regrets are spending money on craft-fairs where I don't cover my costs!!!
I know exactly what you mean.. the first craft fair I did, the organisers offered free tea, or, coffee to 'customers' (I use the term loosely!), well lots of people came but purely for the free tea/coffee:mad: All the stall holders did really badly, I took £2.50 and that was as I was packing my stuff away. I've been to other fairs that offer the same deal and they've been fine, apparently the first fair has a really bad reputation amongst crafters (shame I didn't know about that before I decided to do it!!). Another regret I have is not finding out whether the fair is just for crafters. I did one where there were about 3 crafters and the rest of the stalls were selling bought-in stuff. You just can't compete against cheap foreign imports!! Phew, glad I got that off my chest.

[HelloBeads.co.uk]

I like the choice to topic - nice one Running Wild!!

I think my biggest regret was getting jump and split rings mixed up! I bought thousands of split rings when what I wanted to jump rings!! To me thye are like Orange juice and Orange Squash - I can never remember which is which!!!

Fran xx

[Running_wild]

I know what you mean about memory wire necklaces, JBJB. I make hundreds of memory wire bracelets but have always found the necklaces fall open and loose shape. And the rings are so small and stiff.

As for craft fairs, nothing worse than paying for a table, standing all day smiling and spending more on cups of coffee to keep you awake than you take in sales!:mad: