rchaven

I am recently disabled and am unable to work any longer. At least doing anything productive that will earn one a living. My family was worried about me developing a sedate life after my injury which left me disabled. I had enjoyed making jewelry in school in my youth so decided to get into it about a year or so ago. I figured if nothing else I could perhaps make some stuff and sell some things on eBay or other media sites. Well the jewelry industry is so over abused, and with the overseas sellers to compete against it's tough to make any money. At least as I perceive the industry. Perhaps I'm too greedy but when I make something that takes me  an hour to make, I'm sure not going to sell it for $2 on the internet. Even if I don't have a lot invested, I'm not to keen on giving my product away. Well now go forwards a year of so and the Jewelry business still sucks. I sell an item here and there. My oldest son got into leather working this last spring (2017), and somehow I got drug into it also. I had been into leather way back about 15 years ago. Purchased a master leather set from the local Tandy Leather. Needless to say I fell out of the hobby due to my busy life. Fast forward back to this spring, and now I can't find any of my old leather tools and have to start over from scratch. I went to eBay to get the basic items as I'm on disability and my funds are very limited. The local Tandy Leather store was just so dang expensive. Now its winter and I've collected just about everything I need to make a wide range of leather products. I'm unable to enjoy the hobby that I love which is radio control. It's just to painful to enjoy properly due to my health conditions. After almost 3 years since my accident I gave up this last fall and started selling all my R/C equipment. Now I must say I'm just loving doing leather working. I have made all sorts of small accessory items like key fobs, credit card holders, coin holders and such other small items. I've sold some on eBay however again that market is fairly saturated. I'm not looking for this hobby to support myself and my family. I just want to be able to bring in a couple of hundred dollars a month extra between the jewelry and leather goods. So far I can say this has been going in an endless circle of more money going out then what is coming in. I suppose I need to lower my prices and just sell cheap like everyone else. Anyway that's about the basic story. How did I find this site? Quite by accident really. I asked a general internet question "when using oil based dye do you need to use a sealer". This is the top of the list of sites for answers and when i clicked the link I found this site. So here I am and this is my start on this site. 

Thanks for letting me ramble and share. 

Perry