Honour Your Inner Magpie

ArtLog: Beads of the Month last call for whole-year discounts! And a little BotMo backstory.
OK, we're in the last three days for the February Beads of the Month packages -- remember, the deadline for each month is the 10th now -- and that means this is the last chance to get a 12-month subscription at the discounted rate. (You can still order three and six month subscriptions, and can mix-and-match months, but the discounts are deepest on the whole year.)

Me, I'm hoping a few more people sign up, whether for multi-month deals or even individual months, and then pay right away so that I can cut a serious swath through the bead wholesalers. I plan to hit York today for preliminary scouting. Everybody's been telling me they want more Czech glass, more AB, more cool shiny glass, so I intend to respond to that. The more people that pay now, the more money I've got when I enter the Halls of Temptation. Yep, this is a naked plea for those of you with PayPal to use your powers for good. *grin*

Buying for BotMo is always interesting and a balancing act. I need to buy enough to cover all the packages, but must also choose beads I can personally use in case a month does not sell out and the beads come back to me. I need to lay out large sums of cash up front, when I'm on a buying trip, so I'm not caught short later and wind up buying things at higher prices or with rush shipping. I'm constantly going back and forth between things like "Oooh, those are perfect -- but can the budget stand getting those, when we need so many other things? But I can get the other things closer to home -- not at such a good price, admittedly, but shouldn't I get the outstanding ones now and fill in the more standard things later?" and "Oh, god, if I buy twenty more things, the discount goes up -- but that blows a hole in the budget! Hmm, what can I move around? Which other month's themes have items here that I could get, to make that discount cutoff?" The other thing I have to do is factor in the labor (time sorting them, counting them, making sure they're good beads) and expenses (plane ticket to NYC, in this case, and shipping costs if I mail some home rather than carrying them, which with the current situation with the shoulder and physical therapy and shortness of breath sounds like it might be a win -- though I will have to calculate which ones can travel safely that way, and which ones must be hand-carried), and all the other things like that. Business is fascinating, especially at the interface between wholesale and retail; I used to tell Mike sometimes, "Hey, it's like a big computer game except with real money." He was amused.

At this point, BotMo is allowing me to buy better beads to work with myself, in some cases, than I otherwise could afford. However, because I have to guess which months will not fill, sometimes I guess wrong, and all the beads go out to people -- which is good, but I need to add enough on top of those to supply myself, or wait until December (for instance) to see if that nifty bit of Imperial jasper really is going to be mine to work with. The time factor is huge, because those beads are reserved until I know if they'll be taken -- and I don't know that until the deadline has passed. This year, what with my giving the beads to Katie much earlier, they'll be out of my sight for much of the year -- which adds to the risk of buying them again, says this ADD Lioness, as my sense of "Ooh, shiny!! Want!" is definitely stronger than my sense of having gotten some of those shinies already. (I once had three copies of the book "You Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid, Or Crazy?" which is a book for living with and coping with ADD. I had three copies because I kept forgetting I'd bought it already. Yeah, it's like that. Seriously, there are times that I feel it's a miracle I have a business at all, because the ADD is really quite a handicap at times. But I digress.)

Anyhow, I'm excited, because I'm going bead scouting (and probably shopping, which in this case means buying) today, and that's always interesting.

Yesterday on my preliminary and tiny exploratory foray I noticed that my gut feeling was right, and aquamarine prices have risen significantly. That'll be a challenge, as I wanted some nice ones for March, for "Water." Not sure I can get what I want for you guys, but I'll see if I can. That's the point of it, after all, and also the fun of it, when you come right down to it.

Wish me luck?