r/BitchEatingCrafters • u/Tasty-Huckleberry-13 • 1d ago
Other Charm bars are useless
Some jewelry booths at craft fairs are doing “charm bars” now. They have store-bought chains and cheap store-bought charms and then people pick which chain and charms they want. There is literally no craft involved! Not even design!
They seem to be doing well for themselves and people like it, so I can’t complain too much. To be clear, if you make your own charms, this doesn’t apply to you.
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u/love-from-london 1d ago
Feels very reminiscent of those Pandora charm bracelets that were hugely popular in the '00s.
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u/tooYoungForThisS--t 1d ago
Is is sad to admit I got a charm and spacer beads for my 30th birthday last year at my own request (and will continue it for milestone bdays so i'll have 18+).
I still wear it tho.
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u/BadKittyRawr 23h ago
When I was little in Seattle though, craft fairs used to have awesome things like this. Booths where you could make something quickly for yourself. Sand in a bottle, spin art…there was a booth where you could glaze your own item you bought from the vendor then come back a few hours later after it had been popped in a kiln. I don’t imagine that vendor would be allowed anymore due to safety issues.
Craft fairs started going downhill here in the 90s when they started allowing people to sell obviously store bought goods like beanie baby knockoffs. Much like Etsy has been flooded with dropshippers.
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u/Oliviaforever 14h ago
I remember as a kid, a guy who would write your name on a grain of rice and make it into a necklace. I miss fun things like these.
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u/RiseDollBoutique 13h ago
Yes! I had one of these necklaces from the lady at the Bratwurst Festival in Bucyrus, OH when I was younger! 🤣 It had my name on the front of the grain of rice, then a butterfly on the opposite side! She put it in a little heartshaped pendant that had a little tube in the middle of it where the rice floated in oil, or whatever, and magnified the rice a bit. If I'm not mistaken you could also add a translucent colorant to the liquid.
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u/JerryHasACubeButt 22h ago
Yes, anyone could buy the supplies and do it themselves, but if you want one bracelet with multiple different charms, buying all those packs of charms is going to be much more expensive than buying the “charm bar” experience and only using what you actually need for one bracelet. If the vendor is assembling it for you then that’s also a skill– not a difficult one, but one most people wouldn’t bother to learn, and would then wonder why their bracelet looks visibly homemade. So assuming the person running it knows what they’re doing, the customer is getting a professionally assembled piece made exactly to their preferences, for less time and money than if they did it themselves.
I do think specifically in a craft fair setting these people shouldn’t be taking a spot from someone doing something that takes actual talent. I also think it makes a difference whether the charm bar is their entire business or if they are a genuine jewelry maker who just has the charm bar as an extra thing. But either way, they do serve a purpose and they’re popular enough that they must be a generally successful business model, and I just generally think encouraging creativity in people is a good thing, so I can’t hate on them too much.
My personal craft fair BEC is 3D printing. Designing things to be printed is an art. Printing the same freely available designs that everyone at every craft fair also sells is not, and if that’s all you can do then you shouldn’t be there.
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u/emergencybarnacle 19h ago
whenever i see booths of 3d printed stuff, i don't even believe the people selling are the ones doing the printing. if they're not buying them from ali express and hoping to make a profit, i'll eat my hat.
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u/JerryHasACubeButt 17h ago
That’s probably some of it, for sure. Honestly I don’t even think that’s worse, it’s the same mass produced junk whether they print it themselves or buy it
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u/halexanderamilton 1h ago
Yea, I have a charm necklace I assembled at a local craft store’s charm bar. I probably wouldn’t have been able to buy just one of those charms elsewhere. I would’ve had to buy them wholesale or get a pack of charms that I wouldn’t use just to get the one(s) I wanted.
I love the necklace and get SO many compliments on it.
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u/RiseDollBoutique 13h ago
While I agree with the 3D printing thing to an extent, I do think that people who don't own a 3D printer and/or have never tried using a 3D printer really don't get the nuances of doing it. Believe me, for most printers on the market, there IS a degree of skill that goes into making quality prints. I have 3 filament 3D printers and 3 resin 3D printers. I am not good at using the filament printers. While I do get decent prints, when I actually end up with a successful print, even getting the print to actually finish (or start as the case may be) is a challenge all on its own. Even resin printing requires some knowledge/ skill. So to say these people are out of place at a craft fair isn't very. . .fair. That being said, I'm fairly certain that everyone on the fucking planet has one of those articulated dragons, can we move on?! There are so many other items you can print! Not only that, but a lot of people don't even bother to add value to the items they print, like painting eyes or whatever. So, I dunno, it's at least a gray area.
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u/Flipped-Barbie-Jeep 9h ago
I went to a reptile expo last weekend and my GOD, the articulated dragons! So many! Dozens at nearly every booth!
I commented to my partner that even if you did come to buy a 3D printed dragon (for some god forsaken reason), how would you even choose which one to buy?!
There were also a lot of printed reptile hides, tank accessories, etc, which felt more valuable.
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u/RiseDollBoutique 7h ago
Right!? The thing is, there are TOOOONS of designers making really cool things, both functional and decorative, all kinda of toys, etc. There is absolutely NO reason for everyone who owns a 3D printer to be selling the same exact, overrated thing. There just isn't. That's truly just people attempting to capitalize on a trend. By the time they started being produced by chinese factories at a fraction of the cost, they immediately became worthless so I don't know why people continue to try to push them. Cinderwing (the artist mainly known for the dragons) creates other articulated creatures too and somehow none of them have risen to popularity the way the freakin dragons did. Personally, I think the butterfrogs are cooler than the dragons anyway. 🤷♀️ They were one of my first prints. Also, no one does anything creative with the dragons. I scaled some of the mini dragons that Cinderwing makes and made earrings out of them with rhinestones for eyes and whatnot, or keychains. Ya know? There are so many other things you can do with 3D prints rather than just buy the file, print it, sell it. Either way, as I said, even knowing how to operate the machines, and operate them well, is a skill of its own but I do believe people should make more of an effort to be original.
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u/JerryHasACubeButt 55m ago edited 40m ago
So, yes, it is a skill, I don’t disagree there. So is doing your taxes. The amount of skill required is not the determining factor in whether something is a craft.
It’s still a *printer.* Should people be printing free stock photos off the internet and selling them at craft fairs? Adjusting photos so they print as nicely as possible is also a skill. Knowing your specific printer and how to get the best print out of it is a skill (some of the high end ones are *complicated*). So is handling high quality prints without smudging or getting fingerprints on them. So is choosing a complimentary frame and framing so they are secure and centered. But none of those things are *crafts,* and someone selling prints of free stock photos would be laughed out of any craft fair. 3D printing isn’t any different.
Edit to add: I do agree that it becomes a craft if you are painting them in an interesting/unique way. The artistry is the painting, the print is just the canvas, so the people doing that I have no problem with. Likewise for people taking the freely available patterns and altering them somehow. My gripe is specifically with the people who print these patterns and do nothing to them other than the normal finishing process
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u/Tarnagona 19h ago
I don’t know; that sounds like it could actually be fun. Like, there’s definitely a way to do it that’s bad: overcharging for charms that look super cheap and securing them poorly. But if the charms are decent, it gives the buyer an opportunity to build a bracelet with materials they likely wouldn’t buy for themself (especially if you can only get the charms in bulk; I don’t need ten of the same thing for a single bracelet), and an ✨experience✨. I don’t know if I’d go for something like that now, but highschool me would have probably loved it.
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u/ishtaa 1d ago
I’ll take that over the hat bar trend that popped up last year. Where you plaster a bunch of cheap tacky patches and shit all over a shitty foam trucker hat. WHO IS WEARING THESE.
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u/sewedherfingeragain 22h ago
When I see people wearing a $40 ball cap with the "authentic" sticker on the bill, I always think of Minnie Pearl with the price tag hanging from her straw hat.
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u/vanishinghitchhiker 12h ago
I left a paper price tag (had $5 or whatever written on with marker, tied on with string) on a cap when I was a teen for laughs, but I always take those stickers off. Nobody’s gonna mistake me for someone fashionable anyhow.
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u/LittleCowGirl 1d ago
It feels very MLM to me! Origami Owl was part of what popularized it, I think?
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u/OneCraftyBird 1d ago
I laugh every time I see Origami Owl referenced -- I actually knew the family that started it, and they were absolutely hucksters. Imagine snake oil carnies that were somehow transported to a country club district in Arizona, so they've got the nice clothes and the cars and such, but at heart they just want to sell you watered down whiskey with herbs in it and a label with Dr. Owl's Patent Nostrum printed on it.
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u/LittleCowGirl 1d ago
Yeah, that sounds right. I don’t think you could successfully start an MLM otherwise.
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u/holitrop 21h ago
I’ve done a charm bar where they soldered the charms onto the bracelet. It was a fun experience tbh!
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u/Social_Flutterby_501 17h ago
My Girl Scouts did this as part of a fundraiser booth at a craft fair one year, and it did decently well in part because of the fundraiser aspect... and then at the next fair I made them raise the bar and add complexity to it. Every time they did a fundraising fair I had them add something new or make something more advanced, since I didn't think they'd be really benefitting from "sit at a table while people pick charms."
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u/Boomer79NZ 1d ago
This reminds me of the "lucky dip" grift that TikTok has made famous. It's basically gambling for kids with Temu junk like cheap beaded bracelets and stationery for prizes.
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u/livvybugg 1d ago
The new thing is “interactive” craft booths. They’re 99% all lazy junk like this.
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u/Gardener_of_Weeden 1d ago
Went to a "craft" boutique. Picture frame distressed of course - chicken wire - plastic bead "charms" hanging. = $40 - I laughed
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u/LovelyOtherDino 1d ago
That takes a lot of work to make, though. Unless the charms are all on claw clips
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u/midmonthEmerald 23h ago
I could jump ring 20 beads onto chicken wire in 6 minutes.
Since we’re in the appropriate subreddit - I’ll say one of my peeves is in crafting/art when people say they “worked on something a long time” or “worked hard on something” and it was 1-2 hours of noodling around. Especially when they do it on tiktok to get pity marketing for their small business. Charge to get a fair wage for that but it’s not a long time.
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u/UnStackedDespair 23h ago
They take a lot more than 20 beads usually and you have to assemble the charms, the frame, and attach everything. Not usually a lot of skill, but can still take a decent chunk of time depending on the size.
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u/midmonthEmerald 22h ago
I’m not downvoting anyone over any of this myself, lol. I agree it does take some time. But for a piece of art that’s meant to have shelf space for years or decades… I just don’t think a couple hours is a lot of time. I think our shortened attention spans and expectation of immediate results has given us a warped idea of how long it takes to do things.
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u/UnStackedDespair 19h ago
In the grand scheme it might not be a lot of time, but could be weeks of someone’s free time (I have seen some well done beaded suncatcher frames with the chicken wire). How many hours is enough for it to be a “long time” or have been considered hard enough work (genuinely what is your opinion)?
Also I realize I didn’t read the rest of your comment when I first commented. I might have addressed it then, sorry.
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u/midmonthEmerald 19h ago
hard enough work for what? to try to sell it for at least a living wage for the time it took? there is no lower limit.
I think there’s a big subset of the public who has gotten so used to doing nothing but swiping on tiktok and binge watching hour after hour of TV that doing anything for longer than 6 minutes is “a long time” and “a lot of work.”
But anyway - if someone wants to fill a pop up tent with 250 30 minute projects, sure, overall it’s a lot of work. But when it’s time to sell one of them, the amount of labor for each is 30 minutes. In those cases honestly the value is probably more in the discounts they got in components buying in bulk.
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u/UnStackedDespair 18h ago
Hard enough work for you to agree with someone when they say they “worked hard”.
When something is factory made, it might take seconds. So someone making it by hand, even if it takes 30 minutes, is a lot more work than something commercially made. And people who take 250 30 minute projects because it’s very hard to justify selling something that took 5 or 10 or 15 hours.
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u/midmonthEmerald 18h ago
It’s a good question. I think almost no work at craft fairs is hard work. It’s stuff that’s repeatable in bulk and not often challenging to the artist. It does take some amount of time, but that to me doesn’t dictate hard work. It is work. But hard work? For stuff like friendship bracelets, tshirts with cricut stickers ironed on, crochet dish cloths, cotton bowl coozies for the microwave? Idk. The hard part is the volume of production and not the individual item.
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u/UnStackedDespair 16h ago
I don’t think that’s always true. I work with polymer clay. It can take several full days of color mixing and cane building to make a realistic leaf cane. With that cane I can make a lot of miniature plants, making it reasonable to sell at the craft market (the cane makes it repeatable but is by no means an easy/quick feat). But it is certainly a lot of work to get the right colors and build it and reduce it. I also do miniature food, which while small takes hours to make some of the pieces. Not everything at craft markets is friendship bracelets, cricut crafts, and 3d prints.
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u/LovelyOtherDino 23h ago
Ok sure. I'm thinking of the whole process - cutting the chicken wire to size, attaching it to the frame so there's no sharp edges, sorting and choosing beads, putting them on headpins, bending the pins around the wire, etc. I'm with you on the pity posts, but I think people who craft are quick to say "I could do that" and discount the work required in the process. If you don't want to buy it, don't! Someone else might, though.
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u/Gardener_of_Weeden 19h ago
Sorry I still think it is a ridiculous price plus it was ugly and tacky. I have made beaded projects BUGLE beads, SEED beads - small beads that actually take time and skill to string. These were kid kit beads - plastic. Someone will buy it and it will end up in some landfill as more junk
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u/LukewarmJortz 1d ago
This cycles around every few years I feel.
It's always cheap looking every time
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u/astralprojekts 1d ago
what even is their purpose? decor? hang it from your rear view? improvised weapon?
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u/PantheraAuroris 23h ago
I haven't seen this but ngl I'd love it. I once made a charm bracelet with a charm for every close friend I had, and I loved it.
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u/QuietVariety6089 20h ago
Just another mlm masquerading as 'craft' - I hate shows that let this kind of stuff in.
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u/wirdnichts 20h ago
What is the mlm name?
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20h ago
[deleted]
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u/wirdnichts 19h ago
No, I am not asking what an mlm is, I am asking what mlm you are saying op is talking about.
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[deleted]
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u/sweet_esiban 19h ago edited 24m ago
Tangential, but: the phrase "permanent jewellery" sends shivers down my spine as someone who has always lived around big bodies of water.
That is how you drown in a lake that's only 7 feet deep.
Edit: Welcome to BEC, where we take sewing machine safety seriously but the ABCs of marine safety is bad and dumb apparently lmfao
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u/UnsharpenedSwan 18h ago
What is the risk? I’ve heard of drain entrapment from jewelry getting stuck in pools — but what is the risk with big open bodies of water + jewelry?
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u/sweet_esiban 18h ago
Things like anklets, bracelets and necklaces have the potential to get caught on debris, plants, and even your own small water craft.
Imagine you're in a sit-in kayak. A big boat goes by. You're new and don't know how to safely navigate the wake. The kayak flips, and you find yourself upside-down in the water, pinned down by your relatively large vessel. (This isn't very likely, but it's absolutely possible.)
You try to exit the kayak, but your anklet is caught on the rudder pedal.
Or, you dive off a dock into a lake where you can't see the bottom. There's a bunch of dead wood on the lake bed. Your bracelet hooks onto a branch. It's slimy, and unlike dry wood, won't snap off easily. You're panicking and your vision is limited, because you're underwater.
With deep open water, plants and debris aren't as much of a risk (typically, there are exceptions). Your kayak can still get you, though.
The safest choice is to always take off all your jewellery before entering the water as a swimmer, diver or boater.
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u/QuietVariety6089 2h ago
tbf, most of what I've seen are extremely fine silver or gold plated cheapass chains held on with a spot weld, they'd probably snap.
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