Success Stories

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You need to start making jewelry. Don't worry about selling it right now, it may happen naturally. Just show your work to everyone you can. And I mean EVERYONE - walking down the street, anyone you speak to, work with, do business with, at the hamburger stand, anywhere. Just walk up and show them and start talking about your jewelry and things will happen.

You have to understand what you are doing, where you are going, and firmly believe in what you are going to accomplish and you will accomplish it. The more trouble you have getting there - the sweeter the success!

Don't spend a lot of cash - work with the cheapest wire you can till you get the feel of things. Use copper, brass, nickel - you can make lots of jewelry, perfect your trade, learn to sell and make a few bucks to pay for all of those peanut butter sandwiches you will eat for a while!

A TIP FOR BADLY NEEDED QUICK CASH

Give a garage sale to get started. If you have nothing, ask your neighbors for any junk in the garage or clean it out for them for free (or maybe a dollar or two) and keep what they don't want. Put yourself in motion and the law of return will do the same! But start now!

I know what you're saying:

"Yeah, easy for him to say, he's rich and I'm homeless".

Well, I will tell you a little story and it's a true one!

I call it: TOUCHED BY TWO ANGELS

I had been twisting wire for a full-time living for about a year. I don't know if it was a living or just plain survival. I had a small night time show coming up at a traveling carnival in Slidell, Louisiana but only had about $3 of gas in my car, no wire at all and a grand total of $3.67 in cash. (TRUE STORY)

The one good thing was that the $50 booth was paid so all I had to do was show up. I had planned to make name pendants and bracelets because of the small time venue. But, with no wire, there was not much hope of doing anything or making any money at all. To say the least, I was worried and broke - real broke.

I could not sleep Friday night I was so nervous and I started thinking what I could do. Basically, all I needed was wire, any kind of wire! It didn't have to be gold, just anything to make something that I could sell and make a few dollars.

Saturday morning, bright and early, I got up and made my way to the nearest junk and scrap yard and there it was - just as I had thought. Old telephone cable made of rubber and copper and the copper was pure; some copper is created with arsenic in it and I did not want to use that. Telephone copper line is 99.9% pure copper.

The old phone cable was $2 for about 8 feet but it had about 5 or 6 strands, as I remember, about 16 gauge round. So, I cut the rubber off and cleaned up the remaining copper and boy did it shine!

Saturday night came and I got my little portable booth and went down to the carnival and set up my gypsy jewelry camp! I had my nickel silver rings, my brass bead pendants with cords, my loose tumbled stones and my horse blanket I used to cover my table. I was ready to go!

7:00 pm things got underway and my first customers were two young girls about 14 years old. They looked at everything but weren't too interested. Then, I thought of my copper and said: "Hey, how about a bracelet made with your name on it"? They said: "COOOOL"! So, I went to work making name bracelets from my scrap yard copper wire.

I finished their bracelets and that polished copper shined like a new penny (which it probably is right now) and their names were made into a small work of art from an old piece of junk yard copper that people had been stepping on for who knows how long.

I wanted $14 for each bracelet but they only had $5 each! So I said "OK, I will accept the $5 from each of you but that only makes $10 - you still owe me $9 each. But if you will go around the carnival yard and show off your bracelet to every single one of your friends I will forget about the rest and we can call it even, ok"? They said "Yes" and I went back to polishing copper.

And then a firestorm hit! Every young, teenage girl in that entire carnival was in line in front of my booth waiting for their $14 copper name bracelet! Oh, man - was that cool! I could not believe it! I guess you had to be there under those conditions to understand it, but it was like a gift from heaven!

I was using round copper wire. I can work pretty fast with round wire so I cut the wire made the name in the center, sized it around their wrist and made a simple hook and catch on each end. All told, I think I could make one of them in about 14 minutes. So that was $56 an hour and I felt like Donald Trump!

At the end of the two-day carnival, I had about $495 - but it was like a million dollars to me at the time. I could not believe it…but here is where it all took a turn for the worse!

I guess the stress of not having any money to work the show, the stress of getting it all together over night and the good excitement of all the jewelry I sold at the carnival was a bit too much for a manic depressive like me. Within two days I ended up in the local psychiatric facility on orders from my psychiatrist. _______This was not cool.

So, there I was again, in the local "nut house" all alone. No friends visited, no family, no associates. Again, I was in this adventure all by myself. I was single at the time so my wonderful wife, Mary, was not with me. Just me and my two dogs, Bubba and Bruiser, who were at home looking for me.

About two days later the head nurse says: "Preston, you have two visitors" and into the psychiatric hospital walked the two young girls that bought their copper bracelets from me and spread the word throughout the carnival about the crazy guy with the copper bracelets! And yes - they were wearing them!

At first, I didn't believe that the hospital would let them in or their parents would let them come to a real, honest-to-goodness, funny farm or that they would even think of someone like me working a carnival making jewelry from junk. But there they were - my only two little visitors!

We had a nice visit. For about 30 minutes, we talked and laughed about things kids love to talk about and had a great time. I felt so proud - it was like a visit from the President or something. I felt like I had two friends. Then, they were gone and I never saw them ever again. My two little angels still wearing their copper bracelets!

They were responsible for me paying my rent, my dogs eating, a little wire for the next show, a few beads and gas for my old, beat up Datsun.

Preston Reuther
Master Wire Sculptor

P.S. Could they have been angels? I don't know, but I think we all have at least two little angels watching over us and helping us when we need them the most. I've made million dollar deals since then but I will never, ever forget my encounter with my two little angels with their copper name bracelets!

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