New Year, New Goals!

Well last year was a mixed bag for me. I had some personal ups and down to which I won’t get into on here. This blog isn’t going to be about the rockhounding side of things, to which I will explain why that is in a little bit. This will be about the business side of my life and a little more. This will be little longer than my normal blog posts and for that, I apologize.

Let’s start off with the positive stuff. I started working on my wire wrapped jewelry more often, finding new designs and techniques to try. This is something that I kept going all year long. I had a random pop-up shop at my friends hair salon over the summer and made a few sales which were donated towards her dogs emergency medical bills. That always makes someone feel good. I’m getting better at what I’m working with and on to the point that I’m narrowing down what my style is and isn’t. I am starting to see that the more intricate designs are nice for the right stone but I’m leaning towards more simplistic designs that are more natural and organic in feeling or flow.

I have a business license now for Nevada. Trust me just following the website and filling out the paperwork without anyone giving me pointers is not an easy task, but I got it done, so I’m officially a business owner. With that comes more responsibilities, like making sure I filed my sales and expenditures on a quarterly basis according to what the department of taxation on a set for me. Later in the year the department changed how, what website to use, and my id # so that’s been a fiasco to figure out this month. But I figured it out and all is in order again! So, yay!!!

A little about what I have seen as a negative but it’s all part of learning the ins and outs of rock hounding on BLM land. Upon research, one is not allowed to make a profit or make money from the rocks you find on BLM land in any way. If you find any fossils, any vertebrate fossils it’s against the law to take them, no matter now small, but you can take invertebrate fossils within reason (leave behind much so the future rock hounders can find them and have the same joy of the find you did). The rocks I have found, and have intended to make jewelry out of, have now been taking up space in the garage. I’m considering tumbling a good number of them and when I attend shows to sell my jewelry use them as both decoration and as ‘free with purchase” items.

Having said that, sadly I did not go out rock hounding this year… at all. In early February 2024 I had the start of a series of mechanical and failures with the Jeep starting with fixing something that had been fixed in 2023 (meaning it was a free fix since it was in the 1-year warranty time frame by 2 weeks). A few months later I got in it to come home after work and the check engine light was flashing, meaning something bad was going on, this was a misfire in one of my pistons, which was related to the cable/wire going from the computer going bad, frying the plug-in part on the computer board. So, both of those had to be replaced. The garage I took it to is the best ever and the most transparent one I’ve used in a very long time. Upon inspecting the whole car, they noticed black fluid leaking from my rear differential which turns out the gears in there were eating each other, so another fix needed. Then in the summer my over heating light came on for the engine, which was found to be a pinhole leak in the radiator. This resulted in both the radiator being replaced as well as my water pump. All in all, these fixes go into the thousands of dollars which ended up putting financial constraints on me driving all over Northern Nevada looking for rock. The upside to all this is that hopefully the jeep won’t have these issues for a long time to come!

I have decided this year, 2025 I will be focusing more on building my business. I have decided on my goals I want to work towards making my dreams come true with the business. I want to make more jewelry, I was reading somewhere that say if I want to sell 100 pieces at an event, I need to have 300 ready to go, not all out on display, but have at least 3 times what I want to sell. I want to save money up to buy the equipment to cut rocks into slabs and polish my own rocks here at home. Which will take at least 2 different pieces of equipment. Save up to get a shed built or to rent space somewhere cut and polish my rocks. If we do a shed or something like that, we need to make sure it can be used year round, so we need to find a way to heat and cool it. And to do all this we also will need to get out electrical box looked and upgraded if needed.

I’m considering going to the Gem and Mineral show in Tucson, AZ this spring. With all my work in getting a business license squared away and having my department of taxation for Nevada I should be able to go to the wholesale shows and pay those prices for items. My goals there are to make connections for future use, look at beads to see if really want to incorporate those into my designs, look at bulk raw rocks with the future use of making into jewelry pieces. With all this in mind, I printed off business cards to pass out as needed. The cards are a good start but I already know I want to create different style of them. The cards are rounded square cards roughly 2.5 inches big with rounded corners. This is the front and the back has my @chrissyrockhuntsjewelry QR code.