Better Product Photos even in Winter

YES you too can have good quality product photographs even in winter.

Get a good quality daylight spectrum lamp - this can be a floor standing OTT light, some off brand ott-light-type lamp, or even a simple multi-purpose florescent shop light fitted with daylight bulbs. This last set up is also good for just general lighting of your workspace as it can be hung overhead, out of the way so as not to create any shadows on your workspace.

You can get a good quality overhead shoplight with a pull string for about $15-30 + bulbs - depending on where you go $15 = walmart, $30 = Lowe's. I'll admit I've had better luck with the $15-20 Wal-mart ones than the more expensive ones from Lowe's/Home Depot. For whatever reason those ones do not last, the internal wiring components burn out faster and you end up being out more money. Bulbs can vary greatly - look for 'daylight' spectrum ones. You might notice an increase in your electric bill using daylight spectrum all the time - so you might want to get a couple of shop lights and set up an area with a table devoted just to photography and use a regular full spectrum florescent bulb set up for your work space.

Backgrounds should be neutral in color: cream, beige, light brown, tan, taupe, ecru, eggshell, black, neutral grays - neither warm nor cool, white and so on. Try to stay away from colors like those in the rainbow, yes they look pretty next to your item, but when you take a photo you'll often be surprised to find the image of the item you're photographing isn't the same color on screen as it is in your hand. Blue backgrounds are especially notorious for giving you a very strange resulting colorscheme for your photographed item. Blue backgrounds turn silver colored metal gold, gold colored metal dark brown to black and a myriad of other color problems that cannot be corrected in photoshop.

Stick to neutral colors, and invest in some scrap fabric drapery for your backgrounds. By drapery I mean a rather large cut of fabric for the area you're covering. This lets you stack books, blocks, dishes or whatever under the fabric giving it a raised look so you can photograph the items more clearly.

I generally look for tightly woven twill, suede-cloth (or velour even), velvet works too but it attracts lint badly and you'll spend a lot of extra $ on lint-rollers or tape to remove the lint from the velvet which will still show up linty in photos.
You don't have to spend a fortune. 1 full yard of 45" wide fabric should cover a decent sized area and give you room to pile things under it to elevate your product for photographing.

 As for props under the fabric I've used everything from the lid to a can of pounce cat-treats to a repurposed tub from sourcream (or other dairy spread) sliced on an angle to produce a slanted display. For blocking you can use books of any type, catalogs, old VHS tapes, dvd cases, even scrap lumber  whatever you want to use under the fabric to give a raised platform on your table will work. This is user specific and you'll have to play around with what works best.

These tips are assuming you don't have the $ to spend on a professional light box, photography studio, or other expensive equipment and are for making the most of your photos with little to no outside expense other than lighting and fabric.

The camera - I've seen really good photos taken with cell phone cameras, and really bad photos taken with thousand dollar cameras. The key is - know your camera. If it has a macro setting - and you're taking photos of jewelry or other small items and want to get detail...use the macro setting - usually found in the menus on point & shoot cameras and as a separate setting on DSLR cameras. Macro setting lets you zoom way in and get really really detailed shots of your work. This can be both a plus and a minus. For me as a maille artist, macro setting shows scratches to the metal, links that aren't quite closed 100% perfect and other 'bad' details. But those photos help me see things I need to correct in the item before I sell it. I fix the problem area(s) and re-shoot the photos.

If you don't have a macro setting on your camera or don't know how to find it - ask I may be able to help or at least point you to a site that can tell you where to find it in your specific camera.

Macro setting also shows a lot of good detail which is really good for jewelry and other small items to show to your customer the level of detailing in a clay sculpture, the details in a bead or beads and other things that you can't see as well at normal zoom.

FOCUS FOCUS FOCUS - please make sure your photos are in focus before posting them online. If you shoot a series of photos and they're not in focus to you in the editing phase, they won't be in focus when you upload them. Blurry or fuzzy photos are a big turn off for the customer. I'm a buyer as well as a seller and I can tell you if all your photos are so blurry I can't tell what's being sold I'll skip your shop and go elsewhere.

Speaking of editing - photoshop, gimp, paintshop pro, etc are all great tools to help you correct your photos before posting online. Etsy's ideal image size is a MINIMUM of 450x450 pixels. If the photo you've taken is less than that on any side - it wont' be in focus when you upload it because etsy will enlarge the photo to fill the space making for either a blurry or grainy (pixelated) photo.

Most photo editing software lets you choose your resolution when editing. My DSLR shoots at 300pixels per inch or DPI (dots per inch) which is a very large photo size in both dimension and in disk space. Every item I photograph gets its photos edited before I upload them. This usually involves cropping the excess background out of the way so the item is clear, visible, in the center or close to it of the window I'm working in, cropping eliminates excess background and useless crap (you know desk clutter) from the image leaving you with a smaller, neater looking image. Once I've cropped the image down to just the item I'm selling and the near background (a few pixels on each side for balance), I then check the image size - if it's showing 20% on my screen and takes up most of the screen I know to go into the photo and resize it. First I usually cut the resolution down to either 72 pixels per inch (usual web resolution for faster loading and a smaller file size) or sometimes 150ppi for images I want customers to see more detail in.

Etsy has a limit of 2mb per photograph you upload - you can fit a very large photo into a 2mb space, you just have to know how to edit the photos that its showing what you want it to show, clearly, and not fuzzy or blurry. But you don't have to use that full 2mb per image either. Most of my photos on etsy are somewhere between 47-700kb and they're plenty large enough for people to see the detail in the image without it being a huge file that takes forever to load on slower systems.

That's the other big thing when uploading files online (to etsy or anywhere). Remember NOT EVERYONE has high speed internet with a fast load time of photos. Sometimes less is more. I use paintshop pro (PSP) so I can tell you what works for that program - ask around others who use gimp or photoshop can tell you the tricks for those programs. In PSP, I crop the photo to the image I want, I resize to usually 150ppi for art, photographs & fractals -to show more detail; and 72ppi for all other photos. Then I make the image fill my work area - usually it'll say somewhere around 20 or 45% of full size. I go in and resize the image to the appropriate ppi for the item, and then whatever the image size is on screen if its 45 I enter 45% if its 22 I enter 22% of full size. This resizes the image so that at 100% it fills up my work space - which on my laptop is about 900x800 or somewhere in there depending on the image. This is more than big enough for etsy's 450x450 minimum, but not so big that it's a burden on slow systems.

Then I compress the file before saving. In PSP this is done as you save the image I use a jpg compression that I can choose how much compression to use, usually around 10% - which can take the image from 25mb to 700k or something like that. A reasonable file size for online.

If the image needs lightening, darkening, etc I do that too before I save the image. The last thing I do and I think everyone should get in the habit of doing is watermarking their photos.

Yes all your images are copyright to you when you take them - but unfortunately there are unscrupulous types out there who will steal your images to use as their own. PSP lets me save files as a transparent .psp file that's what i use to make my watermark images. These can then be added as an overlay to your image - casting a 'shadow' type effect or a watermark on the image that helps keep others from using your photos as theirs. I'll cover how to make a watermark image in a later blog after I've had sleep - and again this will only cover PSP as that's what I use. I'll ask a friend to help with the photoshop version...if I can at a later date.

So to review:
Background = neutral colors, tight woven fabric - suedecloth & the like works great and can usually be found in neutral colors often in clearance sections of the home decor fabrics bin. 1-2 yards is plenty.
FOCUS - make sure your images are in focus before uploading
Image size - 450x450 = etsy's minimum - try not to let your images fall below these magic #s.
Editing photos before posting - helps you see flaws in the item(s), and to see what the image will look like to your customers.
If you care about the quality of images you present to your customers - they'll see your care and will take a better look at the items in your shop.
Blurry, grainy, fuzzy, out of focus, off-colored, shadowed, or otherwise dark images will turn customers away from your shop.
LIGHT - use a daylight spectrum lamp to achieve daylight conditions indoors during the winter (and anytime you want to photograph your items in inclement summer weather or if you don't have a good outdoor spot to shoot year round)
MACRO - detail - show your customers what you're selling - up close & personal.

Your photos online are a substitute for the customer's own eyes seeing your product in person in a physical shop. Your photos have to convey quality, correct color, texture, etc (and in the case of food) it needs to look good enough to eat. If some of your items are unusual or unique and not necessarily identifiable as to what they are - what they should be used for or how they should be used - you can always shoot a few different photographs showing just the item, how the item should be used, etc. This way your customer gets the best feel for the product without being able to see it in person.


Too dark photos, grainy blurry etc all can be thought of again in terms of a customer picking up your item in a physical store. If the store has bad lighting, or if the store is dark, and the items are in a case that's got dirty or dusty glass, the view of the item is obscured and hard for the customer to see the item clearly, very few customers these days will buy items 'sight unseen'. Posting a photo of an item that's off-colored from the actual item is a good way to earn a neutral or negative feedback because the item on display differed from what they actually got.

If the photo on screen when you get ready to post doesn't look like the item in your hands - don't post the photo, take new ones.

Shipping Guide - Overview of Series

I want to start out by clarifying that the contents of this series of blogs are based around what works for me and what I've found is the best way to package items to best present the items for shipment via US Postal Service to customers within the US, though most of the info contained herein can be applied to US shipments out of the US - the only things that won't apply will come near the end of the blog series.

This is only part one of a multi-part blog aimed at teaching others how to improve & organize their shipping department - even if you are a one person business - shipping if done well can be a single area of your workspace, organized & efficient. It also can eliminate what some people find to be an annoying chore - even though it is the second most vital part of their business - behind making the product - that is getting the product to the customers. Do so with efficiency, ease, and organization and you'll find things flow smoother, faster and you won't mind shipping nearly as much after you follow these blogs.

These blogs will cover a variety of topics and the blogs will be spread out over a week or so to give you a chance to implement some of what I've suggested.
Topics will include:
Overhead - what is it, how do you figure it in - and how not including it in your final item pricing could be costing you money out of pocket and keeping your business from succeeding.
Organization of Shipping Department: How to improve efficiency and keep shipping from being a chore you despise
Money Saving tips on how to save money in the long run, Will include tips on recycling packaging and more. This will include a tutorial on how to save $ for your customers too - keep your delivery confirmation costs low - and allowing you to put delivery confirmation on EVERY domestic package you ship.
A step by step Tutorial on how I package items for shipment.(This will be a separate blog due to being very photographically intense.)

If you're at all interested in a more detailed analysis of how to figure your own pricing for your items - to make the most of your product, without over or undercharging you're welcome to convo me on etsy about a custom cost analysis for $10 I'll walk you through the steps to reprice most everything in your shop - that is everything that is handmade. I do not offer this service for vintage merchandise as it is not an area I have expertise in.

The next blog - Overhead and how it could be costing you $ out of your pocket - will be posted within the next day or so as time permits me to finish writing the blog.

Frawggie
FrawgzDezignz Etsy - Frawggie's shop

CPSIA - info & my opinions on it...

CPSIA was designed to prevent problems with our children coming in contact with items that do not meet a set of standards for lead and other hazardous material content. However, CPSIA never considered small businesses who rely on their small batch creation, and income to live in many cases. Not only is the economy in the toilet many DIY'ers don't have the money for all of the third party testing that is required under the original un-edited format of the CPSIA.

If you were paying attention at the time this law was first passed, it was written up very fast and passed by the CPSC (Consumer Products Safety Commission) shortly after the round of children's toys and products that were pulled from many store shelves in recent years. The entire lot of toys in question were made in Asia (China to be specific) where testing of any item for use by children is far from safe or reliable. The toys and items came into the US through normal import channels and many were admitted to being purchased by buyers for major retail chains without any regard for the items content in so far as the content may have been harmful to children who would be the end users of the products. The only thing the buyers and the retailers were concerned about was the bottom line and the money flowing into their pockets.

As a result the CPSC moved to make a law that would better protect children here in the US by creating a set of standards to which all products marketed towards children had to follow. The problem was the CPSC failed to take into account the very large and growing subset of the overall market of children's items in the US was and is made by small businesses, who barely have the money to put their small batch items together by hand without hiring hundreds of workers from other countries to do so for them. Their products are handmade, with love in the US (and other countries). CPSIA when it first got introduced had thousands of DIYers and small batch childrens product businesses freaking out. And right they were to freak out.

Basically the act originally stated: (paraphrasing) any product marketed towards children as the end users MUST undergo third party testing of FINAL product for lead and other hazardous material content on EACH item before item is allowed to be sold to the public. This was regardless of the fact that many items made by small businesses marketed towards children are made up of several components known to have no possible way to contain lead or other heavy metals. Yet somehow the CPSIA required testing on final products - because in 'theory' it is possible for a finished item made with components that are 100% lead free to somehow develop lead and other hazardous materials during construction or creation.

Think of a finished toy or childrens item like a recipe for a cake. Several ingredients go into the mix, and a baked cake comes out, in the case of many children's products the ingredients are things like, fabric, yarn, thread, stuffing etc. A small business person assembles pieces of fabric (lead free), strands of thread (lead free), stuffing (lead free), and a set of plastic animal eyes (lead free) into a final product of a stuffed plush animal. According to the CPSIA's original wording - the end resulting plush animal would have to be 3rd party tested for hazardous materials because somehow it is likely that during the creation of the animal it developed a hazardous lead content. You're not baking a stuffed animal its chemical composition isn't changing, its being assembled by hand in the US (in the case of CPSIA only affecting US based businesses).

The wording and the requirements for 3rd party testing on EVERY item made by every small business in the US marketed towards children under 15 years of age as the end user, would potentially bankrupt many small businesses causing them to shut their doors forever and further destroying our fragile economy. Thankfully many people banded together and had gotten a 1 year extention added to the initial date that testing had to begin before products could be sold. And once again we DIY'ers, makers of handmade items (not just children's toys & products but all makers of handmade) are banding together to see that this law gets amended before it fully takes effect and that the parts of the law that apply to small businesses are re-written in a manner that protects both the children its meant to protect in the first place, and the small businesses who make up a large portion of the overall children's product sales in the US.

It would seem that the CPSC really needs to wake up to the fact that if all of the components of any given finished product are lead & hazardous material free to begin with - assuming there is nothing involved that would change any item's chemical components during assembly, then the finished product should not require 3rd party testing. This will save small businesses a lot of money that they already don't have, and put more affordable, handmade, harmless products into the market and available to a public that is desperate to save money anywhere they can.

CPSC and our legislators need to take a good hard look at the act as its written, step back, take it off the table, look at what they're trying to prevent - and that is another large scale epidemic of imported children's products from countries with lax safety standards for hazardous material content in those products, and to realize that US based small businesses are NOT the ones that were to blame in the first place for the string of recalls of imported, mass produced, very hazardous toys & products that caused a lot of illnesses, injuries, potential problems and panic regarding the safety of children's items in the future.

CPSC is an Independent Federal Regulatory Agency. CPSC works to save lives and keep families safe by reducing the risk of injuries and deaths associated with consumer products. We do this by developing voluntary standards with industry issuing and enforcing mandatory standards or banning consumer products if no feasible standard would adequately protect the public obtaining the recall of products or arranging for their repair conducting research on potential product hazards informing and educating consumers through the media, state and local governments, private organizations, and by responding to consumer inquiries

Wire - knowing your components

This is a continuation of my previous blog on knowing what you're buying.

Seeing a lot of people on etsy selling 'filled' wire - that isn't what they're claiming it to be.

If you're looking for something in Silver - the actual element Silver - not silver colored - but silver - ie Sterling Silver, Fine Silver or Argentium Silver  simply put if someone lists "Sterling silver filled"...they're trying to sell you a false product. There's no such thing. Silver Filled is a term used in some countries to denote Silver plated - brass, steel or other base metal. This is not the same quality of Silver as
Sterling - which is again 92.5% & 7.5% alloy of silver & copper respectively.
Fine Silver is 99.5% pure silver
Argentium Silver is 92.5% silver, Germanium & Copper alloy.

These are the three types of quality Silver that you'll find used in jewelry. Silver plated or silver filled as some countries call it is a microscopic coating of silver plated over a base metal, tarnishes easily, and is NOT real silver - nor should you pay the same prices for a piece made with silver plated/silver filled wire that you do for a piece using Sterling, Fine or Argentium.

Gold Filled is a real legitimate term - gold filled - sometimes called Rolled Gold Filled (RGF) is 1/20th of the total amount of metal is gold. This is the most common type of gold you'll find in today's market - because of the price of gold being over $900 per ozt. Gold Plated (GP) is 1/40th of the total amount of metal - a very microscopically thin layer of gold plated over a base metal (like silver plated), it is very easy to wear through a gold plated layer to the base metal in normal wear, same can be said for silver-plated. If you see an 18" necklace claiming Gold Filled and is handmade, if the price is less than $100 for a necklace out of gold filled wire - think again and ask the seller to provide proof of where they purchased the wire to make the necklace. Unless they're giving away the farm so to speak - they're not going to undercut the price of a necklace that much.

Here's a link on legal requirements for the US for gold filled vs gold plating.
Overview of Gold Filled Processes

German Silver - There's a LOT of misleading information out there on this product. Most jewelers know German silver as nickel silver - not Sterling Silver plated over copper wire - which is what some countries allow as 'silver filled wire'. German Silver has No silver in its alloy whatsoever: Containing 18% nickel, the wire is sometimes referred to as German Silver but actually contains no silver. Nickel Silver - sometimes called German Silver

Per Rings&Things.com  the makeup of their "German/Nickel Silver" is: (65% copper/18% nickel/17% zinc)
nowhere in that description is ANY of the element AG - the element ID of Silver is AG.

A lot of silver-filled (Silver plated copper) wire originates in Germany - that doesn't make it 'german silver' it makes it German made Silver plated copper wire - that's how I'd label something in a materials listing if I used the silver-filled wire produced in Germany. German Silver/Nickel Silver is an alloy of Copper, zinc and nickel. It looks like stainless steel with a gold undertone. It in no way resembles true sterling silver - especially when tumble polished.

Here's a link detailing what their 'german silver' is:
Beadstuff.com's "German Silver"

THIS LINK is the MOST useful in covering many sites definition of Nickel silver/German Silver AND goes on to state that "Calling any metal german silver that does not contain that element in alloy is prohibited"...So how do people get away with calling 'german silver...just that?' My guess is that the majority of it is found in various pre-packaged amounts from major beading companies - who source MOST of their materials from Asian markets - where things are notoriously mislabeled & misrepresented - sorry but this is true and the main reason for the CPSCIA regulations that now limit most handmade products lead wise in the US...because a lot of things imported from asian markets have hurt children in the US. Sadly the new regulations don't help those of us who know our products, and know what to look for, and how to properly represent our items to our customers - it hurts those trying to do good just as much as it hurts those who simply don't care about their customers health & well-being.
Wikipedia - Nickel Silver
Columbia Encyclopedia

ALL of this info was found using a simple search on yahoo.com - for "gold filled", "Silver filled", "German Silver", "Nickel Silver", "Non-Tarnish silver wire". It doesn't take a lot of effort - to learn the truth behind the wire one uses in their products. A confident & informed seller - can and will do more to enhance the community they're a part of than a seller who doesn't know what components go into their end result.

Whether you call yourself an artist, designer, silversmith (even if you don't work in just Silver), goldsmith or jeweler, do your research, know your product, know your components, and do your community a favor. Inform and educate your customers - all customers - so fewer and fewer people get ripped off. Knowing your components & end products makes you look like a more responsible seller, and that will get you further, than lying to everyone - misleading is lying plain & simple - by legal standards.

In the UK - you have to have your items assayed & hallmarked before you can LEGALLY label them as Sterling Silver: UK Sterling Silver Requirements

If you have experience with any of this or have anything you'd like to add please leave a comment - or message me : frawgz.dezignz@gmail.com .

Misrepresenting Materials & How Doing So Can Hurt Your Business

I know I'm not alone in the feelings represented in this blog. I know this because I've had conversations with several other etsy sellers, friends, and non-sellers alike - regarding the blatant disregard of etsy's code of conduct regarding tagging of listings and misrepresenting materials in any given piece of work.

Mostly yes this concerns jewelry makers/sellers/resellers. Those who do work in sterling silver know what the metal looks like, in all its forms & conditions. Those who don't...well they fake it. Most curb chains you buy in stores - craft stores are silver plated or nickel plated (most likely the latter).

Curbchains are -premade- oval sometimes slightly twisted links making up a simple chain. Very seldom are you going to find sterling silver curb chain unless you buy it from a respectable online manufacturer/seller such as Rio Grande, Monsterslayer or Thunderbird.

That's not to say other sellers do not exist but if it sounds like too good of a deal to be true it probably is. Current Kitco pricing for sterling silver is: - that's for raw metal - not wire, not jump rings. Most places price silver daily - and silver isn't cheap right now... Want to know more - there are approximately 172 20g 1/8" sterling silver rings per ounce - that's (.8mm WD & 3.2mm ID) if what is in parentheses makes no sense to you - and you claim to make chainmaille - you may want to get your kits somewhere else.

I don't get why someone would want to blatantly misrepresent their items to customers knowing that once you're found out - as selling something for 3 times the price of what its worth - because you're using misrepresented supplies...you've lost your customers' trust. Selling something as sterling silver when you're really selling nickel or silver plated brass - is a big no-no. This is just like people who say moonstone and opalite glass are the same thing. They're not.

Sterling Silver is 92.5% silver & 7.5% copper in an alloy. That doesn't mean silver is plated over copper it means the two are mixed together in the actual metal itself. Silver plating is a thin layer of sterling silver over a usually brass core. As a customer you would be served to be informed of what it is you're looking for in an item before you go browsing on etsy - willy nilly. I say this because in the last week I've seen more misrepresented stuff than I can count - all of it jewelry.

I've had 3 sellers swear their products are Sterling Silver  yet they're charging the same amount for a pair of earrings made with Sterling Silver rings - as they are for earrings that are 4 beads on a headpin. That doesn't add up to a smart consumer. If the deal smells fishy - or sounds too good to be true it probably is. Silver prices are $17 per oz for raw metal today - this doesn't count milling charges, or a seller's profit - most prices for an oz of silver in the last month were $30 + per ounce depending on size of the rings you're buying.

So if someone's using 25 rings in a pair of earrings - and charging $10 for a pair...and using 500 rings in a pendant and charging $60+ for the pendant - there's a problem with the math. The earrings should be priced at the same pricing for silver as the rings used in the pendant.

If you're unsure - or the tags & photos don't add up - talk to the seller - an honest one, who knows their materials, and their final products - won't mind answering questions about their item before you purchase. Also the number of sellers who have items listed and don't know what their materials are is staggering also - german silver = nickel silver  an alloy of copper, zinc, and nickel - and is bad for those with nickel sensitivities/allergies. Yet I see people passing this off as "German Sterling Silver"...its not the same thing. German silver is nickel silver and vice versa. No sterling silver is included in nickel/german silver.

Seeing a lot of bracelets & even suppliers listing things as Non Tarnish Sterling Silver. Doesn't exist. Sterling silver tarnishes because of its copper component in the alloy. Non-tarnish silver rings do exist but know that they're not sterling or even full silver. These rings/wire are generally low cost, and precut; they're most likely made of Silvered Enameled Copper - that is Silvered enamelled copper has a layer of pure silver plated onto the soft copper and then a plastic enamel type coating is plated over that. It does have some silver in it  but it is NOT sterling or pure silver.

Its not just wire jewelry that is misrepresented. Had a 4 way discussion in etsy chat one day with a seller who had Moonstone items in their shop - which you could tell really were moonstone. Two other people joined in who said its ok to list Sea Opalite Glass as Moonstone - it will sell better. One of those people swore up and down that Sea Opalite glass, moonstone, man-made opals, and natural opals are all the same.

Despite posting links to these people showing that the 4 items have very different chemical formulas - the two swore that they were right and its entirely ok to post them all as the same thing "Moonstone".
Moonstone is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonstone_%28gemstone%29
opalite glass is A human-made opalized glass resin that is fused with metal to create an opalescent effect. (manmade)
natural opals are made of silicon, hydrogen & oxygen; see here: http://webmineral.com/data/Opal.shtml

There's so many more things I could say about mislabeled/misrepresented gemstones/metals etc. A lot of it I think has to do with people who choose to be oblivious to their product. Sellers who can and to show a thorough knowledge of their product, and it component items are much more likely to get me to make a purchase from them - than those who don't know anything about the item they're selling.

Simply put - having 14 tags on your etsy items does help people find what they're looking for, and it ensures your items are getting seen by the right target audience you want to attract, but don't make things up, and don't put something down that doesn't truly fit your item, it is a waste of your customer's time, and yours for having put it there, properly, accurately tagged items, are much more likely to get a sale from me and I know from others as well. If your items do not contain something be that something sterling silver or a gemstone of any type - don't put that item in your tags or in your listing. Its one thing to label something 'silver colored' and another to label it silver - and expect your customers to know you really mean silver colored metal not Silver (Ag) Metal.

Here's more on how to know what to look for in quality made chainmaille!

A post from a fellow fe-mailler and friend on quality of chainmaille - very informative for customers and sellers alike - http://torajewelry.blogspot.com/2010/03/whats-in-ring.html