I think the issue is just the venue ... she tried eBay (and got slaughtered, of course) but Etsy has worked reasonably well for her, getting 10-20% higher prices for the same work. Her website has been a non-starter, but I think it has to do with the nature of the merchandise. Facebook produces the bulk of her sales, by far, but almost no margin; meanwhile she can work a flea market or other outside venue and clean up on a weekend (the problem there is that she has three small kids, so child care expenses tend to suck up the profits from the offline sales.)
I've talked with her about considering wholesaling to shops, which she's exploring now -- won't do much for her immediate margins, but with the product on shelves in beauty shops and similar places, it can act as a sort of agent generating custom orders for her based on the interest the premade pieces garner. Aside from that I'm at a loss on what to tell her to do about the FB conundrum of plummeting sales every time she raises her prices even a little. I've done some comparison shopping, and her FB prices are ridiculously low relative to what one finds in the wild. I paid $16 for the pendant above, including shipping, and that wasn't the "friend price" -- I asked her for a rush order so I could get it before the school year was out, and she charged me a whopping $2 extra over the original $14 net price. Just ridiculously cheap, but the resistance against any increase has proven to be fierce.
Thanks for the insights on both counts.
Frank