More Preparations and ‘finds in the cupboard”

 Making the Most of Your Stash

As I prepare my stock for the Christmas Craft Fayres, I naturally end up tidying the boxes that have been holding my makes.

Yesterday tidying another box of papers I made some more laminated folders. I did not need them,  but as I looked at the papers I realised they were perfect for the project, and I had a half hour spare so decide to make a half a dozen to use up the papers. Over the years I have finished off many paper pads this way. As a treasurer for my local W.I. I have lots of different pots of money to collect at meetings, so I allocate a folder for each project or event. I also use them to hold receipts, recipes etc in the home and to give money or small gifts.

So another little bundle of laminated folders.

I went to put them into one of my finished article boxes and came across a number of other items made over the last couple of years to use up the papers were perfect pads and fabric scraps.

I use up all the papers and fabric peices I can possibly find use for, and although I very rarely put them on my tables at craft fayres as I have little space,  I have a friend who sells them to neighbours and colleagues for Cancer Research, so nothing is wasted. 

As I have expanded to 2 tables for my fayres this year I decided to package up all these items for a stocking filler section.

These are envelopes that close onto a double front flap and I have added a card and tag

Here we have 2 laminated folders or wallets and the front blue one is a document wallet

This picture shows a set of three budget purses and a set of of 2 gift purses 

3 sets of a folder and matching bookmark made from pretty vellum papers

Lastly I found 8 tissue holders made from my fabric scraps. 

Altogether there were 46 bundles, all now labelled and ready to display . I have decided to charge one price and it will be just £1.50 an item. 

Happy Crafting 

Dee

Christmas Craft Fayre Report 2

 Marketing Paper-crafts

First Item for the Gift Table

The second table I have booked at the Fayres will be for Gifts and Paper-crafts. I have already decided the items that will be displayed and limited them to allow customers to see clearly the items available .

There will be 3 different single pack Christmas cards and a couple of 6-8 pack designs 

A selection of brooches and earrings  (Christmas and General) which are sold in a small fabric gift purse. 

Christmas napkin rings in a fabric gift bag 

And Blizzard books 

I have just finished making a few of each of the two sizes I make.

The small Blizzard book holds:

 Business card,   

Gift Card 

Supermarket & bank cards

While the standard Blizzard book is a lovely keepsake, you can have black card pages for a photo album or standard pages for a notebook, or water colour paper for a sketch or painting book. I add Black or white card.

Having finished a number of books, I started to write the packaging for selling. 

I am trying to standardise the point of sale paper-work. 

When selling at a fayre it is important to remember that customers need to be able to see your items, and their use, easily. That is the reason I want to keep the tables more sparse than usual with spaces on the table . The Blizzard books are packaged with a product description that includes my craft logo. I took some time to choose the lettering and layout of the product description. With my logo  - “Paper-crafts With Personality” centre stage and as these books were my own design I placed the word “Unique” before the logo.  

These are the small Blizzard Books that take business cards, Bank cards, Gift cards etc

I altered the description a little for the larger version that can be used as an album, art book etc. 

A sample of each size will be open on the table 

First item finished and packed away.

So now onto the next items. 

My choice of 3 Unique Christmas Cards 

Happy Crafting 

Dee

Expandable Storage Bags finished

 Christmas Fayre progress report 1

Hi all you lovely crafters out there. 

Well as promised I am crafting and showing as I work my way toward the Christmas fayres.

Over the last week the sewing machine has been out again and I have made 10 shoe bags (or expandable storage bags to add to my stock. This was one of the bags I decided to include on my table but only had 4 remaining in stock. 

I had to remind myself of the sewing sequence for them as I had not made them for a year, so I took myself on to YouTube to watch my favourite sewing lady. Her Chanel is called Christine’s Home Affairs. Of course nowadays you have to sit through 4 lots of adverts to see a video, or pay to remove advertising (and I am too tight for that), but Christine shares so much of her time and information it is a pleasure to watch her videos. She also shows you how to bulk sew, and how she prices her items to sell, so for anyone starting out there is a lot to learn here. 

I started by selecting the fabrics I was going to use and cutting 10 bases. 

Next I needed to cut scraps for the handles and zip ends. I am not a lover of sewing in zips buy putting a tab end on them makes them neater and simpler to insert, so worth the effort cutting out.

I tried to get a production line going but found it difficult to sit at the table for more than a couple of hours and the bags were taking more than 45minutes each, so I split the load into a 2 to be finished on the first day and then 2 lots of 4 to be sewn over the next 2 days. 

So here I am 3 days later with 10 finished expandable storage bags, ready to tag and bag. 

 These will be added to the stock list and I will check the next items to be made. It is surprising how the months creep on you. At the beginning of the year, after checking my stock and deciding on the bags and gifts I wanted to make for 2025, in my head I had structured the months ahead with a line up of makes to do. Needless to say these well made plans did not come to fruition and I found myself at the end of August starting the process again.   

During the process of tagging the bags I will need to work out a price. My sewing and crafting is not a business, it is a hobby and I do it for pleasure and to raise funds for my local hospital, even though there is no need to make a profit, pricing is very important. I think most craft sellers will agree. Overprice your goods and people will look but not buy. Underprice and they will not buy as the items become devalued. So although a profit is not the main issue, pricing is. At craft fayres people come with an expectation to get the unusual, hand crafted items and most are prepared to pay a  premium for the this, recognising the work and individualism in the item. Underprice and they may decide your items are not the premium product they thought they were. So I find pricing my items the most difficult part. The price is decided by the price of the fabric, zips etc, and the time it takes to make. You also need to factor in to your price where you are selling. If I sell in my home town I have to take items that have a better margin as prices have to be kept low to make the sells, whereas the Christmas fayres I am attending I can take any of my makes. 

These bags take me 45 minutes on average. And I get approximately 3 from a metre of fabric plus a 15” zip. I am charging them at £7.50. I am making money on them provided I do not factor in my time, and this is where it gets tricky. My time is obviously worth something, but I am not a professional, and there are a lot of bag makers out there, so whilst I would like to charge my time at £20 an hour (as this includes the maintenance and purchase of tools packaging and presentation costs, in reality I often end up charging an item at £5 for my hourly rate. So whilst £7.50 does not cover my time I hope I will have other items at the fayre with better margins to make up for this, as I believe this is a price that will give a better number of sells . 

Bags labelled with “Sew Useful Bag” tags and Handmade with Love price tags

Well on to the next make.

Happy Crafting 

Dee 

 

Autumn Crafting

 Getting Ready for the Christmas Craft Fayres

Summer is over, day trips are limited by the weather so my spare time turns to preparations for my Christmas Fayres.

Last year I did 1 Fayre at the end of August and 2 Christmas Fayres. 

For some reason for the August fayre I took a few cards I had made and sold a few. I have been selling my bags for a couple of years   now and not really trying to sell cards, as they had not been selling well.  So it was a pleasant surprise when I sold a few cards and had some commissions for cards from friends, this led to renewed interest in designing my Christmas cards. A couple of designs came to mind and I  started to get excited again about card crafting. With a huge stash of card dies and card craft items I soon had a good pile of cards to take to the fayre in November. The designs were unique and one incorporated a gift while the other was a card and embellishment in one. These sold better than ever, and so I decided to have 2 tables at this years fayre, one for bags and one for cards and gift ideas. The same thing happened to the fayre booked in December, the cards sold well alongside the bags and gifts, and again I decide to book 2 tables for this year, which I have just done. 

First job is decide which bags I am going to sell on Table 1 and which cards and gifts for Table 2. 

Second job is stock check and decide on the items I need to make to get the stock levels up to cover the 2 fayres.

Third job is labelling and pricing the items. 

As I get prepared for the Christmas season I will share my progress on the blog.I will tell you what I have made and how I priced it, and then after the fayres I will report back on how each item sold.

Happy Crafting 

Dee