Work at Home Selling Crafts

Craft shows are a good starting point for anyone selling their work. Beyond the dates of the show, there are no further commitments. When a show is over, it’s over. You can do one or two events and walk away with a minimum of expense of time and money or you can do shows every month and take up the craft fair life-style, making it the mainstay of your business. In an art and crafts fair, you have your own scaled-down model of a retail store, even if it’s only for two or three days.


You can use a show to test new products, designs, price changes and booth displays. You are directly in touch with the marketplace, so if your work isn’t selling, you will find out why immediately from customers’ reactions and sales results. In selling direct to the public, you keep the entire amount of the sales, minus expenses. Since almost all shows are held on weekends, your week is free to create more pieces. You have control of your time. It’s a great feeling to go to a movie in the middle of the week when everyone else is laboring under canned air, moronic managers, and minimal wages.


There are several resources that list art and craft shows around the country and give information about show performance in previous years. If you buy these guides, and you should, get the most current editions available. Show performance changes over the years due to causes you have no other way of knowing about. Some shows simply fold up and disappear. Compare different reviews for the same show. If the reports are similar among various guides, then you can consider them good bets.


Many craft artists say they don't follow what sells nationally because to do so would make them manufacturers, not artists. A friend of mine has grown an exceptionally good business selling her wearable art to stores in tourist areas. If she stopped creating her original designs in favor of a popular craft, she would quickly be out of a business she enjoys and find herself on the endless road of chasing after the next hot trend. There's nothing wrong with being a manufacturer if that's your thing, but let's not confuse that with art or craft. Mass production involves mass marketing of products -- this is opposite to the nature of those who sell what they make through artistic inspiration. The popularity of well made craft, regardless of the medium, is the attractiveness to the consumer of owning a piece made by the craft person. This has always been the draw for thousands of customers of hand made craftwork.