Craft Business

Candle making: Candles are always hot sellers, and are relatively easy to learn to make. With a little creativity, you can create a "hot" business.

Beading: Beading encompasses many different art forms, both worn and display. There is a lot of flexibility in this craft.

Handmade Jewelry: Most women, and some men, love to wear unique jewelry pieces. This can be a very lucrative craft business.

Dolls and Stuffed Animals: If you've always loved stuff animals, and can learn to sew, you can create a wonderful business based on these "toys."

Knitting and Crocheting: Wearable crafts are a great seller at craft shows and craft shops, especially in winter time.

Scrapbooking and Paper Crafts: Are you more interested in making beautiful cards or helping people embellish their photos albums?

Pottery and Glass: If you have the technical expertise, pottery and glass crafts are great sellers and fetch very good prices.

Quilting: Can you use a needle and thread (or a sewing machine) and have a great eye for colors? Quilting can be very profitable.

Soap Making and Perfumes: Creating crafts that soothe the body and spirit make for great sellers, and can also be done quickly and inexpensively.

Woodworking and Metalworking: Are you good with tools? Make some functional - and beautiful - wood and metal crafts.

Want to start your own wholesale or retail craft business? Then check out...

"How to Start Your Own Craft Business."

Selling crafts are not the only way to make money with your crafting passion. In fact, there are a wide variety of other opportunities to either carve out a different type of craft business or to supplement a more traditional craft business.

Commission or Custom Crafts

Perhaps you would like the security of knowing that you will be paid for your efforts before starting a higher-priced craft item. Then commission crafting, or custom crafting, may be more to your taste. Commission crafting means that you contract with your customer to create the craft item that will be perfect for them.

This involves sitting down with the client, discussing colors, where the craft will reside, and coming up with an agreed upon price for the finished craft.

Crafting for a commission should generally be done with higher-priced craft items, since you don't want to be doing a lot of custom work for low-priced items. Low-priced items should be those items you are very familiar with and can produce in very little time.

But, with custom crafting, you want to work on items you can get a higher price for because you will be spending more time, both upfront getting your customer's specifications, and in creating the item because it will have its own unique look and feel.

Here are some ideas for custom crafting:

• Wreaths - You can create a custom wreath that will accent your customer's decorating style, matching colors, fabrics, materials, etc.


• Quilts - You can create custom traditional quilts, memory quilts, baby quilts, photo quilts, t-shirt quilts and more.


• Custom Jewelry - If your customer has certain interests - like sports or a hobby - you can incorporate beads and shapes that match.


• Holiday Ornaments - You can create personal ornaments for your customer's children, parents, grandchildren, etc.


• Scrapbooking - Most people have more photos than they can deal with, and a custom scrapbooking service is a great idea.

I'm sure you can think of a lot of other ideas for custom crafting. You just need to exercise your creativity and settle on a few ideas that match your personality.

Teach Craft Classes

Crafts are getting more popular every day, and a wider range of people are picking up crafting as a hobby (with many of them getting addicted). And the good news is that many of these would-be crafters never received the basic training in the skills needed to make their own crafts. This is where you come in.

Teaching a craft class can be fun and rewarding - both financially and on a more personal level. And, teaching a craft class offers a number of not so obvious benefits beyond collecting the tuition to attend. These include:

• Exposure for your craft business - you can create potential clients for your crafts or custom crafting services


• Networking opportunities with other professionals - you never know who might show up at a class and become a trusted advisor or partner for your business (accountants, lawyers, shop owners)


• Potential employees who can help your business if you are looking to expand or help out in a crunch


• Opportunities to see what folks in your community think about different product ideas you come up with - your own focus group!

Want to start your own wholesale or retail craft business? Then check out...

"How to Start Your Own Craft Business."