What sold at my first craft fair

Craft fairs are so fun. In the past I've done them with a friend who will share my booth and she usually does pottery and other fun crafts, so it's kind of a fun afternoon for us to get out and things up and see if we can sell anything.

I first started doing it because I sit and make all of these projects throughout the week, months, however long it takes me, and then I don't know what to do with them. My house was overflowing with scarves and amigurumi animals and there's a little small knick knacks that I made along throughout the week. So I decided to sit at a craft fair and just see if I could sell some of the extras I had laying around.

Our community has a really good farmers market that happens every Saturday pretty much year round and we just threw our hat in the ring one time and had a lot of fun whether we sold things or not. It's fun to get out and see other crafts and other people trying to sell their things.

It took us probably a good 3 months to get everything ready, as far as having the table and the tent and our business cards and all that kind of things. Now we've got a really good set up where we have bags and business cards and, but when we first started it was all very small and simple. We just had to make enough stuff that we felt like we could go and sit there.

What I made

My very first market I took a bunch of small things like chocolate dipped strawberries and little ghosts. I had made a whole basket for little ghosts because it was all time, and I was selling them for $10 each. Ghosts took me about 30 or 45 minutes to make, and I have made them with a very fancy glow in the dark yarn. It was super fun to post a picture showing people that the little ghost would indeed glow, and they sold so fast. It was so much fun to see how fast the ghosts sold because of that. I probably took about 10 ghosts and sold them all by the end of that market.

Yarn: Lion Brand DIY Glow
Pattern: Lauren Epsy (Menagerie of Stitches)

How I priced it

Pricing can be super hard to figure out at a market for sure. I think that first market I did I was trying to make everything cheap because I wanted to see sales happen. You don't want to sit there for hours taking up your Saturday and not see anything, but that doesn't mean that you price things right either.

Because it fit this little ghost in the palm of my hand, I did not think that they should be any more than $10. The glow in the dark yarn I had purchased was quite expensive, much more so than regular yarn, so I did have to take that into account.

But that day my friend recommended that I increase the prices a little bit. I think I was originally going to charge $7 for them, and she said let's make it an even 10, and I'm very glad she did because they still sold at that price.

What sold

During that market I also had a bunch of scarves and pot holders that I had made to sell, again I thought those were easy projects. The scarves are one type of yarn, the pot holders don't take me very long to make, but I did find that because they weren't as fun to look at, they didn't sell.

What I figured out that first market is if you can get children's attention their parents will let them spend money, so because the children all found the ghosts and the strawberries so cute they would ask their parents for money to buy them, and the grown up stuff like the scarves and the potholders did not sell very well that day because they just weren't as fun.

The table fee

I got super lucky during my first market that we did cover our table fee. We have an awesome farmers market in our community that runs every Saturday throughout the entire year, and they are very reasonable with their fees. I think our first market we paid maybe $50 for the table fee, so it was not very expensive.

And that first market we had great success and did cover our fees entirely, which was a very exciting

What surprised me

That day was a huge learning day. I think what surprised me the most was how much work it actually takes to set up and take down. A lot of people don't think about that, but it took us an hour and a half to get our table over there, get the tent set up, get the table covered, get all of our product arranged so it looked well, there are bags ready and our business cards ready, and it was early in the morning.

I think I was really surprised just how much work it takes before the market even starts.

Same thing at the end of the day, you're tired and the sales are over and now you have to break everything down, load it all back up in the car and go home and organize everything.

For a first-timer

If you are considering sitting at a market or a craft fair, I would highly recommend it if you find a fairly priced one. I would not recommend starting off with some craft fair or event where the booth rental is very expensive. You don't realize how much product you have to sell to break even if the booth rent is high, plus you have to remember how much time you're taking of your day to do all this and it has to be worth it. But if you find a smaller market that seems successful and supportive and the rental fees aren't that much, I would absolutely say try it out. You might find really kind people and they get really enthusiastic about seeing a talent that they don't see around that much and they would want to take home one of your creations.