Retirement is looming and I have concerns about what to do with all my upcoming free time.
I'm married to a very craft oriented girl. She can take a piece of ratty old string and make it pretty and functional. For years, she has dragged me with her to numerous craft fairs around the area.
As we strolled through a typical event, I found myself saying, "I can make that! I can do better than that!"
So, one day she stops in the middle of our leisurely walk through an isle of vendors and says, "Yes, you can! So, why don't you?"
"It could be the answer to what to do in our retirement," I'm thinking.
Source
We discussed what it would take to get into the business. Nothing too extreme at first. Perhaps one or two shows for the next holiday season. The season being that time between October and December when people are beginning to think about Christmas gifts.
This was early spring and we had the rest of the year to create enough inventory to fill a respectable sized vendor booth.
I made a few platters from exotic stock and some simple wooden toys. She made wreathes and Christmas ornaments that she cut out on the scroll saw.
I used scrap ends to make refrigerator magnets and magic wine bottle balancers, those sold well. I walked around the Empire collecting leaves one day and traced the shapes onto pieces of scrap, then cut them out on the band saw.
I made a few magnets and she said, "You know, if you cut those about half as thin we could make necklaces from them. So I cut several and she went to Hobby Lobby and bought bails and cord to fashion necklaces.
Our first show was in October of 2016. It was an indoor event and she rented a 10 feet by 10 feet booth for $25.00. She got a few promotional items from Vista Print, like cards and a banner with our business name on it. We had a web site at the time but found that it was too much of a hassle to maintain and the sales weren't so great on the internet either.
I bought some one inch PVC pipe and fittings to make a frame, and she bought enough black sheets to make curtains that we threaded over the top pipes. This contraption formed a nice little booth open at one end. We bought several six foot folding tables and she sewed up some really nice table covers that draped to the floor. The place looked spiffy when we were set up.
She had this artificial food that made things realistic. I'd tell the kids that came up not to eat the bread because we didn't have enough tooth picks to go around and those grapes tasted just like rubber!
We did remarkably well with our first show, so well that we almost sold out of inventory, and we only had six weeks before the next scheduled show! We were in a mad rush to get enough merchandise made, but we accomplished it!
The next event was outdoors and we had to purchase a suitable shelter. We went with a ten by ten canopy that I purchased from Academy. It wasn't the best for a craft show but it worked okay for novices. The following year we took some profits and bought a real shelter. A ten by twenty tent with side walls and ends that could be rolled down and secured overnight. We also had to purchase more folding tables and she found a place to buy table covers for a reasonable price that where superior to the fabric she had been using.
I made mostly platters the first season, because I didn't have any experience making end grain cutting boards. I called them platters because the long grains of the wood will scar really bad if cut on. But I suppose some people bought them as cutting boards. I was sure to tell them the negatives of using them as one.
I tried my luck with end grain pieces and wasn't succeeding until I discovered this Russian guy on YouTube, Andrei Muntyan. This fella is the Picasso of cutting board craftsmen! His work is absolutely astounding. I watched his videos and copied a lot of his techniques. The results were awesome. Check him out sometime, his YouTube channel is mtmwood.
In 2017 we got busy in January and made inventory at our leisure during the spring and summer months. By October we were ready. We did three shows that year, one was only for an afternoon, but we did our best sales compared hourly at that one. I included a few new items that year, wine caddies and combs. We sold out of wine caddies and the combs went over well too.
Now that we have our feet wet we have got a game plan. If we do four shows a year it won't be such a burden and may continue to be fun. Anymore than that and it becomes another job! Our big finale will begin the day after Thanksgiving and continue through the weekend at a local Christmas tree farm that puts on a big event each year.
The Missus said I'll probably get tired of fishing anyway. I'm wondering if this was her idea all along. She has a way of getting me to do things by letting me think it was my idea in the first place. Sometimes I think women have a big conspiracy going on!
Thanks for reading!
Carry on!