Hello Craft and welcome to the trials and tribulations of a crafter new to business. Shall we learn together?

After being relatively crafty all my life, I recently decided that I wanted to make a living out of it and hawk my wares. Sounds simple doesn’t it? Make something, be creative, offer it to the world and then you get the profit!

For all intents and purposes it can be simple, but a little bit more time and effort go into it. In fact deciding what to sell can be a little bit daunting and, especially hard for this craftaholic, it can be hard to focus in on what you are actually good at making. So a few simple questions will help. Try to answer these in terms of making:

• What do you love to do?
• What gets you out of bed in the morning?
• When are you most happy?

Say you love creating one of a kind dresses and you dream of patterns at night, so that first thing when the alarm goes off, you jump up and happily write them down. Or you find yourself giddy as a kid in a candy store when you’re around sheep, and carding fiber really gets your blood pumping. Or you’re the kind of person that finds inspiration in the everyday and you love telling people about it and you drool over letter press, then whichever your scenario – you have a start.

For me it’s knitting and yarn. The process soothes me. I can be very OCD about the whole thing and I love working out patterns and creating patterns. The more challenging the better. I can be frustrated by it, but that makes me love it all the more. I strive to not have to pull out rows and rows and start over. I love creating patterns from scratch, using the techniques I’ve learned through the years to set me on the straight and narrow.

The point is, whatever your passion is that you land on for your creative starting point, you must love it. I mean really, really, really, love it. This is what you will be basing your business off of, where your brand will come from, and who you market your creations to. You will be making the same thing, over and, over and, over and, over again. So if you don’t have a passion for making eleventy billion scarfs, or letter press cards, or thing-a-mabobs, then you will quickly loose interest and money.

Another thing to take into consideration is the amount of time it takes to create your handmade dress/silk screened t-shirt/soap creation. For many crafters time is illusive and hard to account for, especially if you are doing the thing that you love the most. You might feel like you don’t need to put a price tag on that, but to make a living off of it you do. I’ll be going more in depth about pricing in the coming weeks but for now I’ll stick to time.

If you don’t know how many hours go into your making, start keeping track now. Before you even pick up your sketch book, needles, press, etc. time yourself from start to finish. You start with an idea and as soon as that idea hits paper/fabric, etc. that is when the clock should start. Keep it running until all the ends are woven in, dye is dry, and fittings and alterations have taken place.

Took a little longer than expected, no?

The first run through usually takes the longest, but now you know your high end of time. This starting point will help you in answering important questions such as: Is this piece worth my time and where can I cut my time down?

If your dress takes several days to create, that’s ok. What are some other items that you can make that take you less time? Can you bone up on your sewing skills and learn how to block, cut, and sew faster to get your time down? I’m not saying you can’t market a dress that takes many days to create, but just be conscious of hours spent and make time your friend not your enemy.

Now that you have a starting point and know how long it takes to make a product, you’re in good shape and on your way to starting a business. So tell me. What’s your passion? What do you like to create? How long does it take you?