Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Items from craft bazaar

*edited to add that this is a long post, and a lot of the text ended up at the bottom after the pictures, so if you want to read it all, make sure you scroll down far enough to read the whole post! Thanks!
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Here are pictures of some of the items I had for sale. There were a few things that I didn't get photos of, but this was the bulk of the particular things I had.

First is the handmade gift tags. I made all tags inside and had roughly 14 in each bag. All tags were different, because I used nothing but scraps. (That is a great little tip - Utilize scraps to make gift tags of all kinds! I find the challenge of making something out of leftovers fun! It really exercises your creativity! )
I had not made too many of these, cause it can be time consuming considering each is different, but I made 4, sold all 4, and got an order for 2 more!




Next is a picture of the bookmark paperclips. What you see in the picture was all I had time to make, and I sold all of them. I also didn't want to make too many of them, cause I didn't know how well they would sell, but I know next year I will either double or triple the amount I made. They aren't difficult, but I do like to make them special and not just all the same. I am the kind of person that likes to make everything I do different.
I also made sure I had something for girls, boys, and something an adult might like. One lady bought two, and then another lady came by later and bought the rest. I did package them in little plastic bags with a sticker of my information on the back. I did this mostly to make them look "professional" and also to keep them protected.




The next picture is of the photo clips. These are made with a giant binder clip, with paper wrapped around it and some kind of fun little embellishment. When you tie the arms up with ribbon, it acts as a photo holder. These were a huge hit that day! Not only did the customers just love them, but the people at the tables around me were buying them too! I of course sold out of these and wish I had made more! Definitely next year!
For these, I had used chipboard flowers with white embossing powder in them, and misc. things like buttons, bling, and brads for the centers, depending on the style. I did have to end up hot glue-ing these flowers on, because glue dots and pop dots were just not holding them on like I wanted them to.

Now we come to the poop. As you can see, I made a version of Snowman/Reindeer poop. In my research, almost every blog, comment, etc., said that this was the hottest seller at their table! I sold ONE! And I only sold that one because the lady said her catchphrase is calling everyone "naughty" and it says that in the poem. I had made a whole bunch of these too! Nobody liked my poop! Oh well, now I know what my friends are getting for Christmas! lol!
As you can see, my version of these have chocolate and yogurt covered raisins in them. The original version has marshmallows, jelly beans, things like that. But I wanted to give people a little extra something in the bag besides marshmallows. Oh well, I guess next year I will only do like 5 of these, if any at all.

The last tow pictures are just a couple examples of the "Christmas Fudge" bars I made. If you don't know what those are, they are a giant Hershey bar wrapped up pretty with a poem on the front saying how you ran out of time this year so here is your version of homemade Christmas fudge. Its a cute little poem. There are a couple different versions out there, but I used the shorter one, so that it would fit nicely on the front.
I made about 9 of these, and sold out of them. They weren't selling at first, and a few people thought they were real fudge and I had to explain what it actually was, but by the end of the day, I had not only sold all of them, but got 2 orders for more! One lady wanted 5, the other 6!
I really like the way these turned out. They are very nice in person. I finished the others for the order just yesterday, and I REALLY like the way those turned out! I took pictures, but I wanted to post a few that I had for sale at the table first.

The things I had that I don't have pictures of, are a couple beaded pens, and some peppermint patties, sold individually, with a cute little scallop punch medallion of various Christmas stamps on them. I only sold one of those. In my chart below, I list cards and premium cards. I sold my regular cards at $1 each, or 6 for $5. That seemed to be the trick, as everyone went for the 6 for $5 deal. The $1 cards were just basic cards, nothing fancy, and came with plain envelopes. The premium cards were mostly birthday cards, were quite a bit more elaborate and fancy, and came with matching envelopes and were packaged up really nice. Those were the ones I had on the card rack and sold them at $2 each. I sold a few of those.
For the cards in general, I found that people went mostly for the Christmas and Birthday cards. I had a couple people really looking for masculine birthday cards. I do have to say, that is a tough one! Its hard to come up with them! I will have to really concentrate on doing a lot more guy cards for next year and double up on the Christmas cards! I pretty much sold out of all my Christmas cards! That made me happy! I really was just mostly thrilled people seemed to like my stuff! That makes me feel good!

This wasn't a strictly Stampin' Up booth, because I have been a scrapbooker for 15 years, and have accumulated 15 years worth of various papers and scrapbook stuff! I have been really trying to use up what I have, so I used some of everything while making my items. I had to come up with a name for my little "business" and I settled on "With Love" creations. So that is what I represented myself as. I did make sure though, that my cards had the special stamp on the back with the Stampin' Up copyright on it. :)


Ok, So here is a breakdown of what I had and how many I brought/sold:

-----------------------brought--------- sold
cards: .................................108....................60
premium cards:..................35......................7
photo clips:..........................8........................8
gift tags package:................4.......................4......orders for 2 more
homemade fudge:...............9.......................9.......orders for 11 more!
beaded pens:........................4......................0
paperclip/bookmarks.........7........................7
peppermint patties.............20....................1
snowman/reindeer poop...24......................1



Seeing as the table fee was only $2....yes, thats right, $2, I think I did pretty good! It was a great learning experience, and if my mom still works there a year from now, I will do it again for sure! I will say, the preparation was a little stressful, but seeing as it was my first one, I wanted to make sure that I had planned properly and hadn't forgotten anything. I'm completely happy with the outcome.


My next posts will be some Christmas cards I have made recently. Hope you'll like them!

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