Your Arts and Crafts Style Can Help You Make a Craft Budget

By deciding what your arts and crafts style is you can decide where to allocate your craft allowance. Whether you use needles or paintbrushes, or your work is displayed in your home or sold at arts and crafts fairs, you can use these questions to help you learn what your arts and crafts style is.

Are you crafty or artsy?

Do you knit or paint? Sculpt or sew? All of the above? This is common, as those of us who are creative are creative in many ways and through many outlets. It is important to not get caught up in this question. Often a craft is considered a project you do in which you follow a list of instructions, such as a crochet scarf pattern. Even if someone uses a different type of thread or color of thread, their scarf will look much like yours. While, if you put paint to canvas and another person does as well, you will have much different results and results that are very unique.

Some believe that art is somehow better than crafts. I say these people have never spent hours agonizing over picture and embellishment placement in a scrapbook or entered a fabric store to find the perfect arrangement of quilting squares. Do what you love, whether it be your craft or your art.

What medium do you enjoy the most?

The artist’s medium is the materials you use to create your work. If you are a quilter then your medium would be the fabric and thread as well as the sewing machine. If you paint then your medium would involve paint, of course, as well as canvas and perhaps an easel. Perhaps you most of the time you prefer to quilt but sometimes you like to throw some paint around. Then you could take a quarter of your arts and crafts budget and put it towards painting while still leaving a large chunk of your budget for the craft you enjoy doing most often.

To Sell or Not To Sell?

Really, that is the question. It is a question that at one time or another most crafters think about. Honesty is the best policy here, honesty with yourself and hopefully you can find a friend or family member to be brutally honest too. Is your product good enough to sell? Is it unique enough that it will not get lost in everyone else selling the same thing? Can you make even a small profit off of it? Does the amount of time you put into it equal, or is less than, the amount you have to sell it for?

If you can answer these questions honestly and believe you have a product others would enjoy then you need to think of who would want to buy your product and where they would be. It is expensive to make enough product to sell at a place such as an arts and crafts fair and your product needs to fit that niche. A contemporary painting or modern crocheted bags may not do as well as tatted doily dolls or wood work. To test out your work you may want to put some of your product on etsy.com or ebay.com. Both of these websites will allow you to test one or two of your products so that you do not spend the money putting out a hundred of a product and renting a booth at an arts and crafts fair. You may also try renting a shelf or small booth at your local flea market which, at times, can be cheaper than the amount you spend to sell at arts and crafts fairs.You may find that your arts and crafts style means that you sell better online while others may be able to sell their work at small local boutiques or galleries.

Do you have an arts and crafts style or styles?

It is not uncommon for people to have many creative outlets. This can make it difficult to decide how much money to give to each area. You could, if say you have five crafts that you do, split your craft allowance five equal ways. This is not always the smartest avenue because most likely you do not equally manufacture each of these crafts. Instead, decide on one or two crafts that you enjoy the most and put most of your craft budget towards these. Leave a small amount for the other crafts but decide only when you find very cheap craft supplies will you make the other crafts or decide to only do one project for each of the other crafts once a year.

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