Cheap Craft Supplies - Thrifting Guide For Beginners 2020 - Upcycled Crafts To Sell

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

What is your favourite thrift store craft purchase? 😃

[@samsprrr3548]

In England we have charity shops and I have found some vintage photos that were sold before people took cameras everywhere. I have also found filofaxs and stickers I have been lucky.i also make dollshouse miniatures with jewellery making supplies .

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

Sounds awesome!

[@Schatzie301]

Haven’t been thrifting in a while. Value Village here I come!

[@samsprrr3548]

I have done cardmaking and jewellery making that turned into dollshouse miniature making and journaling. Most of my materials came from UK charity shops.

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

Amazing! We collect dolls and miniatures with our daughter! We would love to see your work :)

[@kikiwise89]

I wish our thrift stores were this organized 😣 maybe I need to travel when thrifting

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

😃Hahah not all of them are this organized over here just the big 3! Although unorganized ones are fun because then you get to go through everything cos you have to lol

[@ashleyskrocki1157]

Nice video, too bad we couldn’t go out!

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

I know!

[@lizpotter8123]

How much time do you devote to shopping crafting and selling. I am just starting out and don’t know what I am doing. I am alone in my venture. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

[@AmyTannerSkrocki]

Hi Liz! I apologize for the length of this response. I want to help as much as I can. To answer your first question about how much time we spend- it depends on the time of year :) If your handmade pieces are holiday or seasonal themed then right before each season or holiday starts will be busy. This is similar for us 3 times a year. During that time we rarely go out to source supplies and focus on sending out orders and filling the booth with stock for our largest shows. There is no set amount of hours, and we just work until either the online, custom orders, wholesale/gallery orders or booth restock is done. Unfortunately, it can be 14-18 hours a day BUT that is our choice to do that. I’m sure you know, as an artist yourself, you can easily get lost in creating pieces and hours just slip away! There would also be significantly less time if you did not do all of those avenues of income we do. We know several artists who do this alone and with a full time or part-time job to either eventually make it their full-time job or earn extra income while doing what they love. Often those artists do online sales and do several shows a year to make it work time-wise. I (Amy) started this venture by myself while Tanner worked full time and went to university. I started small, invested very little on booth displays (I used dollar store table clothes and a clothing drying rack as a display) and went through several galleries/stores to sell my work. If I was to do it all over again, I would have sold my handmade items on online immediately in addition to doing shows and cut back on the wholesale and galleries. Although galleries and stores are great options for many people, it is easier if you have some help to create large wholesale orders, or at least wait until you have several months to a year of sales under your belt, as businesses have tight deadlines for when they need items to be on the shelves. If there is a problem with sourcing materials, then it's difficult to get the order out in a timely manner and still earn enough of a profit to make it worth it. The reason it can be difficult to earn a profit is; if your materials are limited then it may force you into position to pay higher shipping costs to get supplies quickly or more from another vendor who sells a limited or hard to find raw materials at a higher price. This has happened several times to us while trying to fill a time sensitive, often last minute ordered, wholesale order. Also, if I was to have started immediately selling online (I waited until 2015 to sell seriously online), I would have made at least half of my items repeatable…Meaning you have enough supplies or can source supplies that are very close or exact to repeat the same design or pattern again and again. That way you spend less time making a listing for each new item. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sell mostly one of a kind pieces, just make sure the pieces you sell that are one of a kind or limited include the cost of creating and listing your work. This also includes the time to find the best SEO for your original piece. Please let me know if you want us to go into any more of these topics. We will also be making some videos for DIY displays, packaging and items that a person can find around the house or thrift store and turn into something new to sell, gift or keep for themselves to save money.

[@lizpotter8123]

Amy & Tanner Skrocki thank you so much for your response. Really I am all over the place on what I should do. I have dabbled in several crafts but mostly glass fussing which is expensive and time consuming. I am not sure the two thing are even compatible to market together. I must say that I am very impressed with your work. I would hope that I one day to be as successful. Thanks for getting back to me.