Take 2--or Double Take

I really enjoyed the polka dot flower brooch I made this week. On the strength of it I asked myself a couple of questions:

• how would it look in a hand-dyed cotton homespun fabric?
• how long does it actually take to make one of these brooches?

Here's how it looks. And it took fifteen minutes to make after I'd assembled all the materials and worked out the technique on a previous incarnation.

 So what? Well, one of the topics for this weeks Make Craft Your Business class was pricing. We've been pointed to this formula as a good guide. It suggests a fair retail price is four times the cost of materials plus time. Yep, four times! That's to cover all sorts of things like finding and purchasing supplies, developing designs, labelling, promoting, etc, etc, etc. Not to speak of overheads. Now I'm no-where near making my living from my crafts, but it's a worthwhile question, particularly if I'm going to be more intentional about what I make to sell.

 I don't have an estimate for the time and materials I used to dye this fabric. It was a few years ago, but I know that good quilting cottons, whether hand-dyed or commercially printed retail for $24 per meter. This flower takes just under 10 cm of fabric, The brooch back costs 40 cents. The big question then becomes, "What price should I put on my time?"

 

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this difficult topic. I can tell you that when I pulled out the brooch in class and presented my figures, we were all struggling to know how to reconcile the issue. I deliberately did this with something I don't feel too precious about. In fact, by the end of the day I wasn't even sure that I liked the brooch. I'm a bit happier with it this morning. And the possibility of selling kits helps. 

Good Morning

Here's my plan for the day so far.

First: finish waking up. I bought myself a new coffee cup yesterday--just because. So I will wake up with a smile on my face. Then I have class. It's week three of the Make Craft Your Business course. One of the women in this group does cyanotype. It's a traditional printing method which uses sunlight to develop the colouring agent. It makes the original blueprint. I love it. So I've picked out some openwork crochet to lend her. It will be fun to see how it prints.

Depending how much energy I have left at the end of the class, I might head down to Beautiful Silks. I've been thinking about my crochet flowers in the light of the realities of selling. I've figured out that the biggest component in the cost of what I make is my time. So I'm looking at using more really great materials so I can make the most of the time I put in. What could be better than silk? --hand-dyed by me! Last time I was there, they had some lovely white silk yarn in an 8-ply equivalent thickness. I expect to come home with some.

Beautiful Silks is just around the corner from Brunswick St Fitzroy and a street full of great cafe's. That would finish off the day just nicely. 

Business Basics

Last weekend I started a new course. It's called "Make Craft Your Business"--run by Thornbury Women's Neighbourhood House in a nearby suburb. I feel the need for focus and motivation with my textile art. I'm hoping to make some progress in a non-threatening way. The first session was encouraging--very! I set myself the target of working on a business card this week. It's not homework, just something I picked out of the discussion as a step forward for me.

Now I have some choices to make. How much time and effort do I want to put into this little step. Can I do it myself or do I need to have it professionally printed? What about free business cards? Here's my effort so far:

These are home-made: printed on my inkjet printer and cut by hand on a little guilloitine. I wanted to see how my idea of attaching a little strand of handspun yarn to each card would work out before I took the idea any further.



And in case you're wondering about the etsy and madeit shops whose addresses you can see on the card if you have very good eyesight. At this stage they are dreams and aspirations, but they will eventually need a place on the card, so I put them on the draft rather than waiting until later.