How I Started a Small Craft Business!

Come along with me while I open my own small craft business! This series will give you tips and tricks to start crafting for profit and making money doing what you love.

All right friends, I’ve been hinting about this on YouTube a bit but I’m finally ready to share the news! I started a small craft business separate from Hey, Let’s Make Stuff. 2024 started off terribly, with the death of an old friend, a very close family member being diagnosed with cancer (thankfully she’s now in remission!), and a lot of other health stuff for people I love.

And while I love writing and filming tutorials for my blog and YouTube channel, I was feeling a bit disconnected from the joy of actually crafting things and seeing people enjoy what I’ve made personally.

I was pretty burned out.

So I turned to one of my all-time favorite hobbies: reading. I have always been a voracious reader. In fact, my first blog was book reviews! I needed someplace to escape to when life to got too much, so I turned to books.

And as I read, I got the itch to start making book-themed crafts and products.

So I decided to give it a shot to see what I could do. Enter Chapter & Craft Studio!

I started with a local craft fair back in early July 2024 (it’s September now) and then joined Etsy in late July. As of the writing of this post, I’ve made about 600 sales!

This little side hustle has done even better than I’d hoped! So much so that I thought I’d start a series here and on YouTube, talking about what I’ve learned while starting up Chapter & Craft. This post will be a bit more personal, but we’ll get into the nitty gritty of running a small craft business in future posts!

Up until now, I’ve built my business without the benefit of using my Hey Let’s Make Stuff brand name. I thought this would give me a more accurate perspective for most of our Crafting for Profit podcast listeners who don’t have the benefit of a huge audience to start out with. I wanted to put into practice all of the things we talk about under Crafting for Profit. Proof of concept, if you will!

Privileges and Disadvantages

Before we get into those things, however, I want to talk about some of the privileges and a disadvantage I have in starting this business. We all have different things that make our businesses easier and harder to run and I think being honest about those things gives us realistic expectations about what we can (and can’t) make work for us.

My Privileges

I think the biggest privilege I have in starting this business is the number of machines and other resources I have. Because I’ve been a content creator for so long, I am working with a lot Cricut machines, lasers, sublimation printers, and a white toner printer. Most people will not have access to the equipment I do. I rarely crafted more than one thing at a time, but I was able to make a wide variety of projects because I have a wide variety of machines. I also didn’t have to pay for many of these machines because of brand partnerships, which I recognize puts me ahead of many people.

Second, I am lucky that my life circumstances made it pretty easy. I work for myself so I could choose to allocate time to this side project. I got the bulk of my shop set up and running during summer break, and my kids are easy kids so I didn’t have to spend every minute either driving them everywhere or making sure they didn’t get into trouble. I didn’t have to try to cram this side hustle into the margins of my day like so many people. And my husband and kids were supportive and even helped out a bit.

Third, I have a background in design and marketing. This means that I can do a lot of my own design to make my products unique, rather than relying on what already exists out there. And I am also good at branding because I worked at in marketing for years. These things definitely give me an advantage.

And finally, I also think I have the privilege of youth(ish) and all that comes with it. I’m not super young (43 at the time of writing this) but I know a lot of people try to start their small craft businesses in retirement and I think that must be more difficult in some ways. I may have more energy, more knowledge about tech, and perhaps fewer health problems than some of you, and I recognize that as a privilege.

My Disadvantages

Speaking of health, however, my biggest disadvantage is that I’m running this business (and my main business of Hey Let’s Make Stuff) with fibromyalgia, which can leave me with an aching body, brain fog, an upset stomach, and nerve pain. This affects when and how I work and I do have to be careful about how I do things. We did a whole episode on Running a Small Business with a Chronic Illness over on the podcast, if you want tips and tricks for helping manage your own condition.

I also have small kids at home. While my kids are easy, they are…here! Often in my studio! Which I love. But it also means that I have to create boundaries not to work all the time because I want my evenings and weekends to be for my family and that cuts out on a lot of hustle time that others might have.

While you may have different privileges and disadvantages, I do think it might be helpful for you to write them out. You can remember how your life may be easier than some others while also keeping in mind what may make it more difficult for you as well.

Starting a Craft Business

Now let’s dive into what I actually did to kick start this business!

The idea for this business came about when I decided I wanted to participate in our local summer craft fair. My mom is a crafter and has her own booth each year and my wheels started turning about creating my own book-themed craft booth to combine my love of crafting and my love of reading.

Apply for the 2024 Summer Craft Fair

So my first step was to apply for the craft fair at the beginning of May 2024. I didn’t have any photos of products because I didn’t have any products! So I spent a few days creating lists, researching, and making prototypes of things I might want to sell, including tumblers, mugs, art prints, totes, keychains, buttons, stickers, bookshelf decór, and more.

At this point I wasn’t sure if I would be accepted, so I just designed and made one of each thing, photographed it, and submitted it to the craft fair selection committee.

Thankfully I was accepted! I spent the next month making product after product. I had no idea what would sell and I didn’t want my booth to be empty. To be perfectly honest, I probably did more than I needed to, but that’s just my personality for you. #overachiever

The craft fair was on a warm day in July. I did pretty well here for it being a small neighborhood show and the first I’ve done. I made about $500 and learned A LOT to take into craft fairs this fall that should improve my sales. I’ll go into craft fair tips and tricks in future posts since there is a LOT to cover!

Joining Etsy

Soon after the craft fair, I added a few of my products to Etsy. I decided to go with Etsy to start because they have such a robust search engine that makes it easier for people to find you.

All I added to start were my stickers and my art prints and they did really well right out of the gate with no marketing on my part! I will do a whole post on Etsy SEO and the things that will help drive traffic to your Etsy listings. Since then, I have also added Kindle inserts, keychains, mugs, and more. And I’m sitting at a solid 5-star rating from nearly 100 reviews!

If you have Etsy questions, make sure to leave those down in the comments so I can answer them!

What’s Going Right

I’ll go into so much more in upcoming posts, but I did want to talk a bit about what’s going right and what needs improvement right now.

The first thing has been going great is my overall attitude toward this endeavor. I’m having a lot of fun! And that’s part of this whole thing. I wanted to get back to the joy of crafting and I think it’s working. There really hasn’t been much time where I haven’t thoroughly enjoyed creating Chapter & Craft and I’ve really needed it after a difficult year.

Another thing is my sales on Etsy! If you’d told me I’d have more than 600 sales three month after opening my Etsy shop I would’ve thought you were crazy. But I think I’ve found a great niche and some fun designs that are really resonating with people.

What Needs Improvement

My email list! I am such a big proponent of an email list and I talk about it all the time on the Crafting for Profit Podcast. But in real life, I have pretty much failed! I do have the email list itself created in ConvertKit, I just haven’t given anyone a good way to sign up yet. So that is one of my big focuses going into the holiday season.

Another is trying to figure out where to go from here. My mind is a tornado of ideas all of the time and actually nailing things down to do has been more difficult than I expected. Right now, my biggest focus is reworking my craft room to actually make a shipping area (the tiny desk I’m currently using is NOT cutting it) and making products for the holidays (ghost stickers, anyone?).

Then on my longer-term list I have ideas like opening up a TikTok shop, getting on camera more for TikTok and Instagram, starting a FB group (maybe with a book club?!) and wholesaling. And I’m looking at getting my own sticker printer/cutter, because I am just that crazy!

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So what do you think? Do you want to know more about this journey? What particular tasks do you need help with running your own small craft business? Let me know in the comments!