Oct 09, 2007
Spinning Photo Cube
I found these unfinished spinning photo cubes at one of our local craft stores. Gift items are usually what has sold best at past craft fairs so I’m always on the lookout for things that would make great gifts. I painted the unfinished wood with white acrylic paint and covered it with papers from the Piggy Tales Gretel Collection. I used Mono Multi glue to adhere the paper to the wood and then added a coat of Mod Podge over the top. The cover lifts off the box so that little trinkets can be stored inside or the cover could be permanently left off and then you could use it as a pencil/pen holder. Most of the craft show questions I receive involve pricing items so I thought I’d use this opportunity to walk you through my pricing process. I’ve never sold these photo cubes before so I will need to come up with a price. I start by calculating the cost of my supplies:
Photo cube: $5.00
Acrylic Paint: $.25
Foam Brush: $.10
Paper, glue, Mod Podge: $.50
Grand Total of Supplies: $5.85
Then I take into consideration the time it took me to make the photo cube. I spent about 45 minutes painting, cutting, gluing, etc. My hourly rate is $10.00 (or $7.50 for 45 minutes) bringing the total for labor and supplies to $14.10. Now this is where your discretion comes in. I will price these at $15.00, but in another part of the country or even another craft fair that price may be too high or too low. You need to know your market. Set your prices at what you think is fair and then pay special attention to what people are saying as they browse your booth. If you hear “Wow… what a great deal!” or “Oh… that’s such a good price!” a bunch of times, you’ll realize that you can probably charge more for your items. If people look at the price and then set the item down quickly you might realize your items are priced too high. Make time to walk around to other booths and check out the pricing of similar handmade items. It’s always easy to lower your prices, but it’s much harder to raise them so err on the high side. My #1 piece of advice is to see the value in your creativity and don’t sell yourself short!