3. Make Money Selling Homestead Crafts
Selling homestead crafts is an idea that is wide open with possibilities. For one thing, consumers are looking more closely than ever before for meaningful holiday or birthday gifts. The globally conscious consumer looks for locally, hand made items that feature a high quality of craftsmanship (Fair Trade products are also popular for this reason). Inexpensive, poorly made novelty items produced through inhumane human labor conditions and imported from overseas are usually passed over for items of local artisanship. The categories of possibility can include: art, wood crafts, photography, hand-sewn items, doll making, pottery, soap making, candle making, cook books and ever so much more.

There are so many things you can create with a minimum amount of capital investment. Let's take a look at 2 very popular homestead crafts that are easy to handle and have a high profit margin and are always popular with consumers: hand crafted candles and natural soaps.

1. Hand Crafted Candles
Making candles is relatively easy and there are scores of ways to make candles uniquely. Check out your local library for how-to books to learn the craft of candle making and to get general creative ideas. Keep in mind that bees wax candles burn longer than paraffin candles.

At Quaker Farm, our candles are made using bees wax harvested from our bee hives. That makes our candles unique to us.



2. Natural Soaps
Authentic handcrafted soap has enjoyed ongoing popularity for the past several decades. Soap making is a skill which requires practice and chemical precision, but it is a craft that can, and should be, learned on a small scale which keeps the supplies investment during the learning period quite reasonable.

Making soap is a fun craft that allows artistic expression in a variety of ways including shape design, fragrance, color, texture and more.

There are many books available to help get you started, check out as many titles as you can at your local library to review titles before you purchase them. Then, start slowly and perfect your soap making technique before making a large investment in high production tools and supplies.

People love to purchase unique soaps because natural soap is a great gift idea and it is a comparatively inexpensive purchase one bar at a time. Having said that, the profit margin on a 4 ounce, $3.00 bar of soap is relatively high. So, soap making is a win win opportunity for both the consumer and the artisan.

Which ever soap making method you choose, be sure to use the highest quality ingredients so the product is the best it can be. Then, create a sales angle that will make you unique in the market. This includes creating eye catching packaging - which can be done easily and inexpensively with your own computer and printer.

For instance, at Quaker Farm, our handcrafted natural soaps are primarily milk-based. Our soaps are made with milk produced on our farm from several different animals such as, horses, sheep and goats, and the herbs used to color and texture the soaps are all grown here. Our packaging reflects who we are and complements the locality. So, when people purchase our soap, it is a locally created product unique to our farm and is an interesting souvenir from our area too.

...PART 4 comming - soon!