Craft Fair Tutorial: DIY Price Tags

DIY Price Tags

Craft Fair Tutorial: DIY Price TagsIt’s all in the details, right?

Mind you, at my first few craft fairs, I was way too focused on figuring out the big picture to focus on fiddly little details like awesome price tags. More important questions at the time: How do I arrange my booth? How do I display my stuff? How much change should I carry? What kind of shopping bags should I offer?

Dealing with the big questions took me some time, but once I felt more comfortable with things like cool displays and awesome signage, my stress was able to shift to the smaller nagging details of a craft fair setup.

Great displays and awesome signage are good for getting people to notice your booth, but it’s the little things, the business cards and price tags, that they’ll take home with them.

Do you want customers to be able to look at something as ubiquitous as a price tag and instantly be able to recall the style of your work? Do you want them to be instantly consumed with the desire to check out your web shop or your blog or find your next craft fair to buy more stuff? Try some of the following ideas to make your price tags really speak:

  1. DIY your price tags the way that you DIY your business cards. Custom stamps, recycled or handmade papers, awesome and distinctive imagery- all that applies to price tags as well as business cards. These DIY components, this attention to detail that makes even the mundane beautiful, this is why people should shop handmade instead of at Wal-mart. Remind them.
  2. Use different price tags in different situations. For my craft fairs, when I sell stuff en masse, I tend to stick to price tags punched from cardboard record album covers. When I sell in an indie boutique or local business, however, I often spend more time on the price tags, making them especially detailed and thematically appropriate, such as the tags above, which are cassette tapes cut from cardstock and old encyclopedia pages, to sell baby clothing sewn from old rock band T-shirts. If you sell a variety of things, a different price tag for each collection would be fun, or different tags to indicate sizing at a glance if you’re selling clothing, for example.
  3. Include as much information as you can. Small price tags really only have room for the price, and that’s fine because that’s all you need, but is that all that you want? Some brief info and product labeling is handy for customers who are examining your item more closely, to show them the features of what they’re considering purchasing. Also remember that after a purchase, your customers will be taking these tags home with them. Think about including your business name so that they can look you up again. If you have room, include your shop or blog site.
  4. Examine your indie options. If you’re super-successful or super-busy, you may not have time to carefully craft your own unique price tags, and that’s totally cool, but you don’t necessarily have to buy in bulk from a big-box craft store, either. Some etsy sellers or local businesses make bank by making and selling items like these in bulk. Spread the love around a little by buying from them.
  5. Think outside the box. If you scrapbook or make your own gift tags, or know origami, or do any other paper crafting, you can use all these skills, AND your stash, to make price tags that are way beyond the ordinary.

Any other DIY price tag ideas we should add to the list?

9 thoughts on “Craft Fair Tutorial: DIY Price Tags”

  1. Pingback: Craft Fair Tutorial: DIY Price Tags

  2. wonderful tips!
    Some of my items travel between craft-fairs & retail shops… so I go with the ‘one size fits all’ approach (I don’t want to be wasteful by cutting off old tags and putting on new for each locale)… I include care instructions (I sell stuffed animals), a statement saying it’s handmade & a website so they can contact me. I also personalize each tag by writing the name of the stuffed animals, which people think is fun 🙂
    It’s certainly true that there is so much room for creativity… thanks for encouraging me to re-brainstorm my tags!

  3. Virtual craft shows allow handmade artists to advertise crafts conveniently from their home. And after simply completing an application and submitting a few pictures of their handmade crafts the person who manages the virtual craft show booths takes care of the rest. Handmade artists are then free to do other things with their time, like making more crafts.

  4. Great ideas! I blogged a while back about my own DIY price tags. Rather than throwing away Starbucks java jackets, I’ve started keeping them and using a tag-shaped paper puncher to create tags from them. They are already made of recycled materials and it alleviates my guilt about previously throwing them away.

  5. Pingback: 5 Simple Ways to Green Your Crafty Business | FaveCraftsBlog

  6. Pingback: Crafting a Green World | Craft Booth Ideas: Bubble Gum Machine Button Display | Page: 1 | Crafting a Green World

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