I have been up for half an hour now, it’s Saturday morning 4.30am. Having waved my hubby goodbye, I now wait a little while allowing our youngest to sleep a couple more hours and then the two of us are off to join my hubby at my Saturday job……I have a handmade greeting card stall at one of our local markets. To say I enjoy my Saturday job would be a gross understatement…..let me make it clear to you all……I ABSOLUTELY LOVE GOING TO THE MARKET AND SELLING MY HANDMADE WARES! It’s absolutely true.
Let me take you back to where this love affair began. Hubby and I have always been ‘into’ buying our fruit and veg from the markets and have frequented many of them here in our fabulous city of Brisbane. I began protesting against the Big Two grocery chains due to the fact that media coverage was exposing the dubiousness of the freshness of their produce let alone the ridiculous prices they charge us all. Hence markets became the obvious choice and so the weekend consisted of a visit to the market for produce.
Along with these lovely weekend outings and it was about four years ago now, I had become pretty clever at making my own olive oil-based soaps. I went into this craft for the purpose of wanting to secure a soap that was going to be good for my family’s skin disorders. We have eczema, dermatitis and psoriasis in our family, certainly not bad cases of it I hasten to add. Regardless, I had been told by the medics over the years to ‘steer away from’ mass produced commercial soap and to use alternate products which I purchased in the local chemists. Sorbolene had been the recommended medical choice and is a fabulous product but in our hot summers, it felt like you were wearing a sheet of plastic on your skin at times and hence I wanted to find something more appropriate. After much and I mean MUCH researching and seeing the various soaps on offer at the markets and trying many of them, my research always pointed to olive oil soap though there was little of this type on offer so I found a recipe and off I went. Five years on, we haven’t looked back. Okay, I skipped a bit so let’s go back.
After about six months of positive results with my soap, my hubby and I decided to ‘get it out there’ and the markets seemed the obvious choice. By law we needed insurance to sell the soaps, packaging, labelling and it became a bit of a logistical nightmare. Regardless we went ahead with it, secured a stall at the market and enjoyed ourselves. The soaps became quite popular. However we were to be challenged by the ever increasing rent rates which seemed to be happening far too frequently for our liking and hence we ‘pulled the plug’ after looking at our books and realising we were not accomplishing our goal financially. By the way, hubby was and is gainfully employed so it wasn’t as if we were reliant on this product to survive. I, however, often dreamt that maybe one day we would be self-sufficient in our business. To date that hasn’t happened but wait there’s more..
Regardless, after a year or so of not holding a stall at the markets but continuing to support our local producers, I began researching stall availability. This time, it was my intent to sell my handmade greeting cards which I had been making off and on for years but had become a little more serious about them, giving them to family and friends and with the responses always so lovely and positive…..yes, the markets were calling me back!
So nearly a year on, we have been attending a market here in Brisbane each Saturday as a permanent stallholder. Hubby is absolutely marvellous and helps me tremendously by packing up his car with the trestle, boxes etc etc and leaves to be there in time to ‘clock in.’ I dutifully follow him, sometimes with child/ren in hand. We both ‘man’ the stall and have realised over time that hubby enjoys sitting under the sky as much as I do, in the fresh air and chatting to our customers and the passers-by and oh how it is good for the soul.
My cards have proven to be very popular. My aim was to create a card more attractive than you would purchase retail along with a handmade ‘feel’ about them, but also cheaper than retail too and I think I have achieved that. Leading up to Christmas we were selling 80-100 per Saturday, yep I am serious. I have many regular customers who give me so much positive feedback and I appreciate each and every comment. I am known interstate, well not me exactly but my cards, and I am known internationally, OK, again, not me but my cards. Yes, I work from home five days a week restocking, yes, I make them all by hand, yes, the work is extremely labour-intensive and yes they are all made with much love and buckets of it.
Oh well, it’s time to go and get ready for the day. The weather forecast is for a fine day which is great. What will the day bring? I have no idea but I know we will thoroughly enjoy it.
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