The Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club
What if you could find a school that would teach your child applied creativity, organizational skills, project management, math, money skills, entrepreneurship, social skills, and marketing… all in three hours?
Look no further than the annual Kids Craft Fair at the Boys and Girls Club in downtown Santa Cruz the first Saturday of December. Each year this event draws kids from all over the county who make and sell holiday gifts and food.
And if you go as a shopper, don’t think of it as charity. These kids aren’t kidding when it comes to quality.
“All the bath products are great and really professionally packaged,” points out Rebbie Higgins, Operations Coordinator at the Club. “There are kids that make bath bombs, lip balms, soaps. They’re great for presents because they’re really attractive. The hand-dipped beeswax candles are gorgeous and make great gifts.”
“To be honest, things that look like they were made by a child generally don’t sell as well as things that look similar to what you might find at a adult craft fair,” says Heddi Craft, a local homeschool educator and crafter whose daughters have taken part for the last six years. “But there are people who will go around and buy something from every kid that’s there. It’s nice to see them support even the smallest kid.”
That entrepreneurial spirit
The approach to the fair varies from family to family, but most make it all about the kids’ entrepreneurial spirit. The parents invest in materials and act as support; the kids come up with the ideas, make the crafts, and sell them at the fair.
“I’ve talked with parents and they’ve had the conversation with the kids about, ‘you made the jewelry but you made me buy the beads, and you’re going to pay back for the beads’,” Higgins explains. “That’s an awesome opportunity for understanding how business works.”
Heddi Craft agrees, describing her daughters’ experience as “a mini-economy, complete with loans.”
“Molly has become much more aware of things like, how much am I spending on materials? How much do I have to set aside from this craft fair to have enough for next year? In the beginning I would front her the money, but she makes enough now to set aside money for the following year.”
Kids learn quickly that the successful sellers at the fair have created products that buyers would buy at stores—for higher prices.
“Some of the girls doing little embroidered Christmas tree ornaments—it’s stuff you would totally expect to drop twenty bucks on in one of the fancier artist shops in town!” Higgins says. “The prices are great, the kids know the value of their stuff.”
“All of Molly’s things have been very successful,” Craft says. “She makes Metal Clay jewelry, yarn dolls, things out of Sculpey and Fimo. She usually sells out by the end of the day. Erin found the most lucrative thing she did was last year when she sold sandwiches and lemonade. It’s kind of a captive audience. You have a whole roomful of people at an event that goes through lunch!”
Shop ‘til you drop
So if you’re planning to attend as a shopper, what might you find? For gifts, look for such items as beeswax candles, homemade soaps, bath bugs, potholders, decorative mason jars, handmade greeting cards, custom Lego sets, crystals, succulents in charming pots, seashell magnets, bookmarks, jewelry, sock snowmen, felt creatures, hand-sewn cloth bags, and wallets.
After that, you might get really hungry, so look out for the baked goods, peanut butter cups, hot chocolate, and coffee. (Sometimes there’s chili, too!)
Don’t go until you’ve checked out all the holiday decorations for sale, including cards, gift tags, ornaments, and wreaths.
Newly empowered kids
Amidst it all, be aware that you’ll be competing for the best stuff with the kids themselves, who, newly flush with their own earnings, like to support their fellow entrepreneurs.
“The most impressive thing is how empowered the kids feel,” Higgins says. “Usually you have to go and ask your mom and then she’s like, ‘no, you can’t have sugar.’ Unless the parents figure out something where they’re going to restrict the kids’ spending, it’s the kids’ money, they earned it!”
Craft points out that empowerment can turn into actual paying work. She knows of one child who went on to sell at professional craft fairs, and her daughter Molly received a custom order from a shopper who asked her to specially design a necklace for his wife.
The Boys and Girls Club celebrates its 50th anniversary next year. Higgins admits that no one is quite sure how long the craft fair has been going on, but lots of grown kids in town remember it fondly as the first place they learned the power of creativity.
The Kids Craft Fair
December 1, 2018 11:00 am–2:00 pm
Boys and Girls Club Downtown Clubhouse, 543 Center St., Santa Cruz
http://boysandgirlsclub.info/events/craftfair/
Note: This article is forthcoming in Growing Up in Santa Cruz
