Looking for some fantastic current resources for your arts and crafts business? I recommend five arts and crafts books in my personal library. They cover topics from designing your art or craft product and photographing it to picking the right marketing venue and day-to-day pointers on how to efficiently and effectively operate your arts and crafts business.
1. Splendid Settings: The Art + Craft of Entertaining
Envision yourself as the next Martha Stewart! This book, written by Jane Korman, combines cooking and entertaining with using arts and crafts for table settings and party decorations. Could be a nice side complement to your arts and crafts business. Earnings 5 star reviews at Amazon, this book only comes in hardbound.
2. Design! A Lively Guide to Design Basics for Artists and Craftspeople
A lot has been written about the notion that people with perfectly symmetric features are, at first glance, considered to be more attractive than those with less symmetric eyes, noses and mouths. Well, this theory can also apply to arts and crafts too. This book explains how to arrange raw materials in the most appealing way possible in your arts and crafts designs to subconcisouly appeal to your customers.
Covered is repetition, rhythm, symmetry, asymmetry, focal emphasis, and underlying shapes. Written by Steven Aimone, it comes in paperbound at a variety of prices, used and new.
3. Photographing Arts, Crafts and Collectibles: Take Great Digital Photos
Regardless if you are photographing your arts and crafts products for the web, marketing material or for submission to juried shows, you need flawless images. Paying a professional photographer can be pricey.
If you want to try to do it yourself, author Steve Meltzer, explains how digital cameras operate, and gives great information about lighting and photographing jewelry, pottery, glass, installed art, stamps, coins, dolls, and other collectibles. Also included in this paperbound books is advice on using photo editing programs as Adobe™ Photoshop® and CorelPHOTO-PAINT Pro®. Numerous prices for this book depending on whether you buy used or new.
4. The Crafts Business Answer Book: Starting, Managing, and Marketing
5. The Handmade Marketplace: Sell Crafts Locally, Globally, and On-Line
Twelve great chapters covering marketing basics and selling arts and crafts at shows, online, through blogs, holding trunk shows and a lot more! There is some very useful info about using online marketplaces such as Etsy, Artfire.com and others.
Even though I've owned my craft business since the 1980s, I found wonderful information that I had not yet considered or forgotten. This book also has the "Look Inside" feature so you can really check it out prior to clicking that "Buy" button!
