When it comes to my craft business, I love spending money on the fun stuff: new acrylic paints, a cool hammer with textured heads, or a sleek necklace display.
It takes me longer to part with my money for the non-fun items like accounting software or a shipping label printer. But those items, while pricey, are worth it for the amount of time and stress they save me. Thinking about them made me wonder: What less expensive (under $40) but kind of boring (no Instagram photos for you!) items have also proved worthwhile? (By the way, these are just my personal recommendations; I get no compensation whether you view or buy any of these items or not.)
Here are four items that fit the bill:
1. Postage Scale
If you can weigh outgoing packages on your own scale, you can avoid the line at the post office and print your own postage. While you do not need a scale to start your online business, it's something you'll probably want to consider soon after. You can wait longer for a dedicated label printer; printing your shipping labels on plain paper and taping them to your packages works fine. I did it that way for years.
I've had my scale for more than 15 years; I'm not sure that they even make it anymore. (One minor downside of mine is that it only weighs packages up to 5 pounds. If I were ever to replace this scale, I'd look for one that weighed heavier items.) A quick check on Amazon shows lots of postage scales for around $25.
2. Adjustable Fold-in-Half Table
Craft shows often require you to bring your own 6-foot table. The one I have is from Home Depot and has a list price of $39.98. What I like best about it is that it folds in half, so I can easily store it in the closet in my home office. It also has a built-in handle which makes it easy to lug to shows. I'd initially balked at this expense because I don't do many craft shows. (I did two in 2019 and that was a big year for me!) However, I've since discovered that it makes a great extra workspace for packing up orders during peak times. It's fairly easy and quick to unfold and set up, so I don't mind pulling it out or stowing it away as needed.
I love using my tumbler to polish metal. It's definitely a purchase that's made my jewelry-making life better with the time it saves me. (It costs more than $40 or it might have made this list.) Many jewelry makers I know run their tumbler more or less continually. I've found that while I can do that in some cases, sometimes I can't. For example, with my aluminum rings, I want to tumble them just long enough to get a nice shine, but not to harden completely. The problem is that I'd put the rings in the tumbler and then get totally distracted for hours. (Beads! Sparkle! Pretty!)
This $12.98 timer from Lowe's is the kind that people use to turn their lights on and off automatically at certain times of day or night. It also has a countdown feature where you can set it for a specific amount of time like 15 minutes or an hour, which is just perfect for how I wanted to use it. I am sometimes stymied by complex technical gadgets, but this one is incredibly easy to use.
4. 25 Box Storage System
Almost any crafter you meet will have tons of little plastic boxes filled with all their materials: embroidery floss, beads, sequins,
buttons, charms, rivets, thread spools. And what almost any crafter will tell you is that not all little plastic boxes are the same. My new favorite is the one from Harbor Freight that is a bunch of tiny boxes inside a larger box.
This new $4.99 box eliminates one of the nightmares I have about putting beads into a regular plastic box that just has dividers: Beads will spill over from one section to another or -- horrors! -- if you drop it, all the beads will spill out together all over the floor. With this new container, some of the mini boxes might still pop open, but I'm betting it won't be all of them. I often like to work in different places, so this makes it possible for me to pull out just a few boxes rather than the whole container. A major plus: this box doesn't come with a huge sticker on it that you have to scrape off. (In a similar vein, I also like this large scrapbook/photo organizer from Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft. I use this to organize the majority of my findings.)
Those are my four boring, but practical, items. I hope this list reminds you (and me if I forget!) that sometimes a dull purchase can improve your work and give you more time and energy to do the fun parts you love.