This past Saturday my daughter and I teamed up to sell stuff at a holiday market. She is a photographer. I had my art there and then we set up a small photo booth for her. We also offered on demand printing where people could find a favorite photo on their phone, send it to us, and we sublimated it on different items like ornaments, metal signs, coasters, etc.

I had in my mind that this part of the event would be the side business, the one that maybe worked well because of the photography and art. Boy was I wrong. People loved having the ability to share a photo with us and have it printed right there, and leave with very personalized items either for themselves as mementos or for family and friends for gifts.

Interestingly enough, my art sold exceptionally well as well. Some of it was because I have already established my name here, but I think some of it was because it took about 20 minutes to get the sublimation process completed, so they had time to wait around a really look at my art and many people bought art along with their personalized items.

Only 2 people chose to get their photos taken, but my daughter didn’t even mind. She had brought her college homework to do thinking she wouldn’t be very busy, but she worked from about 1 hour after the market opened until 30 minutes after it closed helping customers transfer photos, getting them setup for printing and running the back side of the business.

Neither of us expect to have such a huge response to this idea, and we were both unprepared but excited for the huge positive response. The setup was easy, my art took longer to set up than the on demand printing setup. We even had people emailing us afterward and have several more orders to fill this week.

We aren’t sure if this is a fluky thing or if there could possibly be the ability to have steady work with this, but we have opportunity again in a couple of weeks to setup at a different market and test the waters again.

This idea came about several months before my daughter moved back up here, long before I actually thought it was even a possibility knowing I couldn’t pull it off by myself. As soon as I found out she was moving up, I signed us up, not really even knowing then how to handle everything. But I’m kind of a jump in and try and learn as you go type of person. At least until I realize I really need to learn more.

What’s really nice is my daughter had so much fun that she is running with the idea. She also included in the booth a photo album of the professional pictures she takes and was able to give out her name and number to several families looking for family pictures. Hopefully this will help her get her foot in a number of different doors giving her more than one option for making extra money for their family.

New things are fun, I like change, and I like trying new ideas. Many of my ideas don’t seem to pan out very well, but once in a while I strike on something that actually seems to work. I am grateful to my daughter for her willingness to give this a try with me, and for her excitement to keep going. I am also grateful for my son who came and ran the heat press for several hours, he sped up the process quite a bit. I am looking forward to our next market on December 7!