Starting with Nothing

As I was tinkering with some copper wire tonight I was thinking about how one person's trash can become a treasure you can then sell and buy stuff to create even more treasures.
But how do you start with nothing. 

First opportunity:

 Rocks! Everybody loves rocks. 

You can paint rocks. This may entail finding scrap paint. even house paint that you have that half can of. or ask on Facebook if anyone is getting rid of their craft paint or old house paint. If you get spray paint leftovers you can do marbling on anything, including rocks.

You can wrap rocks in wire. Where do you find wire? Just about any piece of dead electric or motorized equipment has wire, you just have to tear it apart to find it.  And who would say no if you asked for their dead gear.

Second opportunity:

Wire! Now you know where to find it.

Make jewelry. there are lot of tutorials on making pendants, bracelets, rings... with wire.

Make ornaments, simple or complex there are tons of cool designs.

Make beads that you can use on your jewelry or ornaments

Third opportunity:

Paper! Its everywhere.  

Fold it, cut it, paste it, make it into mache´. 
Sculpt it, decoupage it,  make envelopes, boxes, origami, beads...

Old newspapers, old magazines, egg cartons, cardboard boxes... You can even use your junk mail.

Fourth opportunity:

Sticks! Unless you are in the desert or prairie or arctic tundra you can find at least one, or two.

Big sticks can be carved or made into walking sticks

Little sticks can also be carved.

So there are a few ideas to get you started from nothing.  I just made 10 items that I will sell at $5 each from a few feet of scrap copper wire I pulled out of a dead motor someone was throwing away. I have enough wire to literally make 100 more items. $500+ from nothing is not a bad return.

creating something from nothing

I tend to have a very small crafting budget. Read $0. The few exceptions are for notions like thread that I use for none craft mending and sewing. Or glue Or water.
The rest of my crafting is often created form things I find at the recycle pad, or as gifts, or salvaged from something else.
Much of my fabric comes from give aways and salvage from old clothing.  scraps of wood, spray paint that was being thrown out. beads as gifts from those who were no longer beading...

So when I create something with the intent to sell it I struggle with how to value it. A few scraps of fabric a bit of thread and some empty plastic bottles costs me basically nothing. So I have go with time and how much is it worth?

Making bracelets that are colorful and funky and easy to make for almost nothing, but if I charge $1 I am only making $10 and hour. so if I charge $3 then I can offer a discount if someone buys 2. like $2/5
That ends up making them at about $25 an hour, which may seem a bit much but I do have to invest in marketing and such as well. So there I have justified the price.

The next question is how many to make. There will always be a percentage of them that do not sell and if the customer is making the choice I need to have lots of options. So for every 2 I sell I need 10 available maybe. I realize this is a problem because if I make 10 and only sell 2 I have only made $5 an hour for my work.  Or it just means I need to have 8 bracelets whose only job is to market the others so that becomes a whole hour of time. So with 2 hours of work in I will have 12 bracelets that might sell so that is $30 divided by 2 is $15 an hour for my work.

ok I will drive myself nuts.
I will have a booth with pieces worth $300 and pieces worth $3 and everything in between. I have to trust it is all worth every penny and every minute spent creating and selling. Even on a $0 budget.