Start a Cottage Industry Business Ideas Making Custom 3D Picture Frame Works of Art

There are many reasons start a cottage business, otherwise known as a home-based business. Some of those benefits include, but are not limited to:

• Significant tax breaks even from ordinary home expenses, be sure to consult a tax consultant or CPA, for the specifics your cottage business would qualify for, and the record keeping needed.
• The flexibility to work from your home based on your own schedule. If you are a night owl, it can be a perfect time to work.
• The joy of doing work you love, and being your own boss.
• The options of growing the cottage business to the size you’d like, including hiring of other family members, should you want to do that.
• Obtaining a better quality of work life balance overall.

The idea for a cottage business we will talk about is designing and creating unique picture frames. Everyone uses and needs picture frames for displaying their family photos. Family photos are almost always at the top of the list for a person’s most treasured possession.

These make wonderful gifts for even people that are difficult to buy for, because they already own everything. The need for photo frames will never end, because of the incredible value of displaying antique family photos of our loved ones to surround ourselves with. Even with the digital photo age and so many going towards displaying their photos in that medium, it still will not replace, classic picture frames.

You will want to draft an official business plan as goal setting is very important to your future success. Go into this treating it as a real business. Research your local competition, see what’s out there. Keep in mind however with the internet; you could have access to a much larger customer base than simply the local market. This is also a viable area to put some research to.

Check into your local Small Business Administration, as you may qualify for grants or loans for needed seed funds to get your cottage business going.

You will also want to look into a marketing plan for once you do have designs and product made. How do you want to sell them?

Perhaps local businesses would consider displaying some fine art prints displayed with your beautiful photo frames and taking a small commission for every sale this generated for you.

A person may be able to participate in local art shows, farmer’s markets, mall kiosks, or even set up a small gallery at your home for sales, if zoning permits. You could develop a party plan structure if you so desired and sell that route, including enlisting presenters that do the selling for you.

An alternative avenue to research is hiring an independent sales rep that will represent your product line and get you established in store accounts. There are many agencies online that offer these types of services.

Look also at some of your nearest major tourist attractions for ideas, these would make incredible travel souvenirs that are actually useful instead of junk that simply collects dust and is eventually thrown out.

Learn how Social Networking Approaches for Businesses and Organizations can be a cost effective method as well.

You get the idea, they are limitless. Start however with one design, draw on a paper the dimensions of a frame, consider beginning with the standard frame sizes like 5X7, 8X10, 16X20, etc. Say for example, you choose a Western theme. Begin listing all the items you would think this could entail: horses, cowboys, cows, ranches, ropes, cowboy boots, hats, cowgirls, trucks, rodeo, and bandanas, everything you can think of.

Begin drawing on your paper or computer program, designs based on these items. Keep in mind balance, whether the design is symmetrical all around the frame, on one side or two, or one corner or two. Consider these to be a 3D type of art form.

Now, consider the frame itself. What type of materials lends itself best to your theme? For a Western theme, if you could get access to old barn boards that could be very authentic look. Or, perhaps a basic cheap frame that is wrapped and glued with rope or a bandana. If you don’t have carpentry skills and you would need those, perhaps you could hire a handy man to do the basic frame building for you, or start studying this topic and teach yourself.

You will need to research to find those items. Search on online auction places, resources that carry miniatures, scrap booking supplies may prove useful to you. Don’t rule out toy stores either for small items that fit your themes.

Once you have done all this, get a low temp hot glue gun and spend the day playing and designing various looks, gluing your items to your frame as you’ve drawn it. You may find you come with a whole series of frames within one theme. Going back to our Western example, you may find you design one dedicated to horses, one to cowboys, one to rodeos, one to cowgirls, etc

This also may really open up marketing ideas of where to sell these unique picture frames. Look at Western stores, rodeo vending, ranchers, horse shows, and don’t forget city dwellers that may have a love of country Western life, that want to surround themselves with those items. They may have a family member who loves horses, what a perfect way to display a photo of that person.

When you have completed some designs that you are happy with, you may want to get your drawings copywrited. This is not a difficult or expensive process and will protect your work from being stolen, or at least give you legal recourse if they are.

You may end up that your design is a one of a kind creation, or it becomes a template pattern that you create the same photo frame many times over, or it becomes your signature trademark.

You will also need to design in the finished product, how the photo fits in the frame, how it will either stand alone or be hung on a wall. Another consideration is if the frame will have glass or not, and if so, a matte or glossy finished glass, basically how the whole end photo frame fits together properly.

In times of a slow economy, many turn to home based / cottage businesses as a way either to supplement their income or current job situation, begins with a goal of being full time income which replaces a non-existent job, or a very dissatisfying job.

Check out our related articles, some may be addition components you can add to your business:

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