10 Tips on Starting Art and Craft Classes for a Profit

 

10 Tips on Starting Art and Craft Classes for a Profit

how-to-start-your-own-art-and-craft-classes-small-profitable-business

Arts and Crafts Classes: How Do You Start?

Teaching arts and crafts to kids can be a small but profitable business to start up, especially for ambitious housewives. It's a lucrative home-based business opportunity.

I myself entered into this field because I wanted to give enough time to my child and was not ready to put him into boarding school. I quit my job and started my own art and craft classes for kids. The best part was that my child was learning a lot from this activity and getting lot of quality time to spend with his parents.

Initially I struggled, as I knew it takes time to get recognition especially when you live in an area where there is a good competition. But I learned that if you give good quality instruction and kids are satisfied, you will surely get success. I realized this when a few of my students stood first in art competitions; I started getting lot of calls for more admissions. Kids I trained have been consistent award winners. I was never worried about what others were teaching; I concentrated more on what and how i would teach. For this I put great effort into the curriculum and how to find a way to transform a child's ability in one year of training.

I found this business most satisfying and at the same time it was improving my artistic and creative abilities. I will explain in this article what you can to start such a business without much investment.

How to Start Your Own Arts and Crafts Training Center for Children

1. Assess Your Knowledge

Knowledge of the art field is the first place to start. So assess your skills, or should I say, know your basic drawing ability. If you have previous formal training in the field of art then go to the next step. If you don't have previous training, but your hand at basic drawing is good, then take at least 2-3 months to train yourself, and in the beginning start drawing classes for little kids up to the age of 8 years. The next step will tell you how you can train yourself without spending too much money.

2. Train Yourself in Arts and Crafts

If you are not a fine arts graduate and don't have a diploma in art, not to worry. The Internet is the best source of information and full of easily downloadable books and tutorials like 123peppy.com or youtube (or my own tutorials that I keep uploading on HubPages). You can also purchase some good drawing books from the nearby bookstore.

Train yourself in the following areas and include all this in your curriculum.

  • Pencil. Improve your knowledge about pencils like what HB stands for and what is the difference between 2B pencil and a 2H pencil and what all different kinds of pencils are available in the market and so on.
  • Colors and brushes. Improve your knowledge about all types of color mediums like crayons, oil pastels, water colors, pencil colors, soft pastels, paints and learn about round and flat brushes and there differences.
  • Shapes. Learn to draw all types of shapes like circle, oval, triangle, square, rectangle, cone, cylindrical, and move on to trapezium, semicircle, kite, heart shape, eye shape and cloud shape.
  • Lines. Learn to draw lines like standing, sleeping, slanting, dotted, wavy, curly, zig zag, and curvy lines, and "m" and "w" shaped lines.
  • Alphabet drawings. Learn to draw basic things around us using alphabets and shapes. Alphabets and shapes help kids learn drawing easily.
  • Basic elements. Learn to draw trees, houses, flowers, clouds, mountains, water, island, and the sun and make some simple nature scenes. In the same manner, draw some cityscapes like school building, market area, a house with garden, and so on. Practice a few under water scenes with underwater animals and fishes, corals and seaweeds. 4-5 drawings in each area is enough for the beginning.
  • Shading. Learn basic shading and coloring at the level that kids require. Begin with pencil shading first and then go for coloring. For the 3 to 7 year age group hardly any shading is required.
  • Drawing living things. Learn to draw animals, birds, and insects, and try to draw all these with the help of shapes.
  • The human body. Learn to draw human body actions like sitting, standing, running, jumping, walking. Start with a boy and girl and move on to topics like 'My family'.
  • Craft materials. Learn about various craft products available in the market like sheets, origami papers, cardboards, punches, calligraphy pens, flower making materials, greeting cards embellishments.
  • Craft ideas. Learn to make greeting cards, origami basics, flower making, punch craft, quilling, school projects. These craft areas are very easy to learn and teach.

3. Consider Your Investment

Starting classes at your home is the best idea, as no investment required is required for the space. You need to purchase table and chairs, some colors, shelves to display some drawing books and some of your art and craft work. Besides this, you need to spend money on advertising; printing and distributing pamphlets is a must. So the total investment is very little if you can start at your home.

4. Plan the Curriculum

Plan a curriculum for at least a year, with 2-3 classes in a week, for example two classes and one craft class. Plan a curriculum in such a way that kids complete 3-4 drawings in a month and 2-3 craft projects. In the beginning, let the children practice only shapes and lines for 3-4 classes which helps improve wrist movements.

5. Choose an Age Group

Choose the age group best suited to your skills, perhaps 3-12 years, or one group of 3- to 7-year-olds and a second of 8- to 10-year-olds. Keeping separate groups is better as these two age groups have different needs.

6. Choose a Location

It's best if you can start from your home; otherwise rent a room in a potential place that gets a lot of traffic. You can also share space with an already established tutoring center or playschool.

7. Choose a Name

Pick a catchy name for your art school, like Colors, Color Palette, or Pencil and Scissors. Or use the name of any famous cartoon character. Or choose a more intellectual name like Virtuoso, Little Artist, or Strokes and Cuts.

8. Advertise

People will come to know about your center only through advertising, so distribute pamphlets, and put display ads in book stores and stationery stores. Put advertisements in newspapers and on the internet so that more and more people know about your center. You can also organize workshops or art competitions for children in your area which will help you a lot in gaining recognition.

9. Hire Teachers

Once your business is doing well and you are not able to take all the classes yourself, hire outside teachers on a monthly basis.

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