Craft Your Way To Success Monday, December 1st Money Making

I have just moved into my new apartment, so don’t have Internet unless at work, of which I will only be in today and tomorrow…you can keep up-to-date with my ‘issues’ by visiting the ‘my updates’ link above.

So, as you may know, I like to give you all ideas on how to make money – and not just hypothetical ideas. Real ideas that you could go out and make money on. Well, I thought I would share another technique I have found in order to give you guys a little bit more money this Christmas. It involves getting a little bit ‘crafty’, and can see you a very good return if you are good at it! Its also an ideal Christmas gift if you aren’t sure what to get someone this year, so you get the best of both worlds! I won’t go into the details of exactly how the item is made (as it should be pretty obvious), but we will go through how it can benefit you financially, which is what matters. Ok, so lets take a look at what it is we are going to sell…

The Product

We are going to be creating and selling – film cell frames. What is that you ask? Well you have probably come across them before, here is a website full of them. Sometimes these things can sell for hundreds of dollars, yet the funny thing is they can be built for less than five! You see, when you first glance at these items they come across as almost a ‘piece of history’ – the fact you are getting a frame that contains ‘authentic’ film cells of you favourite movies, but the fact of the matter is there are loads of these in existence, and you can buy packs of ten on eBay for less than a couple of dollars. All these film cells come from used and old movie reels that have been used to show the films in cinemas around the world, as well as any others that might have been privately bought. They have no real value, but put them in a frame with some pictures, and all of a sudden they become amazingly so. Now we know what we are making, how do we go about doing it?

The Method

I wont go into detail, but I will cover the basics: First things first you’ll need to buy the film cells themselves – this can be done very easily on eBay. Just do a search for ‘unmounted film cells’ and you’ll be able to find hundreds of results. You can put in the film name as well if you know exactly what film you want to do. Now you can normally get 2-4 frames worth of film cells for under $2. Then you need to buy the backing plate, which is simply two bits of thin black cardboard. You then mark on the cardboard where you want to place the film cells, cut the sections out, and then slide the film cells between the two pieces of cardboard. Then you just need to stick on a small picture of the movie in question, and frame it! If you want to go all fancy you can get a small piece of shiny card and print the name of the film on that…I’m not exactly sure where people get the engraved plaques you see on some of them – I assume they don’t come cheap though, so I offer ’shiny card’ as a substitute!

The Sale

Once you have done all the work, you should be able to sell it for almost double what you paid for it! After getting the first couple under your belt you should be able to produce loads for a reasonably cheap amount of money! Then you can set up your own shop as seen above, or sell them on eBay. The key is to try and make them look as professional as possible so that they will sell well - there are lots of ‘tacky’ ones on eBay, and they don’t ever see a bid. If the whole thing cost you $5, or $10, then sell for $20, even $25! The more professional it looks, the higher the asking price!

The idea is a sound way to ‘craft’ your way into getting some money this Christmas, and each item will take less than an hour to build – albeit I foresee it taking a lot less time than that. If you were able to build 5 (which shouldn’t cost much more than $20) within a few hours, you could see a return of over $100. That’s not a bad investment when you think about it, and also takes you away from the distractions that your computer contains, which normally might stop you making money ‘online’!

My Challenge

Now I can’t claim I have tried this one personally – I bought the film cells in order to do so, but never got around to doing it sadly. However, I am going to try and put a bit of effort into this plan, and try to build at least one by the end of the week; so long as I can get the film cells sent up to me in time! (They are at my parents house) When done, I will get a photograph of the final product, and place it online for you to see. If you would so like, I will include step by step instructions on how I made the item, and the cost involved! I hope you guys do try this, and have found it a useful idea.

Dan