AUSTIN — Breanna Wells of Cabot said she came up with the idea for a children’s handcraft fair after listening to a podcast recently.
That idea has turned into a reality — the Fall 2018 Children’s Handcraft Fair will take place from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday at Oak Grove First Baptist Church, 500 Oak Grove Road in Austin.
“I heard about it on a podcast, about a children’s handcraft fair,” Wells said. “The kids make these things to sell. They learn a skill. My daughter Josie is making scarfs. She learned how to finger-knit. We’ve learned about beeswax candles. So we got some local beeswax in Cabot from a person who harvests bees and honey. So we’re going to make candles out of that. We did research on that.”
Wells said a shop will be set up for children vendors to sell their products.
“The kids make their table decorations and decide on how they want their ‘store’ to look,” she said. “It’s going to be out at an old country church.”
Wells said 15 to 20 families are participating in the event.
“It just started out that my daughter is doing this for school,” said Wells, who home-schools her daughter. “I asked some of my family if they wanted to do it, and they said ‘yes.’”
In addition, Wells said, some of her friends said they wanted to participate as well.
“It’s going to be pretty small. This is the first time we’ve ever done anything like it,” she said.
Wells said this will give the children a chance to check out what other kids are making and selling and, hopefully, be inspired for the next time,” she said. “They can also work on their negotiating skills,” referring to trading different items around during the fair.
“It’s just something that is supposed to be fun for the kids,” Wells said.
She said the children get their own money from sales.
“They run their entire booth,” she said. “They make their products. They learn a skill for whatever they are doing, whether it’s woodworking or painting, sewing or crocheting, whatever they are doing.”
Wells said her daughter had so many ideas of things she wanted to make for the fair.
“Let’s stick with maybe one or two and see how much time and resources it takes to make those,” she said. “Time management goes into it, also. You can’t make a hundred different things. You’ve got to have a few ideas and settle on one or two and see how long it takes. There are skills involved with that.”
Staff writer Mark Buffalo can be reached at (501) 399-3676 or mbuffalo@arkansasonline.com.