Charged $75 for an 8x10 at the fall craft fair and the woman next to me had hers at $250

I did a small church craft fair last Saturday, six hours at a folding table, and I priced my 8x10s at $75 because that's what I've always done and I didn't want to be the one nobody could afford. Sold four. Felt good about it until I walked the room and saw a woman two aisles over with 8x10 acrylics marked $250, and she sold three while I was standing there.

I know her work wasn't better than mine. Different, but not better. The difference was she wrote $250 on the tag without flinching and I've been writing $75 for so long I've stopped seeing it as a number I chose.

What kills me is the math afterward. $75 minus the $18 canvas and a frame I got on clearance for $11 and the table fee split across what I sold, and I'm under $40 for something that took me two evenings. My 11 year old asked if I made "a lot" and I said "some" and changed the subject.

I think I'm scared to raise it because if nobody buys at $120 I'll have to admit the $75 wasn't the reason people were buying. Not sure I want to learn that yet.

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Elin Holm·1h

The acrylic woman is a bit of a red herring, I think. Paint on canvas has a price floor in people's heads that paper doesn't, so she could charge $250 partly because nobody at that fair expected acrylics to be cheap. You'd be fighting a different assumption entirely.

That said, you're right that $75 stopped being a choice and became a habit. Which is a real thing and worth fixing. I'd just fix it by the work, not by her tag. What goes into the 8x10, how long, what the paper cost you, what you'd be content to let it go for. If the answer is $75 then fine, but then you'd know it instead of just having always done it.

Mateo Serrano·58m

The canvas/paper thing is real but I think it's doing less work here than you'd think. I've sold handbuilt pieces next to people selling slipcast mugs at twice my price and nobody blinked, and the material was not what moved them. The tag does most of the talking before anyone gets close enough to even know what it is.

Where I agree hard is the cost-it-out part. Sit down with the actual hours and the paper and see what number comes out. Mine came out ugly the first time and I ignored it for six months anyway.

Karen WesselOP·40m

Ha, the paper part is fair, except mine were on canvas too. Same room, same category, same size. So the assumption wasn't doing as much work as I wanted it to, which is a little uncomfortable to admit.

The math part I can actually do. Roughly three hours on an 8x10, canvas and paint maybe twelve bucks, and I'd have been fine letting them go at sixty. So $75 wasn't even a generous number, it was just the number I got used to. Sitting down with that this week and writing it on an index card to tape inside the lid of my box, so I have to look at it at the next fair.

Inês Costa·2h

The number on the tag is a decision, not a fact, and it sounds like you already know that. But I would not take the acrylic woman as proof either. Acrylics read as painting to a craft fair crowd, and people carry a different budget in their head for painting than for a print. So part of what she got was category, not just nerve.

Still, four sales at $75 tells you something too: your work is wanted, which is more than a lot of tables can say. Maybe the honest move is to try the price on a small run and see how it sits in your stomach, rather than deciding all at once that you were wrong for years.

Karen WesselOP·1h

Mine were acrylics on canvas too, that's the part that stings. Same category, same room. But I hear you on the small run idea, five pieces at a higher tag next time and see if I flinch at the table. Honestly the flinching might be the real thing I need to practice.