How to Host an At-Home Party with Your Silhouette or Cricut

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Yesterday I talked about hosting workshops using your Silhouette Cameo or Cricut. Today, we are going to explore a similar idea: having in-home parties with your Silhouette or Cricut die cutting machine. If you’ve ever attended a Tupperware, Pampered Chef, Scentsy, Origami Owl, or any other at home party you will probably be familiar with the idea.

Steps to host an in-home party with your die cutting machine:

Before the Party

1. Find a friend who is interested in having the party in their home.
2. With your friend, you both decide what project will be created and choose a date for the party. Like I mentioned in yesterday’s post, one to two hour long parties on weekday evening usually work well for many people. If you are in need of projects ideas – head to Pinterest!
3. You create some basic flyers (its a good idea to offer both email format and hard printed copies) of the project of the night for your friend to distribute, which also details the cost for each participant.
4. Your friend then invites her friends to the party to create the project. It generally works best if your friend collects the payments from each participant before the night of the party and gets them to you beforehand. Cash or checks work well in this case. If you’d prefer to accept credit cards, after an attendee RSVP’s to your friend – you can contact them directly to collect payment via credit card. In my opinion, collecting payments at the party is not a good idea because you will have to pay all the supplies out of pocket. Additionally, you may have people who don’t show up because they haven’t paid anything – leaving you with wasted supplies. Lastly, it is time consuming to collect payments the evening of the party.

At the Party

1. Your friend prepares some refreshments for the party.
2. You arrive before the party to setup and you bring all the supplies for each participant to complete the project of the night. In addition to your machine(s) and project supplies, you may also need to bring tables, chairs, newspaper (to cover tables), and aprons for all participants.
3. You demonstrate each step of the project and attendees create the project alongside you.
4. Attendees are able to leave that evening with a completed project.
5. Be sure to have information available and be ready to book additional in-home parties.
6. Always remember to take photos of everyone with their completed project. They are great for future advertising, and social media.

How do you make money holding in-home parties?

For those familiar with home based party companies, you may know that consultants or representatives make a commission based on the amount of products they sell. With Silhouette or Cricut based in-home parties, you will not be selling anything. Instead, you’ll make money based on the amount that each participant pays to attend the party. Let’s look at an example:

I offer an in-home party and the chosen project is a 12″ by 12″ painted wooden sign. My cost per project is $2.50 for wood, $1.00 for paint, $1.50 for transfer paper, and $0.70 for vinyl. We will add $1 for machine wear and tear, and another $1 for gas mileage. My total cost per project is $7.70. If I charged $25 per attendee, and eight people attended the party, I’d make $200 in attendee fees. If I subtract $77.00 (total cost of supplies for eight projects, plus one demonstration product, plus no charge for the hostess of the party to create an item) that leaves me with $123.00 left as profit – not a bad payrate for a few hours of time.

One last concern is compensation to the hostess who opened her home and invited her friends to the party, as well as served refreshments. I’d suggest two things: 1) Give the hostess the demonstration product you made during the party. 2) Bring samples to the party of other projects that attendees can book for a party in their home. You can then leave these samples with the hostess as a thank you gift.

If home parties are your thing, consider assembling a small team beneath you and could design all the projects and your team could go out and offer the classes. This would allow you to make commissions from your ideas that would be charged to your team members. With a little creativity, you could turn this into a much larger venture than just a few home parties. Tomorrow, we will wrap up our discussion on at-home parties with How to Host a Holiday Market in Your Home.

Christine Schinagl, Cutting for Business

Since 2015, Christine Schinagl has been helping crafters start and run craft businesses through her blog, Cutting for Business. As a Silhouette and Cricut crafter herself, she has a unique take on what works and what doesn’t work in the craft business world. She also teaches a course on creating digital SVG designs, available at How to Design SVGs.

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