September 4, 2002
Mulder sisters crafty entrepreneurs
Traverse City girls sell hand-made wares at Wheatland Music Festival
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
Tara, Celia and Hannah Mulder are no slouches in the entrepreneurial department.
The three sisters, ages 11-15, are heading off to the 29th Annual Wheatland Music Festival in Remus this weekend to sell home-made crafts ranging from beaded jewelry and tie-dye clothing to scented candles in decorated flower pots.
After spending part of their summer vacation making up their stock, they are ready to set up shop and have some fun. As for the profits, the girls can find many ways to spend them.
"We always buy a bunch of stuff from the other kids at Wheatland," said Tara, 15, a tenth grade student at Traverse City West High School.
Some of the money they make each summer is earmarked for savings or paying back their parents, Craig and Kathi, for money advanced for craft supplies. They have also used their Wheatland earnings for treats, school clothes or summer classes at NMC's College for Kids.
The Wheatland Music Festival has been a Mulder family tradition for the past 11 years, often turning into a weekend camp-out with members of their extended family. The three-day festival features music acts from around the country, draws 20,000 attendees and campers and includes activities for all ages.
Four years ago, Tara started selling crafts when she received a postcard from festival organizers inviting kids to bring items for sale.
"We got there and all my stuff sold within in the first hour," recalled Tara, who has been making beaded jewelry for years. "I was there with my cousin and we just decided to make jewelry all weekend."
"I made a couple of hundred dollars and decided to do it the next year," she said.
With the family already heavily into crafts of all sorts, her sisters also realized this was a great way to make some money doing something they loved. So the tie-dying began in earnest as first Celia and then Hannah a few years later began making unique T-shirts and onesies. This year Hannah is hand-painting the festival's name on many of her items.
"I found out last year that kids' shirts sell best and tank tops for women also sell because it is so hot there," said Hannah, a sixth- grade student at Willow Hill Elementary School.
This year, Celia is making scented candles and covering terra-cotta pots with stones to hold them. She likes to try new crafts for sale each year and melted, scented and molded the wax herself before affixing beach stones, one by one, to the pots.
"We are too busy to do this during the school year," said Celia, 14.
Tara specializes in beadwork and has made wire-wrapped bead necklaces and decorated bottles with beads for sale this year. She also takes orders for her popular macram‚ hemp necklaces, which always sell out the first day. As she continually expands her repertoire and skills, she keeps her craft fresh.
"There are a lot of different aspects of beading so it stays interesting," Tara said. "I just keep learning. Most of the stuff I do is pretty simple, it is just keeping up with a pattern."
A committee at Wheatland checks out the crafts before approving them for sale, to ensure that they are indeed homemade by the kids. Except for this check, the arrangement for youth vendors is informal: the kids grab a table in a designated tent and display the stuff for as long as they like. They handle the money and the inventory themselves.
"People sell all kinds of things there," said Tara, who said the crafters get ideas from one another.
While the Mulder girls have had many successes with their wares, sometimes things do not go as planned. Last summer, Celia used a velvet embossing kit she received as a Christmas gift a few years ago to make a number of pillows for the festival.
"The pillows did not do as well," she said, though her unsold stock still found a use: "I gave the remainder away as Christmas gifts."