Eight young entrepreneurs showed their creativity at the art gallery park in Bundaberg on Friday evening when they held the Young Creators Market.
The twilight market was part of this year’s Emerge Exhibition, which shines a light on the region’s talented young people.
There was a variety of artwork, photography, cross stitch and handmade jewellery from the all-girl stallholders, some of whom learnt how to make their goods from watching YouTube.
Hand-crafted jewellery sold fast
Morgan Everett from Meco Collection first designed and made jewellery from polymer clay at the age of 12 before branching into beautiful resin-set jewellery and accessories about a year ago.
The brightly coloured earrings are made from pressed flowers, shells or diamontes which Morgan buys online and sets in resin in a variety of styles, fashioned to match every outfit.
For the Bundaberg Regional Council multimedia trainee, the Young Creators Market was an opportunity to help promote her business in the community, and the earrings proved popular as she sold five pairs in the first 10 minutes.
Morgan said she has sold a lot of her Meco Collection pieces online through Depop, Facebook and Instagram.
The 19-year-old said she was inspired to make earrings by her passion for art and although she started with over-baked clay the resin proved very popular within the Bundaberg Region.
“The resin came not long after the clay where I was watching tutorials on YouTube and then it just kept going!” Morgan said.
“I just love creating something unique that you can add to different outfits and I am open to custom orders.”
Scrunchies make a comeback
Laura Helbig ,16, from Laura’s Scrunchies was never much of a sewer, but when she found a hole in the market for the neat hair accessory, a scrunchie, she jumped at the opportunity to take advantage of it locally.
“It started as a hobby, when I was making scrunchies for myself and other people saw them and wanted to buy, so I started sewing,” Laura said.
“I was getting headaches from hair ties and had read that scrunchies were better for your hair, but I couldn’t find any that weren’t plain in store, so I found a YouTube tutorial and went from there.”
Laura said her mother said scrunchies were popular when she was a young girl and she was excited they had made a return in fashion.
“My designs change all the time as it depends what type of fabric I can get,” Laura said.
“I like the bumblebee and everyone else seems to love it also!”
Laura is a big believer in helping others and said half the proceeds went to the charity, Chinese Orphan Assistance Team (COAT), which helps disabled orphans in China.
The Year 12 Shalom College student said she started making the scrunchies a year ago after she couldn’t find patterns she liked and the mini-business started to boom.
“It takes me about five minutes to make a scrunchie,” Laura said.
“We have raised over $1700 for the charity, selling the scrunchies through school and Shalom Markets.”
Pet photography popular at Young Creators Market
As the “biggest dog lover in the world” Emma Bayer was at the Young Creator’s Market promoting her business of Dreaming Pet Photography.
The 25-year-old said not many people realised there was a local photography business that specialised in pet photography, so the market was ideal to help spread the word.
“I had a Border Collie cross cattle dog named Lady and she was almost 12 years old when she got really sick all of a sudden and passed away,” Emma said.
“And as you do when you’re grieving you look at photos and I realised I had none with her, besides the selfies off my phone, so as I have always had a love for photography I thought I would give everybody the chance to get photos with their dogs before they pass away.”
Emma said people in the Bundaberg Region had a strong love for their pets and her business did quite well.
“I can take photos of just the pets or of people with their pets, it depends on the human to what we do,” she said.
“The thing I get from everybody is that their dog will never sit still for a photo and they are normally right – it takes a bit or work and a few treats to get photos like these.”
The young entrepreneur said she started with dog photography, but had now spread her lens to capture cows, lizards and of course cats.
- Earlier report: Twilight market to highlight young creators
