Jewellery, prints, candles and makes. Presentation sells the piece, so packaging is part of the product.
The kit our builder picks for a typical Handmade and crafts seller. Change the answers to fit yours.
Storage
Holds tubs or boxes floor to ceiling in a small footprint.
Label printer
A compact thermal printer for your first few hundred labels.
Each step in the order you'll need it.
Start with a pocket scale that weighs to the gram, because most handmade parcels are light and the postage band turns on small differences. Add a pack of small jewellery or presentation boxes, tissue paper and a roll of thank-you stickers.
A label printer can wait. Most makers send a handful of orders a week at the start, and a home printer copes with that. Buy one once you’re cutting and taping labels most evenings.
Wrap the piece in tissue, seal it with a sticker and add a handwritten card. That takes under a minute and it’s the part buyers photograph and share.
Earrings and rings go in a small box inside a padded envelope, so they don’t slide to a corner and bend. Candles, ceramics and glass go in a box with paper wrap on every side, with enough padding that nothing moves when you shake it.
Keep fragile wrapping and gift wrapping as two steps, with the protective layer outside the presentation.
Finished stock and raw materials end up in the same drawers unless you separate them. Keep sellable pieces in labelled clear tubs or boxes, one per product line, and keep supplies somewhere else.
Give each listing a short code and write it on the box or bag. At 10pm you can then pick an order by code instead of rummaging through near-identical pieces.
Kit for this step
A small light box gives you clean, even shots of jewellery and small makes on a kitchen table. Take one plain shot, one in the hand or on a model, and one close-up of the finish or texture.
Buyers ask about size more than anything else. Put a coin or a ruler beside the piece in one photo, and state the measurements in the listing.
Kit for this step
Live selling suits makers who can show the process: pouring, stringing or glazing. A phone on a tripod and a clip-on mic are enough to start, with a soft light so the colour reads true.
If you make in batches, list the batch together and say so. Buyers accept a made-to-order wait when you state it plainly in the listing.
At this point packing time starts to compete with making time. Pre-fold boxes and pre-cut tissue in a quiet hour, so packing an order becomes a two-minute job.
A thermal label printer and a postage tool that pulls in orders from your shop save you copying addresses. Order custom stickers or printed tape once your shop name and look have settled.
Kit for this step
Each one costs you money or reviews, and each has a fix.
Complete kits for one kind of seller, costed and laid out.
What most orders like these go by, at today’s published prices. Prices checked 6 October 2026.
Royal Mail Tracked 48 Small ParcelUsual£3.75
Clothing and small boxed items up to 2 kg, with tracking for less than untracked 2nd Class.
Royal Mail 2nd Class Large Letter£1.55 to £2.70
Single cards in a rigid mailer, jewellery and other flat items up to 750 g that fit through a letterbox.
InPost locker to locker, small£1.99
Flat parcels up to 8 cm deep, such as folded clothes, dropped at a locker and collected from one.
Loose glass or ceramics in envelopes. One drop in the sorting office can break them.
Wraps a garment so the buyer opens a neat, cared-for parcel.
One roll covers a few hundred small parcels.
Handmade buyers pay for the story as much as the object. Tissue, a sticker and a card turn a parcel into a gift, and they cost pennies an order.
Most makers ship small, light items in padded envelopes or small boxes. Candles, ceramics and glass need a box with padding on every side.
No. Plain mailers with tissue and a sticker look deliberate. Move to custom printed stickers or tape once you’ve settled on a shop name and a look.
Yes, in the UK. Wrap the jar, box it with padding and keep it upright if you can. Hot weather softens wax, so avoid leaving parcels in a warm car.
Keep it to the materials you’d miss if they weren’t there: a box or mailer, tissue, a sticker and a card. Price your work with packaging included, rather than treating it as an extra.
Usually yes, but some ingredients and liquids have rules. Check the current Royal Mail prohibited and restricted items guide before you list, and seal anything that could leak in its own bag.
Yes for small, shiny pieces, because it softens reflections. Daylight by a window works too, if you shoot at the same time of day so colours stay consistent.
Many makers already wrap every order, so a gift note option costs little extra. Leave the price off the packing slip for gifts.
