Art & Craft Supplies

Thread, linen and lace for the national dress:

have a market of their own in Panama. The needlework on the dress is done on fine linen lawn, while voile is the cheaper cloth used to build the body of a white gala dress. The thread is DMC stranded cotton, sold by the box in a single shade, so a seamstress counts her boxes colour by colour before she sets out. Shop-bought lace serves most dresses, but the hand-woven edgings on the gala dress of Los Santos come off a bobbin-lace pillow: a padded cylinder once built around a milk tin and now usually around a length of PVC pipe, worked with dozens of wooden bobbins. Whoever orders that lace normally hands the lacemaker the thread, which is why opened boxes in the right shades are worth more than they look. Old lace or a finished dress kept as an heirloom is a different kind of object and sits with antiques.

Paint, paper and markers by grade rather than brand:

the label tells you more than the logo. Winsor & Newton’s Cotman watercolours are the student line, with less pigment than the artist range from the same maker, so a cheap-looking Cotman set may be priced exactly right. With watercolour the paper is the bigger split: cotton paper takes repeated washes and lifting, while wood-pulp paper pills and cockles under the same water. Copic alcohol markers can be refilled and fitted with new nibs, so a set that looks tired still has life in it, whereas most cheaper markers are finished once they dry out.

Cricut and Silhouette cutters and the vinyl they cut:

are the most expensive thing in most craft rooms, and here they earn their keep on birthday banners, cake toppers, stickers and heat-transfer vinyl for team and school-event shirts as often as on cards. A new Cricut or Silhouette runs from about $250 for a basic machine that handles vinyl and card to around $500 for one that also cuts fabric and thicker stock. A used one goes for less mainly because a newer generation is always on the shelf, and because mats, blades and blade housings wear out and need replacing. One handed over with a sharp blade and mats that still grip sits much closer to the new price than a bare machine.

Test cuts, yellowed hardener and a firm lace pillow:

those three tell you whether a used piece is worth taking home. Ask for a test cut on vinyl and watch the carriage run its full width without grinding, and if the mat no longer holds a sheet of paper, plan on buying a new one. Epoxy resin hardener yellows in the bottle once it has been open for a while. It still cures, but it tints a clear pour, so ask when the kit was opened and hold the hardener against white paper. On a lace pillow the cushion should hold pins upright and the bobbins should be smooth, with no splinters to snag fine thread. Check the pins as well: ordinary steel ones rust and stain white work, which is why older lacemakers pinned their lace with orange-tree thorns.

Leftover DMC boxes, half-finished projects and a cutter with its mats:

sell on how clearly a buyer can see what is there. Photograph thread with the shade numbers readable and say which boxes have been opened. List a cutter with its model, the blades and mats included and the original power cord, and say whether it has cut fabric or only paper and vinyl. A half-worked panel for a national dress or a started strip of bobbin lace should be described as exactly that, with the pattern if you still have it. Keep anything that is not a craft supply apart: a ukulele or keyboard that surfaces in the same spare-room clear-out belongs in music and instruments, where its buyers look. A seamstress coming from Las Tablas for your DMC boxes will match shades against her colour card in daylight, so lay them out by a window rather than under a fluorescent tube.