Designed for independent makers
From first idea to finished sale.
One connected workspace to plan, create, develop, market, sell and grow a handmade business.
Your ideas, products, plans, customers, market days and marketing sit together — so when you reach the next stage, the work you've already done is there waiting for you.
Specialist workspaces are available for candle, home fragrance, skincare, soap and bath & body makers, alongside the shared maker-business tools.
For makers who have outgrown the notebook but don't want to run their business like a corporation.
"Slow craft, recorded well."
The problem
Your maker business shouldn't have to live in twelve different places.
Most of us end up working across
This isn't about being disorganised. It's that the information is spread across too many places, so the journey of one product becomes fragmented — and you end up re-entering the same details every time you move on to the next job.
The connected alternative
Fern Dale Makers Studio keeps ideas, product development, planning, customers, invoices, market days, marketing and review in one place — around the product itself.
A business workspace for makers that connects what you create, what you plan, what you sell and what you learn.
One workspace. One connected journey.
The connected maker journey
Idea, create, plan, sell, learn, grow.
The same loop, whatever you make — and each turn of it starts you off better informed than the last.
Idea
Catch it before it disappears — a sketch, a note, a name.
Create
Develop it into a real product record you can work from.
Plan
Decide what actually needs doing next, and when.
Sell
Take it to a market or launch it, and record what happened.
Learn
See what sold, what didn't and what people responded to.
Grow
Use what you learned to decide the next idea.
Then back round to the next idea — better informed than the last one.
Plan · Create · Grow
Room to think, a plan for the week, and a way forward.
These tools work the same way whether you pour candles, throw mugs, solder earrings or sew bags.
- Today — what's actually happening now
- Week — balance and priorities
- Month — direction and goals
- Quarter — a 90-day view
- Year — the bigger business map
- Diary — Week and Month as working diary pages
Work is grouped the way makers think about it: Make, Develop, Run and Show up.
Concept Sketchbook — where an idea lives before it becomes a product. Catch a quick idea in seconds, or work it up properly.
The Drawing Board — a canvas that never runs out of room. Sketch freehand, add notes and sticky notes, pin inspiration photos.
Maker Products — a straightforward record for the things you make and sell.
Collections — group products into ranges, gift sets and seasonal drops.
Business Growth — your own business measures over a month, quarter or year, including figures you keep elsewhere.
Reflect — honest questions about direction, customers, sales, pricing, workload and review, with small actions you can add to your plan.
Studio Activity — what you've been working on inside the Studio, shown as activity rather than as growth.
Events & Market Day
Markets should tell you more than how much money you took.
Keep taking payments with SumUp, Square, Zettle, Shopify or Etsy — Makers Studio sits alongside those and records what the takings alone can't tell you: what you took, what sold, what came home and whether that market was worth doing again.
Before
- Event name and date
- Products you're taking
- Quantities taken
- Stall fee
- Other costs
- Target and notes
During
- A quick tally on your phone
- Tap +1 as something sells
- Undo when you mis-tap
- Sold and remaining for that event
After
- Units sold and event sales
- Event costs
- Best sellers and the ones that barely sold
- Quantities returned
- Sign-ups and wholesale enquiries
- Footfall, customer fit, would you return
- Notes for next time
Event quantities are event records, not your stock count
"Took 8. Sold 6. Brought home 2." means two came back from that event. It doesn't change what you hold — your stock count lives in your Stock room. Makers Studio is not a till or a payment processor.
Materials, making & money
From "can I even make this?" to "what did I actually keep?"
Cost a product properly, keep a running count of your materials, check a recipe against what you really have, hold it aside, record the make, and let the finished items go onto stock. Then see what the selling left you with.
Your shelves, your materials, costing, "Can I make this?", ordering and suppliers come with every plan. The Home Fragrance and Skincare & Soap workspaces — recipes, testing and their compliance paperwork — are the parts that need their own plan.
Costing you can keep
Materials, packaging, your time and overheads worked out into suggested retail and wholesale prices — saved onto the product so later figures use the one you agreed.
Your shelves
A running count instead of a number you retype: deliveries in, materials used, finished items made. Put items on it one at a time, in your own time.
Can I make this?
Checks a recipe against the free amounts you hold, tells you what's short, and holds materials aside for a planned make. Anything it can't match with certainty is listed, never guessed.
Ordering & deliveries
What's fallen to your reorder level, counting what's already on the way. Write the order, then record the delivery — it goes back on with its lot code, date and cost.
What you keep
Market days, an Etsy sales file and — soon — your own online shop can sit next to the cost you saved, so you can see what's left after materials, packaging and selling costs. Where a cost hasn't been saved, it stays shown as unknown rather than filled in for you.
The rest of running it
The bits that usually live in a notebook and three different apps.
Everything here feeds the rest of the Studio, so a figure you've already entered isn't asked for twice. Nothing is ever sent to anyone on your behalf.
Suppliers
Who you buy from, their lead time and minimum order, and what each one sells you. The same material can sit against several suppliers, with one marked as preferred. A supplier's price is a quote to compare, never a change to a cost you've saved.
Money out
The spending that isn't a material — fees, insurance, mileage, advertising. It's read straight into What you keep and Grow. Market day costs stay on the market day, so there's only ever one place to put them.
Renewals & reminders
Insurance, certificates, assessments, registrations and equipment checks, with review and expiry dates kept apart and an optional repeat. Anything close or past shows in Needs your attention.
Wholesale & stockists
The shops you supply, agreed trade prices, a printable trade list, and orders from draft through held to sent. Stock is only held and only taken off when you say so, and sent orders show in What you keep.
Maker Community
Somewhere to share a product, a guide, a supplier find or a recipe if you want to, and to ask other makers a question. Sharing is always your choice, you pick how others may use it, and the rest of your Studio stays private. Anything shared comes from an independent maker and hasn't been tested, verified or approved by us.
Maker Products
A simple record for the things you make.
For jewellery, ceramics, textiles, art, stationery, woodwork, resin and other handmade products — one straightforward record rather than a formulation system you don't need.
What you can keep on a product
The record isn't the point — the connections are
A Maker Product links through to the rest of your Studio:
- Plan
- Marketing
- Events and market days
- Grow
- Collections
- Concepts
From original to prints
One painting. A whole range of prints behind it.
Joanne paints an original on canvas — a stag in teal, gold and violet. It sells once. The artwork, though, can keep earning: giclée prints in three sizes, mounted and unmounted, greetings cards and a framed edition. Each one needs its own details remembered, and a year later nobody remembers them.
In Makers Studio the original becomes a Maker Product record, and everything needed to reproduce it lives with it — so the next print run is a repeat, not a rediscovery.
The original stays a one-off. The record is what lets you reprint it faithfully, price it properly and take it to the next market.
Sewn by hand
Eye pillows, stitched at the kitchen window.
Elaine sewing a run of eye pillows for Fern Dale Rituals — calico inners, a floral outer cover, and a notebook of measurements beside the machine. That notebook is the bit that usually goes missing.
Every measurement lives in a Maker Product record instead, so the next batch is cut and stitched exactly the same way, whoever is at the machine.
Written down once, repeatable for as long as you keep making them.
One product, one connected journey
An engraved keepsake, from idea to next decision.
Nothing here needs starting again from scratch.
- 1The idea goes into the Concept Sketchbook
- 2You work through the design on the Drawing Board
- 3It becomes a Maker Product record
- 4Development tasks go into your plan
- 5You prepare the launch
- 6You create the marketing (with the Marketing Suite add-on)
- 7You take them to a market and tally what sells
- 8You record what sold, what came home and what people asked about
- 9The pattern shows up in Grow
- 10You decide: make more, change the price, or try a variant
The same journey works for a ceramic mug, a print, a bag or a candle.
Specialist workspaces
Specialist tools where your craft genuinely needs them.
Some crafts carry extra work — formulating, testing and documentation. These workspaces are purpose-built for that work, not generic product templates.
Fern Dale Makers Studio is the Studio as a whole. Inside it are three spaces, each for a different kind of making.
Maker products & crafts
Your Craft
Because no two makers make quite the same thing. This is the flexible part of the Studio for the products and processes that belong to your craft.
Home fragrance & candles
The Scent House
The home of everything scented within the Studio — candles, wax melts, diffusers, room sprays and anything else you make with fragrance.
Cosmetics & soap
The Formulation Room
The Studio's dedicated space for cosmetics and soap — where formulations, batches, PIFs and the records around making them stay connected.
The Scent House
Candles, wax melts, diffusers & sprays
Dedicated workflows for developing and recording home fragrance products. From the substances on your supplier's safety data sheet and the amount of oil you use, it suggests label wording in plain words — warnings, what to do if there's a reaction, harm to aquatic life, disposal and the “Contains” line — so you can check it and copy it across.
The Formulation Room
Formulations, records & documentation
Purpose-built formulation and record-keeping for cosmetic makers, including a dedicated soap workspace. It helps you organise your information — it doesn't approve or certify it.
Fern Dale Makers Studio supports your record-keeping and decision-making. It does not provide legal or regulatory advice and does not guarantee compliance — responsibility for formulation, testing, labelling and compliance stays with you.
Soap workspace
A dedicated workspace for soap makers.
Fern Dale Makers Studio doesn't simply accommodate soap recipes — it includes a purpose-built soap formulation workspace. Develop complete cold process and hot process soap formulations without leaving the Studio.
No more formulating in one piece of software and transferring recipes elsewhere. Everything happens in one connected workflow.
Customers
Keep retail and wholesale contacts, their details and their history in one place — including the invoices raised against them.
Invoices
Create branded invoices with your own line items and payment status, then export or share them. It isn't accounting software and it doesn't take payments for you.
Marketing Suite · optional add-on
Made it. Now help people notice it.
An optional add-on — £9.99/month or £99/year, available with any base plan. Not included in the base prices, and not part of the free trial — it is charged from the day you add it.
The Marketing Suite doesn't begin with a blank AI prompt. It uses the information already held in your Studio — including your Maker Products, and your specialist product records where you have them — so you can move from making the product to talking about it without starting again.
One connected run: group products into a collection, plan the campaign and launch runway, write the content, then keep and repurpose what worked.
Brand voice
Paste examples of your own writing and the Studio learns your tone, rhythm and phrasing.
Launch planner & marketing calendar
Pick a launch date and get a dated runway of teasers, shoots, launch-day posts and follow-up.
Copy Studio, social & Email Studio
Product descriptions, captions, reel scripts and email sequences written from your records.
Photography planner
Phone-friendly shot lists with framing, styling and prep so shoot day is already decided.
Content bank & collections
Keep what worked, tag your evergreen pieces, and turn one good post into a week of content.
Claims check
Wording is checked for medical, absolute-safety and vague environmental claims before you post.
Your formulation records stay in the Studio
The Marketing Suite does not read formulation percentages, weights, ratios, base levels, manufacturing methods, batch data, supplier costs or internal formulation notes into its AI requests. Instead, it builds a restricted product brief from approved product and ingredient information — your product details, the ingredient types, functions and characteristics recorded in your Ingredient Library, packaging, size, how the product is used and the brand voice you've set.
Text you deliberately type or paste into AI-enabled fields is sent as written, so keep confidential recipe information out of those fields. You can also exclude any individual ingredient from the Marketing Suite. Exactly what is and isn't included is listed in our Privacy & data notice.
The Studio helps you write and plan. It doesn't make business or compliance decisions for you.
Grow
See more than how busy you've been.
Grow keeps three things side by side: what changed in your business, what you were working on at the time, and what you think helped.
Business Growth
Your own measures for a month, quarter or year — including figures you keep outside the Studio.
- Event sales and event costs
- Items sold
- Strongest events
- Customers
- Audience and marketing measures you track yourself
Reflect
Honest questions across ten areas of running a maker business, with practical guidance and small next actions you can add straight to your plan. No jargon, no growth-hacking.
Studio Activity
What you've been working on: maker products added, products in development, testing, making, planning and marketing activity, and workload.
Shown as activity, not as proof of growth — the Studio shows you what happened alongside what changed, and leaves the conclusions to you.
Who it's for
Shared tools where makers share the same business problems. Specialist tools where their craft genuinely requires them.
…and other independent makers.
What it doesn't try to replace.
You may already sell through Etsy or your own shop, and take payments with SumUp, Square or Zettle, alongside your accounting software. That's fine — keep them. Fern Dale Makers Studio keeps the making side: what it costs, what materials you hold, what you can make today, and what the selling left you. Your Etsy sales file can be brought in, and connecting your own online shop is coming.
It is not a till or POS system, a payment processor, a warehouse system, or accounting or tax software.
Meet the maker
Hi, I'm Kathryn — founder of Fern Dale Rituals and the maker behind Fern Dale Makers Studio.
I've always been someone who makes things — including, many years ago, a very wonky candle I proudly made for my Nanna.
After years of struggling with my own skin, I began looking more closely at what I was using and started making skincare for myself. I shared what I made with family and friends, and little by little, Fern Dale grew from there.
I still work full-time in a demanding role, and making gives me a completely different space to switch off and create. It's genuinely my happy place.
As Fern Dale grew, I found the same problem many makers do: ideas in one place, product records somewhere else, launch planning elsewhere again, market notes in a notebook, and a constant effort to remember what needed doing next.
Fern Dale Makers Studio grew from wanting those different parts of a maker business to actually connect.
It began with the specialist candle, home fragrance and skincare workflows I needed myself — and now the Studio also supports the wider business journey shared by independent makers.
More than software
A place to grow as a maker.
Fern Dale Makers Studio offers practical prompts, checklists and reflections where you need them — quietly available as you work, never in the way.
Your data stays yours.
Fern Dale Makers Studio is not a closed system. The records you create — products, plans, batches, testing notes, event records and documentation — can be exported, so you always retain ownership of your information.
You're never locked in. You're supported.
A beautifully crafted workspace, built specifically for independent makers.
Designed to support the way makers actually work — not how software thinks they should.
Pricing
Choose the workspace you actually need.
Every plan starts with a free 7-day trial, and includes the shared maker-business tools. Add a specialist workspace if your craft needs one — and the Marketing Suite separately if you want help with the marketing side. The Marketing Suite is not part of the free trial.
For makers who want the shared business workspace.
- Plan
- Create
- Maker Products
- Events / Market Day
- Grow
- Customers
- Invoices
- Shared maker tools
Everything in Maker, plus:
- Specialist Home Fragrance workspace
- Candle, wax melt, diffuser and room spray records
- Burn and product testing
- Batch records and launch sign-off
Everything in Maker, plus:
- Specialist Skincare / Soap / Bath & Body workspace
- Cosmetic formulations and Soap Workspace
- PIFs, batch and ingredient records
- Allergen calculations and stability testing
Marketing Suite
£9.99 per month, or £99/year
Available with any base plan. Not included in the base prices, and never free — it is not part of the 7-day trial and is charged from the day you add it.
Every plan begins with a free 7-day trial, taken once per account — your first payment falls due when the trial ends, and cancelling before then costs nothing. You choose your plan when you join, and you can change it later. Annual billing is charged as one yearly payment.
Your ideas, products, plans, markets and next steps — finally connected.
Free 7-day trial, then plans from £6.99/month or £69/year. Optional Marketing Suite add-on £9.99/month or £99/year — not part of the trial.