My name is Madelyn. I am 10 years old and am in the 5th Grade at Arthur Stanlick Elementary School in Jefferson Township, NJ.
I was very excited to sign up for TREP$. At first I was not sure what I would sell. I had thought of making storage boxes or invent and make a shampoo dispenser to use in the shower, but I thought they would be hard to design and make. My mom had a suncatcher hanging in the window that someone had given to her as a gift. She told me it was made with melted pony beads. We looked up how to make them on the internet and I decided they looked like they would be fun to make.
When I made my prototype we found out that when you melt the pony beads in the oven it really smells bad! The whole house smelled. My mom suggested that I could use a toaster oven out on the deck instead, but we didn’t have one. So my mom posted on Facebook and asked her friends if anyone had an old toaster oven that we could use – and someone was nice enough to give us one for free!
I had a lot of fun making the suncatchers. I used metal cookie cutters and filled them with plastic pony beads and then we baked them in the toaster oven. I was lucky that my mom and aunt had a lot of cookie cutters that they lent me to use. I decided to make holiday themed suncatchers since it was so close to the holidays. We also made a display stand to use on my table at the TREP$ Marketplace so everyone could see my suncatchers hanging up. We recycled some pvc pipe to make it. My mom helped me to cut the pipes to the correct size and then I spray painted it black. I used dollar store shower curtain hooks to attach the suncatchers.
I was very nervous the night of TREP$. I was afraid that no one was going to come to my table and purchase my suncatchers. I was also nervous to talk to all the people I didn’t know. But once the Marketplace started I got a little more confident in myself and started to feel more comfortable talking to people. It helped that my entire family came to support me including my Grandfather, Aunt and Cousins and my friend’s parents came a shopped at my table too. An even though a lot of my peers told me that I was not going to sell out I ignored them and sold all of the 32 suncatchers. A lot of people said to donate all the money, but I decided to save it up. Not for me, but to donate later and collect more money to donate to Charity. I had a lot of fun at TREP$ and hope to do it another year.
