One local business owner is looking to expand her empire even further after establishing herself as the go-to for everything mushrooms in Grande Prairie.
10-year-old Royal Young, better known as Grande Prairie’s “Little Mushroom Girl,” says she got started in the mushroom-themed craft market over the summer, and now she’s ready to pass along her knowledge to her fellow young crafters in GP, with plans to host classes and craft nights out of her home studio.
“In the summer, my mom wanted to get crafts to do while my dad was at work, and she found the mushrooms, and then I painted them, and she said I should do a business with them,” she says. “It’s for eight plus and it’s geared towards girls, but boys are also welcome.”
Royal’s mom, Natasha, says after a few months of market appearances, her daughter is looking for a consistent group of young crafters to teach them some “tricks of the trade,” all while providing the city’s youth with a comfortable place to make friends.
“One of the things we thought about when we started this is that it would be good for kids who just moved here and stuff like that to come and meet a bunch of girls or boys their age,” she says. “She has a shop that she’s got turned into a craft room, it’s big enough to host maybe 12 to 15 kids at a time.”
“She would like to host events a couple of times a week, and maybe even host birthday parties, things like that, but we kind of want to start out slow, get a feel out there, see what days work, what crafts work, so we just need to iron out all the details before she jumps in too hard.”
The addition of classes and craft nights does not mark the end of Royal’s mushroom empire, however. Natasha says her daughter’s “go-getter” attitude, combined with all of her success, means the young entrepreneur has every intention to continue crafting and filling orders.
“We just always loved crafting and stuff like that, and we’re always looking for something new to do, and Royal’s quite a friendly go-getter kind of girl, so we craft quite a bit and put it all together, and it doesn’t hurt that she’s making a bit of extra cash for herself,” she says. “We’re very proud of her, she works very very hard, there have been nights preparing for markets where she’s up painting on school nights until eleven, twelve o’clock at night, painting mushrooms and making little keychains.”
Signing up for classes and crafting nights, along with placing orders, is all done through Royal’s Facebook page- “Everything Royal.”
