Yard art is built from two piles: the scrap you got for nothing and the new bar stock you didn't. A garden heron is rebar legs, a scrap-sheet body, a foot of new round bar — plus gas, discs, and the primer-and-enamel finish that survives a sprinkler. MadeKeeper keeps both piles honest, so 'basically free to make' becomes an actual number.
The app is live. Free during the pilot. Founding rate $19/mo, locked for life.
No card to start. Use it free through the pilot, and lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.
Say you weld a 4-foot scrap heron:
At $145 at the spring market you keep $108.50 before fees — and because the scrap logged at zero, that margin is true, not a story you tell yourself about the pile behind the shop.
Materials and true cost per piece, products (in bulk or one-of-a-kind), sales that drain stock, the was-this-fair-worth-it event math, mileage, expenses, and the year-end tax packet — all in the app today. Etsy and Square sync, your own storefront, a booth card reader, and shipping labels are building, shaped with founding makers. Nothing above describes a feature that doesn't exist without saying so. See the full live-vs-building list →
Because the build's other costs — new steel, gas, discs, enamel — are real, and because a season of sales against honest costs tells you which designs earn their weld time. Zero is a cost basis too; it just needs to be written down.
A commissioned piece logs with its deposit, its materials from both piles, and its hours. When the pond heron ships, you'll know what it truly paid — usually more per hour than the market table, but now you'll know by how much.
Batch them — a dozen disc-blade flowers log as one run, costed each. The small stakes are the impulse row that pays the booth fee while the big pieces draw the crowd.
The app is live and free during the pilot. Lock the $19/mo founding rate for as long as you stay.