This could be salvageable you know.
The first thing any self-employed person needs to do is to work out their costs that they have to pay in order to provide the service and to calculate their break even point. If it costs you £50 for the items you need for that event (for instance), then you need to pass that on to your customer. Anything you earn after that is your profit.
£50 to recoup your expenses and break even.
You then add on how much you want to earn as a wage, so say £20 for an hour's work. You therefore have to charge your customer the £50 to cover your costs, plus what you want to earn per hour. For a three-hour party, that should be £110 and you have been only charging £60; way less than what you should have been charging.
Your costs were £50 and your income is £60 giving you a net £10 profit. Out of that £10 per party you then also have to pay insurance, fuel, advertising, stationery, phone, IT, you name it.
I think what you've been doing is not taking into account how much you have to spend before you break even.
Hopefully this will go some way to explaining why this experience has been so disappointing and futile.