Craft Night {yarn wrapped ornaments}

Another Craft Night went off without a hitch. Word travels fast and Theresa was gracious enough to host our largest craft night yet complete with some amazing details.

Below is a sampling of the crafts that were completed - the theme was ornaments, but it is always an option to bring something outside the theme:

salt dough ornaments

yarn stars

Mod Podged monograms

clay stamped ornaments

pine cone elves

felt Christmas trees

yarn-wrapped bottles

I decided on monograms and stars and worked with two of my favorite crafting mediums: Mod Podge and yarn (not at the same time, of course). The yarn-wrapped ornaments {tutorial here} took the prize as my favorites, both because they were easy-peasy and because I love their warm and fuzzy feel.

The way women's eyes light up when you talk about craft night makes me realize that most of us are craft night deprived. I'm not sure if it's the actual crafting we are after, or the community, laughter and the sense of actually, physically accomplishing something in this virtual, high-tech world.

If you'd like to try your hand at starting up a craft night, here are our tips:

• Pick a craft or a theme. Either way works - you can pick an actual craft complete with a supply list if you have a lot of first-time crafters who would appreciate the extra guidance -or- you can pick a theme (yarn, ornaments, Mod Podge, etc.) if you want to give people a little more freedom.
• Pick a date. Choose a day that easy to remember - the first Monday of the month, for example. We start at 8pm which allows most of us to help our husbands get the kids to bed before we leave...happy husbands don't seem to mind craft night :)
• Invite your guests. You can start small and see who shows up if it's overwhelming to think about a big group in your house. Or take the invite-everyone-you-know approach and sit back and watch your worlds collide. Either way, find an easy-to-use on-line invite system - we use Facebook and set the Event settings to Invite-Only to keep the Wall more private.
• Start a group Pinterest board. Create a new board on Pinterest (select Me + Contributors to allow others to post to it) and add your guests' names. This is a fun way to collaborate leading up to the event.
• Make a snackage plan. The hostess usually takes care of the drinks, everyone else brings a snack to share. Keep it simple. 
• Rotate hostess duties. After each craft night, follow-up with your friends and see who would like to host the next craft night. It's important to keep the ball rolling and it's nice to have a variety of hostesses - it keeps things fresh and spreads out the responsibilities.

Consider yourself warned: women will show up in droves. Craft on!

{Craft Night: Let's Get Clippy}

{Craft Night: numero dos!}