Everything You Need to Know About Starting a Craft Night

After getting my 4th email – just this week alone – about our monthly Craft Night, I thought perhaps it would be a good idea to devote an entire post to answer these FAQs;). By no means am I complaining – I love the idea that my girlfriends and I have inspired you all to gather a group of friends together and get your craft on! I just thought since I get asked so often about it, this would be much more efficient than answering the same questions over and over again;) Hope you find this post helpful, and those of you who start your own group, let me know how it turns out!

1. Is it at your house each month, or do you rotate houses depending on whose month it is to “host”?

We do it at my house primarily. Once we had it at someone else’s, because we were all dying to see her new remodeled kitchen, but other than that, we pretty much are here. It kinda boils down to you and your friends’ situations. It’s worked out well here, because we have the basement two floors below our kids’ bedrooms, and it has a door, so we can be as loud as we want and not have to worry about a thing. (And we DO get loud! lol). Everyone comes over at 7:30, we chat and hang around the kitchen till about 8, then we go downstairs and get workin’. Usually wraps up between 10 and 11, although we have been known to hang till 1 a.m., long after the craft is done!

2. Do you purchase and provide all the craft supplies for each person and they pay you, or does each person bring their own supplies?

We usually alternate the last Wednesday and Thursday of the month. Some ladies have obligations on Wednesdays (like evening shifts at work, etc), and some have Thursday conflicts. By alternating, it makes it so that the same girl(s) never have to miss it every single time and can at least make it every other month. There are exceptions, like we have one late November, then don’t reconvene until January, since December is such a crazy month. And of course, if the majority can’t make that last Wednesday or Thursday, we figure something else out.

4. How do you decide on what craft to do?

Not long after our Craft Night, I send out an email to the group, with about 5 ideas for our next one. I think about the upcoming season, holidays, etc. For example, in October, we painted pumpkins. In June, we made patriotic flags for The 4th of July. It helps to come up with something when there’s a theme you’re thinking of. We used to all just pick one that the consensus agreed on, but lately, we’ve just been making whichever one is our individual favorite. Makes it kinda fun, that we can all see different crafts, too! Every once in a while I’ll think of something original to include, but for the most part I just search through my Pinterest boards and find some things that would be good Craft Night ideas. And by good, I mean:

a) relatively easy to do (we do a lot of gabbing…and eating…and drinking while we craft – don’t want anything making us concentrate too hard – lol!)
b) inexpensive (usually everything we make is under $10. $15 max)
c) not something that will take too long.
d) not something that needs to be spray painted/stained/anything that we’d need ventilation and lots of drying time for

5. How do you decide who brings food, wine, etc?

We don’t really have a set schedule on this one. Once we get close to the date, we start going back and forth on the email thread, and some chime in they’re bringing red wine, another will say white, another will say she’s trying out a new dessert recipe, others will say they’re bringing an appetizer. We’re NEVER short on food and drinks;)

6. How did the group form?

It was the brainchild of one of my friends, Amy! She emailed me, asking if I thought it sounded like a fun idea, for a group of girlfriends to get together, come to my house, and we could all make something together. We went back and forth in an email, concocting a list of friends – old and new – that we thought would be interested in something like this. To our surprise, a lot of them loved the idea! (I say ‘to our surprise,’ because not too much earlier than this, Amy and I tried to get a book club together, and weren’t as successful;) Had no idea at the time I would end up blogging about it – in fact, I ended up taking a few pictures that night and asking them if they minded if I wrote a post about it. They were all game for it, and it turned into a monthly post for the blog, resonating with a TON of you! It’s been amazing!

7. How many ladies participate?

Our group consists of 14 of us. I’d love to invite more, but our basement just doesn’t have the room. Then again, it is nice not to have a huge number, because you feel like you can talk to everyone more when it’s not a group of 30! There have been nights when everyone has been there, and nights where at the last minute husbands had to fly out of town for business, or kids got sick – things come up – and the group is no more than 5, and both are equally fun;) So make it as big or small as you want – and your house can contain!

Well, I think I covered all the questions I’ve been getting about our popular Girls Craft Night! If not, leave a comment or Facebook me and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

Have lots of fun and hope you all enjoy it as much as we do!

{P.S. In case you missed any Craft Night posts, check out the latest one – Washi Tape Projects – at the bottom of the post is the entire list, with link ups to each one!}