Start a Crafting Group

I usually make Christmas ornaments every year and give them out as gifts to a select few friends and family. 

And now some of my sisters and I and other family and friends also have an ornament exchange.

To me, it's wonderful to see all the talent and hard work put into each home-crafted ornament and I cherish them as keepsakes throughout the years.

My daughter Alexis and I, my son's girlfriend Jennica and a couple of our friends decided to start a Crafting Group meet-up.

Our Crafting Group is for making Christmas ornaments but we also meet for many other craft projects.  The group could also be for lessons or instructions to learn a new craft!

Everyone brings their own supplies for crafting

For our group meet up for making Christmas ornaments, we set the dates and and a block of time, (usually around 2 - 4 hours) and start meeting in November. The number of meet-ups depends on everyone's schedules and not everyone comes to every meeting. We can usually get 3 or 5 meetings arranged before it's time to mail out all the Christmas boxes. 

And it's OK to work on the ornaments outside of our crafting group if extra time is needed to complete your work.

For our meet-ups, everyone brings food or snacks to share and the host (me) provides the plates, cups and napkins.

We have snacks first before starting on our individual crafts or ornaments.

One of our snacks, yum! There is usually lots of food at each meeting!

We wanted a name for our group and came up with quite a few fun ones, but "Trophy Wives Crafting Circle" submitted by our friend Heidi won.  Believe me, we don't see ourselves as "trophy wives" and many in the group are not even married, (only two of us are), we don't frequent the salon or whatever else "trophy wives" may do,  so for us the name is funny so we kept it!

Gift bags ready for our end of the season group party

If you have a crafting group you will need a large area and tables to work on. I always cover my dining room table with a large plastic-coated table cover for protection, but you may just want to use folding tables instead.

Our flower painting group meet-up

Some years we have discussions while crafting about what's going on in our lives or with the kids or current events. It has become a really relaxing couple of hours and great to visit with these women while also finishing our Christmas ornaments or other crafts.

To make it fun we had an “Ugly Christmas Sweater” meet-up which was hilarious, but another theme would work too. It's a way to pull everyone into participating in the group.

Our Ugly Christmas Sweater Day, I am second from the left, yikes!

Some groups collect a small fee at the beginning of each meet-up, a dollar or two to give to a group selected charity in December. You could choose to buy a book for your local library, purchase supplies for a local animal shelter, or give gifts to a needy family.

Our last meeting is always in December for our group's Christmas party. We have a gift bag set up for each member and everyone brings little gifts, candy, chocolates, or whatever they wish to put into gift bags, plus an ornament. Our husbands or partners are also invited to our Crafting Group Christmas Party and we all dress up.

My daughter Alexis at our group Christmas Party.
(she's in ugly green sweater in pic above, haha)

Having fun (and wine) at our Crafting Group's Christmas Party!  (Heidi, me, Alexis and Jennica)

I hope you decide to start your own crafting group, it's lots of fun and a really great way to stay in touch with family and friends. There is something warm and inviting about crafting together and crafting together goes back centuries. There is nothing like making something with your own two hands and sharing it with the ones you love.

Elizabeth

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