Craft Night Party!

To celebrate my new crafting space, I decided to throw a small crafting get together with some coworkers.  As it turned out, “small” turned out to be super small, and it was just myself and one other due to a few different unplanned circumstances… but sometimes those are the best kinds of parties!

When I started thinking about the party, I began thinking about my menu.  The party was planned to take place after work on a Friday night, and there were some dietary concerns to consider too.  I eat primal, and my coworkers are vegetarian and vegan.  There is a bit of overlap between the food needs – the best of which is that they are all focused on natural, healthy foods.  Since it was a craft party, I thought about colour, and I decided the best foods I could possibly serve were fruits and vegetables!  They’re colourful, and they’re primal, vegan, and vegetarian friendly – how could I go wrong?

So, my menu consisted of:

• a platter of fresh berries & grapes, and some green apple slices.  I whipped up a vegetarian/primal friendly dip out of Greek yogurt, maple syrup, vanilla and cinnamon, and a caramel dip made of dates, vanilla, almond milk and water that is friendly to all three diets.

• A fresh cucumber and tomato salad.  This has always been a summer staple in my Italian family, and it is delicious.  It’s just diced (fresh – not canned) tomatoes, cucumber, fresh basil,  onions and then a dressing made up of olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder.  Yum.
• Not pictured, but I also popped some natural popcorn.  Popcorn is one of those things that isn’t really paleo-friendly, but I have to admit, I did cheat a little.  It’s hard to resist!
• For beverages, we had a giant glass jar with fruit-infused water, and two glorious bottles of wine that my coworker, Cheryl, brought (no, we didn’t go through both!)

Of course, I added little labels beside each item so that everyone was able to identify what they wanted/were able to eat.

When it came to the crafting portion of the evening, I wanted to pick things that would be easy for everyone to create, but also things that would turn out nice and would be fun to display.  Bottle Cap magnets were the first thing that came to mind, because they’re quick, easy, fairly trendy right now, and they turn out great.

I happen to save bottle caps every time I drink anything from a glass bottle – and since the centrepieces at my wedding were made of glass coke bottles… I happened to have a lot of bottle caps!  We started by using one-inch circle punches to cut out our images.  I used an vintage magazine to cut out a cute little couple, and some old sheet music for mine.  Cheryl made hers out of a business card.  I added a bit of embellishment, with glitter, rhinestones and beads.  Then we used Mod Podge’s Dimensional Magic to seal them in place.

While we let our magnets dry a bit, we watched a bit of Orange Is The New Black and then began crafting up some cards.   Cheryl made a beautiful “I Love You” card for her man, while I created a little something to mail up to my nephew for his first birthday.  We decided to make use of some of my tools and toys, and picked out some stamps, ink, and embossing powder.   I’m not sure if you can tell in the pictures, but in my card, the word “one” is embossed in red, and in Cheryl’s, the butterfly is embossed with a lovely clear embossing powder, on top of turquoise ink.  Her card turned out really great!

 

In the end, it turned out to be a super fun night of wine and art!  We both had a blast, and came away with a few fun things to display and share.  To recap, here are some of my tips for throwing a craft party:

1. Take into consideration other people’s diets, and plan accordingly.  There is bound to be something for everyone, even if it takes a bit of creative planning.
2. Lay some butcher paper over your surfaces.  It serves as scrap paper, if you want to test out a colour before using it on your project, and it makes for easy cleanup the next day!
3. If you know how to use something that’s unique and interesting – teach others the technique too!

Have you ever thrown a craft party?  What are your best tips?