Setting Up A Scrapbooking Crop

Setting up a scrapbooking crop can allow you to share your ideas with others, gain inspiration for yourself and create a circle of friends with one brilliant hobby in common.

If you are already part of a group of friends who enjoy scrapbooking, an easy way of setting up a crop is to host it at your house. Just lay out some drinks and nibbles and invite your friends over for a day or evening of scrapping. This will cut out many of the costs otherwise involved when setting up a crop. To save even more, rotate the host house among your friends. It also spreads around the delights of hosting among friends who enjoy it.

If you don’t have the room to host at your own house or you would like to invite others from the community who you don’t know as well, consider another venue. Community halls, church fellowship halls and local schools are all options worth a look. However, there are other issues that will need to be weighed when choosing a venue in addition to the cost of hiring the room:

Everyone will need to travel to your venue – either by car or public transport, so ensure that there’s adequate parking and that it’s accessible via public transport. As for the room itself, if you are going to be there for more than a couple of hours, ensure that you have access to toilets and a kitchen. Most will have them…but ensure that they’re unlocked and that you have permission to use them (for instance, if you are meeting at a school). Are there tables and chairs provided? Who’s responsible for set up and tear down?

In addition to the cost of the room and refreshment, if you’re hosting classes, keep in mind the cost of class materials. You’ll have to recoup all these costs through admission fees. And if your price is too high, you won’t be able to attract new people and might have to seek out a more affordable venue, etc. There’s no point in hosting a crop if you have to bear the financial burden by yourself.

The final thing to decide is what you’ll do at your crop. Are you just going to invite people to bring in their own projects…or are you going to put on some type of class…or possibly a mixture of both? In order to attract the largest number of people and have them leave the crop satisfied with their investment of time and money, you may want to talk to potential attendees ahead of time and see what they’d hope to get out of the event.