You may be a consultant wanting to interest your customers in coming to more of your events, or equally you may be hosting a crop made up of a group of friends getting together for fun. If you are the Hostess/Consultant, it is always good to have a few ideas up your sleeve to keep people inspired, including yourself!
The beauty of scrapbooking is that each person is making an album that suits them alone. Beginners and more advanced scrappers can comfortably sit in a crop together. Each person will take an idea you give them and make it their own at their own level and in their own style. I am yet to find a wrong way to make a scrapbook page. Encourage your guests along these lines with the aim of making them feel comfortable enough to explore their own tastes, ideas and goals for their albums.
Things to keep in mind
Everyone wants to find their mojo (their artistic muse or inspirational voice) and often you hear scrappers and paper crafters in general saying their mojo has gone on vacation! Coming to scrapbook crops can kick start the mojo in all of us again.
Encourage scrappers to share their ideas, pages, techniques and creations with each other. Be willing (as the Hostess) to be first to share. You can do it informally, leaning across and verbally admiring another person’s work, then showing a page or idea of your own. Or you can be a bit more formal and offer to let people in on your thinking process behind making one of your pages, or explain how you came up with a whole album. Or ask a more experienced scrapper to share some of their work and thinking about these same things.
You may just see a light bulb go off in someone’s mind as you speak! That is their mojo returning from vacation!
When you can see people are inspired it takes very little else for them to enjoy the day. You certainly can add value to the event however with the following inspirational concepts.
Three Inspiring Ideas
- Idea: Have a series of Charity Crops throughout the year! Do you support a charity or have a cause you would like to promote? One of my friends fund raises for breast cancer research. She goes to the Breast Cancer Awareness website for inspiration about how to crop a page. You could do the same with your own charity or passion. Most charities have websites these days and you can get a feel for their theme quite easily.
Here are some ideas for how to use your charity or passion to inspire yourself and your scrappers:
- Pick the theme colour of your charity and challenge your croppers to scrap in tones or shades of it on the day. For example, for breast cancer awareness, the colour is pink. Ask people to make a layout with a pink ribbon on it, or pink flowers or rhinestones, or all three.
- Encourage people to bring along a photo of someone they love or admire who has had the condition you are trying to raise awareness about. You may not have considered scrapping about your friends or relatives who have been touched by cancer, for example, but you may be very glad you were encouraged to make pages about them
- Do something fun around the theme of your charity. For example, we ‘scrapped a bra’ this year for one of my friend’s events. We each chose a favourite bra (or bought a new one just for the occasion!) and decorated it in ribbons, lace, beads, flowers, feathers, stitching, Cuttlebugged felt cutouts, iron on embroidered patches and any other embellishments we could think of. Some of the finished items were wearable and some were not, but we all felt inspired to use our scrapping supplies in new ways afterward
- Encourage scrappers to make a greeting card to cheer someone or encourage that person, then to actually send it. Scrapping supplies are very good for making cards. You can even do a little research and find a stranger affected by your issue to encourage. For example, if you were supporting Muscular Dystrophy awareness, find a person has the condition and send that person some cheerful ‘thinking of you’ cards. Or choose a tireless charity worker and make thank you cards for that person to show their efforts are recognised. This kind of behaviour is called a RAK — a Random Act of Kindness
- Idea: You could have a series of Masquerade Crops throughout the year! Pick a theme and ask people to come along dressed in costume. Choose a theme from a period in history that was fun like the Roaring 20’s, the 1950s (or choose another favourite decade from history), or pick a theme like Circus events, Cowboys and Indians, Hawaiian days (or beach days), Space, The Grand Old Oprey, or fit in with a holiday that is coming up. Ask people to find photos they could work on that will fit with the theme. When they arrive, provide an ideas page for them such as a sketch or a hand made embellishment they can make, or even a small packet of scrapping material such as lace, raffia or ribbons that would fit in with the theme. Your friends could agree to bring a plate of food in the style of the theme and you would have a reason and means to crop all day.
- Idea: Have a series of Technique and Tip Crops throughout the year! Pick a series of techniques you would like to know more about yourself and learn how to show them to your friends. Or pick a few friends who know how to use particular techniques very well and ask for a demonstration of them. Provide little kits of sample materials for people to try out the technique you have chosen to highlight. Ask friends to bring a page or two to show others how they have used the technique in the past. Have a place set up (the ironing board with a sheet over it is a great slim line display area) to show off the pages people make using the new technique. You may be amazed at the different interpretations people come up with when using the very same techniques.
I hope these three concepts may assist you in conducting some enjoyable scrapbooking crops and that your Hostess mojo is well and truly back now!
