Etsy Craft Night

Last week I went to an Etsy/ Yelp hosted craft night.  It was held at CAFAM which stands for the Craft And Folk Art Museum, and all the crafting happened on the outside patio area.  We were lucky enough to be crafting with Mark Montano who wrote the book Pulp Fiction Perfect Paper Projects .  Honestly, I had no idea who he was or what his book was about but I was excited just to be making something!

How it worked was you showed up, paid $5 for an empty box and got free admission to the museum.  Outside was a great set up of tables for people to mix and match and hang out.  It also helped that they were serving snacks!  Making new friends, and making crafts is like a magillion times better with food!  I managed to sit at the same table with Katie, who works for Yelp, hi Katie!!  She and her friends were a lot of fun to hang out with while we made our 3D greeting card boxes.  All of the materials we needed were sitting on the tables; scraps of paper from books, stamps & ink, even butterflies to cut out.  As you can see from the picture mine turned out pretty awesome!  The best part was rubbing the box on your head to get the leaves to stick to the outside, everyone’s hair looked awesome! Meanwhile, Mark walked around looking at every body’s work.  He had a lot of great things to say, and was clearly enjoying himself.  It really was an fantastic time!

Finally, just before it was time to go, we went and took a look at the art in the gallery.  We’re at a museum, might as well check it out!  One of the exhibits was a bug exhibit, with real bugs glued to the wall.  It was disgusting and cool all at the same time.  I loved that the artist had fun with it, there was a sculpture of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves made out of bees, and bees wax.  The work was really stunning!

This isn't what I saw at CAFAM but since my pictures came out funny, I went to Jennifer Angus' website and used these ones.  These are all REAL bugs from all over the world.  She's pinned them up like you would when you display any kind of bug.

Overall Etsy Craft night was a complete success (especially seeing as they had to open up the back room because they ran out of tables on the patio!).  I hope they do another one soon.  Letting those creative juices flow is always such a relief!