Portland Scrapbooking

If the dozens of crops around the Portland Area don’t quite do it for you, or if you want to plan a party with a scrapbooking theme, let’s talk about how to set up a crop. You’re going to need four main things for your crop; Space, Snacks, Stuff and Scrappers.

Cropping Space

You may have a great scrapbooking place at home, but a crop needs four main things; first, lots of space to spread your stuff out. One popular suggestion is to take two eight foot tables and two six foot tables and arrange them into a square. You should be able to get eight scrappers around one square, and the center can be left for some snacks or stuff. While you’re considering the flat workspace, you also want to consider the lighting; the brighter, and the closest to daylight hues is the best. A few “Ott-Lites” can resolve confusion about color matching. You’ll also want to think about where the scrappers will sit; some comfortable office chairs would be sublime, but some crops have been successful with rented metal folding chairs. Your croppers will thank you. And their bottoms will thank you. Speaking of bottoms, your last thing you’ll need is a clean, well-lit bathroom. Nobody likes to go in the dark, and if your crop goes for any length of time, they’ll want to go too.

Cropping Snacks

Lots of scrappers go to crops expecting snacks to be available. The best snacks won’t get all over layouts; pretzels, M&Ms and other hard, non-messy snacks would go over well. But if your crop takes the place of a meal, you might want to schedule some time for real food, a time with a beginning and an end, so that the careful croppers can cover their work while they eat. And many crops require all drinks to be covered. Imagine the horrors!

Cropping Stuff

Frequently when you go to a crop, there’s a cache of “community tools,” usually something someone may not use a lot of times (an eyelet-set hammer tool, a big die cut machine, that sort of thing). Also, if you go to a crop at a store, you’ll be able to purchase items (paper, embellishments, tools) at the store as well- You might want to consider either hosting your crop at a store or inviting some Scrapbook Consultants to your crop to make their products available.

Cropping Scrappers

Advertise for your scrappers, if you don’t already have some in mind; you can talk to your Local Scrapbook Store to find out if they will let you advertise there, or you can put a message up at craigslist. Or, come to think of it, contact us and we’ll put you on the list of crops.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 10:49 am and is filed under advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.