My mom lives for crafts. She has been into crafts since she was a little girl. And she’s very good at them. She has made hundreds, (1,000s?) of things in her lifetime. She’s entered her crafts into our county fair for decades and has won countless ribbons. She participates in craft booths at least twice a year selling her wares. In fact, her Fall craft fair, people recognize her and tell her that they’re glad to see her as they were looking for her to buy her crafts. One of the reasons people like her crafts, other than she has cute stuff, is that she’s cheap. I tease her that she needs to make a sign for her booth – Barb’s Five and Dime.
If you’ve ever gone to craft shows you know that the majority of the booths are nice crafts for a nice price. Mom’s crafts are small and cheap and people love them because they can buy something from the craft fair and take home as a souvenir and not have to skip dinner in order to pay for it. And after doing crafts for so many decades, she has a feel for what sells and what doesn’t.
She’s figured it out.
My mom is a crafty woman. (See what I did there?)
I like crafts, I don’t love crafts. And I don’t really know why. I enjoy putting stuff together but I guess I just don’t have the patience to follow through. I would rather read/write than do something with my hands.
When dad died and mom and I started hanging out every week, I got back into crafts. It gave us something to do together, (after we watched Survivor), and I confess, I quite enjoy it. Not only because of the time I spend with my mom but because it’s relaxing and it’s quite satisfying to complete something for a change. But don’t be too impressed – the “crafts” I do are cross stitch and diamond painting. (Which is paint-by-number with beads – and it sounds as hard as it is). I definitely don’t do any crochet, knitting, painting and everything else my mom does. My sister has gotten into macramé, which is making a comeback, and she’s quite good at it. in fact, look at these cuties that she plans on putting in mom’s booth in the Fall:
I plan on putting some of my crafts in her shows as well. I’ve made quite a few diamond “painting” ornaments and will make a few wall hangings and coasters, too. (I need to get busy though – October is coming fast!!) My stuff is not nearly as cute as my mom and sister’s but they’re small and I’ll price them cheap so someone can take it home and toss it in the trash when they get tired of looking at it.
All of this to say, a craft conference was never, nor would ever, be on my radar. But it was on mom’s radar and when she asked me if I wanted to go to a Pinner’s Conference with her I was like, “say what?”
So, I do what any good person with a world wide web at her fingertips would do – I Googled it.
Pinner’s Conference is a conference sponsored by Pinterest.
It’s a conference where you and your friends can hang out and shop crafts all day. Or, you can take craft classes, create something and take it home, or, you can sit down at make/take tables and make a craft and take it home. If you’re into crafts, this is the place for you.
It looked fun and I’m always up for a road trip so I said, “sign me up!”
You have to purchase tickets and if you want to take a class, you have to sign up and pay more money for the class, this is on top of the normal admission ticket. This is to pay the teacher and for the supplies you’ll need for the class. Mom and I took two classes, a needle punch class and a calligraphy class. When you check in for your class, you get a packet of the supplies you’ll need for the class.
Mom and I drove up to the Kansas City conference the night before. When I started searching for hotels, I started to hyperventilate because WOW, the cost of hotel rooms nowadays … wow. I pulled up the venue on Google maps to try and see if there were any hotels near the venue, again, not hoping for a good deal but a decent deal would be nice at this point. And I was pleasantly surprised to see a Quality Inn quite literally across the highway from the venue. And the price was $180 per night, which mom and I split, so it wasn’t that bad, quite honestly.
And we were pretty happy with the room, too.
Mom loved the window seat and took possession of that right away. Ha!
(As you can see, she brought her WIP, (work-in-progress) craft. Mom is NEVER without a WIP. You never know when you have time to craft!)
Saturday morning rolled around and we arrived as they were letting people in. There were a lot of people, but not so many that you felt closed in and gasping for fresh air.
Or, maybe that’s just me.
We walked around and looked at each booth – three times – throughout the course of the day. I ended up buying a small bottle of homemade laundry detergent, (that I’ve yet to use but plan on using it on our towels) and mom bought Cynthia the macramé heart pattern, (that you see she has already made several of in the picture above).
In addition to booths, the Pinner’s conference has classes and they were located against the back of the conference room and in another section off to the right of the above picture.
We went to our first class, the needle punching class,
and though it was fun, I hated it. lol I felt like I was murdering the material by punching large holes into it to get the yarn in and though it didn’t look half bad by the end of the class, (no, I didn’t finish it – we were making coasters), I knew there was no way I was going to take it up again and … sorry mom, don’t read this part … I threw the kit away when we got home. It just wasn’t my cup of tea. But I’m glad we did it and it was fun to take a class together.
But remember, my hand/eye coordination is .. poor at best, so trying to do ANY crafts in a room full of die-hard crafters was intimidating. But I’m glad I tried it.
We walked around some more after our class and we made a list of booths we wanted to return to at the end of the day. We were interested in their stuff but we didn’t want to carry bags around all day. One booth was selling this funky-looking tube thing that you can take on camping trips, or just use outside, I guess, and mom had to try it out.
I was actually interested in it since Kevin and I go camping quite a bit, but it was just too weird and too expensive and I can’t even imagine what Kevin would think if I brought something like this home so I passed on it. But it looked comfy. Mom doesn’t look very comfy here, probably because people were walking by and stating at her, LOL, but she said it was comfy.
Our calligraphy class was the last class of the day and by the time it rolled around, mom and I were getting pretty tired. We likely won’t take a class at the end of the day next year. I didn’t take any pictures at the calligraphy class but I enjoyed it. I do get frustrated by calligraphy though, mainly because I’m left handed and it was hard to follow a right-handed tutorial. Our instructor said there were left-handed tutorials on YouTube so of course I looked it up. Here’s one to whet your appetite if you’re a lefty like myself:
The instructor was entertaining but a bit ditzy, in my opinion, and I started to lose a little patience with her, and the class, after about 15 minutes. But like I mentioned, it was getting late in the day and I was getting tired so that probably had a lot to do with it. We actually got a pot of ink and an actual nub, which I haven’t played around with yet, I’ve always used brush pens, so I thought that was cool. Again, I’m glad we took the class but I could have learned just as much, if not more, watching a YouTube video.
Another thing that was cool at the conference were all the make-and-take it booths. I think mom and I are going to focus more on the make-and-take it booths than the classes next year. (Yes – we’re already talking about next year!) They are a little expensive but they’re so fun as we get one-on-one attention from the vendor and we get to bring home a fun craft. Mom and I participated in a “chalk” painting class and these were our projects:
I really enjoyed making this. (The one on the left is mine). I could see myself doing more stencil projects like this because well, they’re easy. lol
By the time our calligraphy class was over, the place was emptying out and it was time to go back to the hotel. We were exhausted and ready to relax.
It was a really fun trip and it was even more fun because it was with my mom. I’m really looking forward to the Pinner’s Conference next year, (the end of January!) and hopefully we can talk my sister in coming with us. We’ll see. We have a few months to work on her!
Thanks for reading!
Write From Karen 