What to do When Your Local Scrapbook Store Closes

Today, I'm gonna take a few minutes to share what to do when your Local Scrapbook Store (LSS) closes. Back in 2004 our LSS announced it was moving. It moved about an hour north and finally closed about 2 years later.
Being a quilter, I had been to my sister's quilt guild a few times, and had even checked out my local quilt guild. I wondered, why can't we have a scrap booking and paper crafting guild? So, when the store closed, I got serious and took the following steps:
1) Contacted a local artisan guild, such as a quilt guild for help on how to form a guild. and information on by laws and running a guild.
2) Got the book, "Non-Profits for Dummies"
3) Found a meeting location. Check your local library, ours offered a free meeting place when we started. They did add rent, but it was reasonable for non-profits.
4) Called a few paper crafting friends and asked them to join me.
5) Put a free add in the paper. Most local papers will list up coming local events. Write a blurb for this section. Now, you can create a Facebook Group to promote too!
6) Contacted my local scrap booking home sales reps for contacts, ideas and support.
7) Determined my first topic
8) Made a to do list and asked for volunteers at the 1st meeting.
All this happened back in 2006 and our guild is small but still going with around 50 members. We try and have one fundraiser crop a year, one make and take project a quarter (see photo above for our make and take for January), one free all day crop, meetings once a month, and we do some charity work too!
Now you may not want to go to all this trouble, so here are some idea for you:
1) Start a stamp camp, and rotate a hostess.
2) Contact your local sales reps and find out what events they host. For example, your Stampin' Up or Close to My Heart local reps may have regular events too!
3) Google your states name and scrap booking events.
4) Check out this site, they list events all over the US: http://papercrafterscorner.com/illinois/
And if you live in northern IL, near the towns of Sycamore, DeKalb or Genoa, please come check out the S.C.R.A.P. Guild of Northern IL! We meet on the 3rd Thursday of every month from 6:00-8:45pm in Genoa, IL. Every meeting is open crop time, even if we have a make and take or speaker. So bring a little project to work on! Want more information on the S.C.R.A.P. Guild? Just email them at scrapguild@yahoo.com.