We were Forkin’ and we were Talkin’

This past Saturday, Craft Gossip hosted its second Fork & Talk Craft Blogger Meet-Up. As with our first meet-up, the event was sponsored by the generous folks at EK Success. They’re the people who bring you such brands as Martha Stewart Crafts, Inkadinkadoo, K & Co., Laliberi, American Girl Crafts, and more. They treated us to a fabulous lunch at Trio’s and sent everyone home with a big ol’ swag bag filled with all kinds of crafty goodies.

Once again, Denise was our very able emcee. Being a group of introverted editors, we were very grateful for her to stand up and talk to everyone.

A round of introductions, with old friends and new faces. One of our editors got a new last name since we last met. We found out two of our guests are expecting. Two other guests are working on an arrival of another sort – books in the works to be published. I admitted to my obsession with buying craft supplies in laughably huge quantity.

We had one guest Skyped in, as she was laid up in bed with pneumonia. Who’s going to let a little think like that get in the way of meeting new crafty friends? A huge thanks goes to our guest Suzanne for stepping in with her fancy phone when we had technical difficulties on our laptop.

For our group contest, we challenged each table to give a “makeover” to their editor. Look how fancy we are!!

Denise

Scarlett

Stacie

Myself

Scarlett’s group won. You know, her table won the group contest last time, too. A coincidence? I think she’s in cahoots with the Trio’s staff, who we recruit to judge the contest. Our waitress said it was the fork earrings that put her makeover over the finish line, but I’m wondering if Scarlett didn’t quietly slip her a twenty in order to influence her decision.

After our makeovers were complete, we got to the good stuff.

Each guest got to take home a giant yellow tote bag filled with goodies from EK Success. Inside, there were punches, dimensional stickers, decorative paper, trims, stamps, needlework kits, and more.

It was like Christmas!

My favorites were the scalloped flower paper punch, the Dimensions crewel tree needlework kit, and the American Girl memory box kit.

After we all had a chance to paw through our bags, we all found the Dimensions Java cozy and coaster kit and worked on that.

The handstitching project was perfect for a get-together like this. Folks could hang out and have conversation while making simple stitches of the coaster and coffee sleeve.

At some point, we all had to say goodbye to each other and head home. But before we left, we took a couple of group photos. Here’s our jazz hands version.