- I think I've been a maker since birth.

I really have always been a crafty child.

My mom has given me things that I've made, like little books that I made out of cereal boxes and wallpaper and stuff like that when I was like six or seven.

So I really don't know that there's ever been a time in my life that I can recall where I wasn't making something.

I don't know how to not make stuff, (laughing) I've just been doing it forever.

(upbeat rhythmic music) The Craft Lab started when I took over my dad's hardware store in 2007.

And within six months of the taking over the store, we decided to put in some scrapbooking stuff.

And it started in a little bitty corner of the store with just a few shelves, and it just kinda progressed from there.

And in 2015, we sold all the hardware and completely gutted the store and made it 100% craft store.

We sell mainly paper crafting materials.

We have gone a little bit further into some mixed media.

Mainly paper, and dyes, and inks, and stamps, and stencils, lots of stencils, some paints, embossing powders, just about anything paper crafting related.

Lots of scrapbooking paper and scrapbook page protectors and items like that.

And a lot of times, I just listen to my customers, you know, "What do you guys want?"

And we try to bring it in.

I think I'm gonna lace mine with the twine.

One of my favorite sayings is that somebody says, "Oh, I could never do that," I'm like, "Did you pass kindergarten?"

Because if you can cut and paste, you can do anything that we're doing here.

Because you know, it's just paper.

We're just cutting paper up and gluin' it back together.

It's not rocket surgery.

(laughing) You know, it's very easy to do.

And we teach everybody how, that doesn't know how to use the machines, we teach them how to use the machines.

Anything they wanna learn, we share our knowledge.

And if we don't know the answer, we will discover it together.

- That's why I come here truthfully is for the people.v - We call this our girls day / night out, and we do this every Friday, and it's just an opportunity for people to work on their projects and just have comradery with other crafters.

We do a lotta crafting by committee.

You know, when you're working on a project, and you're like, "Hey," holding up, "Does this piece of paper go, or that one?"

you know?

So we do a lot of sharing, and giggling, (laughing) and working on our craft projects.

We also do monthly shoebox card swaps.

And the way that works is each person participating signs up the month prior, and they create one card as a sample and then a kit for each person that is participating.

And then we meet on the second Tuesday of the month, and we put each other's cards together.

My card for Tuesday, I've got a dye cut and I've got a mat for the dye cut, and then I've got a background piece of paper and a card base.

That's a very simple card.

Some cards are a little bit more intricate, have special fun folds that make things pop out.

So it really just depends, we don't set a theme so everybody just makes what they want.

You could have a birthday card, a sympathy card, really sometimes it's just a just because.

And a lot of times, we will even make our cards without a sentiment inside and just make them blank.

And then you could customize them when you get ready to use them.

Typically, the basic pieces are your card base that you usually wanna use something fairly sturdy.

We use like 130-pound card stock.

It gives you a nice sturdy base to hold anything you might wanna put on it.

Some people will do a card front that they put on top of that that just gives it added structural integrity.

We do layer a lotta layering and matting of your design.

So you stamp an image and you color it, and then you may have a mat to accent it.

And then of course we have to add bling.

We've got glitter glue and sequins, and all kinds of fun things to... You know, rhinestones.

You know, we always have to have some bling.

It's not a proper card if it doesn't have bling.

Right now, most of the classes that are listed out there are free.

Now our girls night out, we do charge $10, and you get 10% off of your purchases while you're here crafting.

You also get full use of our tools, so we have a whole bunch of tools that are available for use by people when they come in.

We have a whole wall of stamps from my collection that I share with my customers.

And the $10 just helps us recoup costs for, you know, when equipment breaks, if we break a dye cutter, or if we need to buy some new stamps, or things like that.

We do ask people to bring their own inks, or they can purchase 'em from us, which we would love.

(Amy laughing) But we do have a big variety of things that people can use.

I have a bunch of embossing folders and older dyes that people are welcome to use while they're here crafting.

So we try to provide quite an extensive toy box for people to play in.

(laughing) You know, we wanna be here for a long time.

And as long as people continue to come and shop and support us, we'll be here.

(upbeat rhythmic music fading)