November 2006 Meeting Notes

The Central Oklahoma Polymer Clay Guild held its first meeting Wednesday night — and we had a great time! There are still some questions that are up in the air — the most pressing being *where* to meet (ideas, anyone?). But this meeting was a great start & we’ve got a lot of fun things planned already! Have anything you want to add to the discussion? Please let us know! And we hope you’ll join us for next month’s meeting, on December 9th!
Read on for the notes from the meeting…

The meeting was held at the Downtown Library on November 15, 2006, at 7:00 p.m. Angela Mabray and Penni Jo Couch were in attendance. After introductions, where we shared a few of our clay projects, we got down to business.

Name

We decided to call ourselves the Central Oklahoma Polymer Clay Guild.

Meeting Place

The library has free study rooms, but these only seat 4 people and would not work for “claying.” The library’s larger classrooms cost $10/hr… and paying that each month would require significant dues.
* Penni Jo suggested that Hobby Lobby or Michaels might make their classrooms available for meetings, and Angela said she would follow up with the Hobby Lobby and I-40 & MacArthur.
* We will also check whether anyone else on the OKPolyClay mailing list knows of possible meeting locations — ideally something free, that seats at least 10 people, where they won’t mind us using a toaster oven.

Meeting frequency

We decided to meet once a month at the beginning, adding additional meetings later if folks are interested. Since advertising the meetings is easiest if there’s a regular schedule, we decided to set the meetings up on the 2nd Saturday of every month — which makes our next meeting December 9th. Penni Jo suggested maybe we could do a special 5th Saturday blow-out party every time there are 5 Saturdays in a month (this happens twice a year).

Dues

We decided to charge dues — somewhere in the vicinity of $24-40 per year (maybe a discount for multiple members from the same family?). Visitors are welcome to come to a meeting or two for free, but will be asked to join after that. Dues can be prorated for members who join later in the year. We also discussed the option of having a $2/meeting fee for folks who only live in the area part of the year, or who are unable to come regularly for some other reason.
Dues will allow us to pay for incidental costs, and will also (hopefully) allow us to start a guild library. In addition to dues, we could also plan special fund-raisers — raffles, auctions, etc. — to help with costs.

Web site

The web site will include minutes of meetings, announcement of future events, calendar of events, and (if folks are interested in being included) a member profile/links page. Angela asked whether there were objections to having small text-based ads on the site, to help defray the costs of the domain name and hosting, with any additional ad income being put into the general fund. Penni Jo indicated it should be fine as long as the ads weren’t too big & distracting. There was also some discussion about the design of the site — Angela would like to include some polymer clay elements, made by the group’s members, in the design.

Advertising

We would like to advertise the group at various craft stores in OKC. Deena Parsons had previously indicated by email that she thought And Bear Makes 3 would be willing to put up a sign listing our meeting hours. Angela will ask about the possibility of doing the same at Hobby Lobby when she visits them. JoAnn’s & Michael’s would also be good places for signs. Penni Jo suggested that there should be a cohesive look for the web site and the signs. For online advertising, Angela is planning on emailing the National Polymer Clay Guild webmaster with info on our group.

Goals

We discussed our goals and plans for the group. Angela mentioned she was interested in a guild library — the idea being to have a collection of polymer clay books, magazines and videos that members can borrow from. She said she would like to see a state fair contest category for polymer clay. We also discussed doing swaps — possibly even meeting with Tulsa’s now-forming polymer clay group once a year or so to swap with them. Penni Jo expressed interest in making Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) — and in just generally relaxing and having fun with clay.

Upcoming Meetings

* Our next meeting will be December 9th, and we’ll be making Christmas ornaments. More details TBA.
* Our January meeting will be January 13, 2007. We will learn how to make Artist Trading Cards (ATCs).
* Our February meeting will be February 10. We will swap ATCs made based on the previous month’s lessons. We’ll also have a lesson — possibly making polymer clay name tags?
* Other ideas that were mentioned for future guild projects were: faux techniques, mini masks, scrapbooking embellishments, and accordion albums.