Pinterest & Purses Party

I've been showing you things I created for the Chinese Auction held during  the recent "Pinterest & Purses Party" I was involved in.  Today I'm going to share information on the event in case you'd like to do one yourself!  

It started off as an idea to have a silent auction of purses as fundraiser for our community association's Relay For Life team (If you'd like to support me in this year's event, click on this LINK). I knew that we would need something fun to encourage the ladies to stick around for three hours and bid the purses up, so after much thought I remembered another crafter who put on a Pinterest party at her church.  Hmmmm...Pinterest and purses.  What a great combo and a great name for our new event!  

My friend Dorothy was in charge of collecting donations of new and gently used purses.  We had all kinds--from name brand purses (Coach, Dooney & Burke, and Gucci) to ones from Wal-Mart...all of them either new or in pristine condition.  Some purses came with matching scarves.  She sweetened the deal with gift boxes and envelopes that went with every purse, containing additional items and/or gift certificates worth up to $15.  There was also a little favor box of nail polish for each purse purchased.  The photo above shows just some of the purses we had up for auction. At the end of the day we raised over $900 in the purse auction.  

One of the most important parts of the "Pinterest" side of the party was getting recipes and the prepared dish from volunteers.  The picture above shows just one table of treats.  I had almost twenty different food items to sample, thanks to the ladies from my community.  Each dish was presented in bite size portions and had a little place card in front of it with the name of the recipe.  Attendees made notes of what they liked and once home, could go the special "Pinterest & Purses Party 2014" Pinterest board to get all the recipes.  A really fun way to try lots of different recipes!

The other part of the "Pinterest" portion was the crafts.  There were four craft stations where attendees could do a fun make-it-take-it project.  I had friends and family serve as "instructors" and each project had complete instructions on the "Pinterest & Purses Party 2014" Pinterest board in case they wanted to make more at home.

We also had two massage therapists offering chair massages for $1 per minute and they kindly donated half of their earnings.  Door prizes were awarded and we had a table set up with information on our Relay team.  For our first year, we had a decent turn out of 49 attendees and raised over $1,300.  The ladies had a great time and I had lots of "are you going to do this again?" questions.  Dorothy and I agreed to do it all again next year...and we're hoping for an even bigger 2015 event!