The Crafting Place acts as a hub for paper art enthusiasts

On a visit to The Crafting Place, 3560 E. Russell Road, you might find people scrapbooking, making greeting cards or bookmarks or doing any one of a variety of crafts. One thing you're sure to see is crafters enjoying themselves and each other's company.

"We all feed off each other's energy," said the store's owner, Jennifer Pereda. "It's not just a store, it's a community."

Pereda said the building was one of many homes on Russell Road that were converted to commercial property to capitalize on the traffic from McCarran International Airport. The craft store fills up all of the first-floor rooms, and a former four-car garage is now filled with tables for crafters to work on. The craft store provides not only space but also an assortment of tools to work with.

Paper crafting has come a long way from pasting a few family photos in a book or making a few clever cuts with specialized scissors. Pereda showed off samples of paper embellished with a portable machine capable of embossing a variety of patterns. Another popular crafting technology is the Cricut , a machine that can cut intricate patterns from a variety of thin materials.

Pereda provides the space free and tries to keep the prices as low as possible to encourage people to come in and explore their creativity and share.

"I just want to be here with my friends and have a place where we can get away," Pereda said. "They come here because there's no telephone, no kids, no dog, no washing machine or any of that. You can't see the dishes in the sink you've got to get to. You can just focus on the crafts."

Cheri Cottino, a regular at The Crafting Place, comes in part for the company and in part for the readily available materials. Should some brainstorm strike her for which she needs a particular material or tool, she knows that it's likely right there in the store.

"She has some of the best prices and things you can't get anywhere else in town," Cottino said. "Some people are here to make things for charities, some folks are working on their own pet projects and some are here making stuff to sell."

The shop is open for only a few hours each week, but on the first and second Saturday s of each month, it holds a marathon crafting session called a "crop," where people get together and work on their own projects. Pereda adds games and prizes into the mix.

"Our husband s call it our 'ladies days,' " Cottino said. "We call it our therapy sessions."

Pereda said her husband, Julio, built the first website for the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 1994. He saw the potential of the Internet early on, and for several years, the couple ran a website hosting business from the building with server rooms and offices for several employees. Eventually, they sold that business to a larger company but retained ownership of the building. The new company rented the building from them until two years ago, when they consolidated operations. A combination of the real estate market and Pereda's sentimentality drove her to retain the building and expand her online craft supply business into it.

Pereda had sold her craft supplies on eBay but became frustrated with the percentage of the sale that went to the online auction site. Her husband came to the rescue by creating webstore.com, an online store and auction site that doesn't charge fees to buyers or sellers but instead brings in all of its revenue from banner ads. The site started in 2007 and now boasts thousands of online stores and users.

The Crafting Place is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday, Friday and Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Wednesday. The store offers crops on the first Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the second Saturday of each month from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Visit buy4less.webstore.com or call 485-3799.

Contact Sunrise/Whitney View reporter F. Andrew Taylor at ataylor@viewnews.com or 380-4532.