The Handmade Fair

Last week's Nice Day Out was a very crafty one as I had a ticket to The Handmade Fair!

After attending the taster event at the V&A this summer, I was delighted to be sent a press ticket to the Fair itself. A day of crafty goodness is always nice and I was very curious to see what this new event would be like...

The fair was held in the grounds of Hampton Court (which you know I love) and although the morning started out a little chilly and overcast, it soon warmed up and we had lots of autumn sunshine.

 

You know you've arrived at a fun event when this is the first thing you see - hundreds of pompoms!

The Fair was very making-focused, with each ticket including a "skill workshop", a "grand make" and a talk or other event in the "super theatre". Unfortunately I missed my super theatre session thanks to the traffic (rats!) but I arrived in plenty of time for my "grand make" - making origami flowers.

 

The "grand make" aspect of this (hundreds of crafters all making together) didn't really happen as there were only a couple of dozen of us making flowers that session... but it was still fun to sit and make some origami for half an hour.

Samuel from Sesame's Origami was a great teacher, and very entertaining giving us lots of tips and chatting about his origami business. Apparently his most common customer is husbands buying bouquets for their "paper" wedding anniversary. He talked us through folding a little paper t-shirt, then a paper tulip. Here's my tulip...

 

... and here's how a whole bunch of the tulips look when made with pretty multicoloured origami paper:

 

You can find lots of beginner-friendly video tutorials on Samuel's website, along with info about his upcoming workshops.

 

After making my tulip it was time to explore the Fair!

You had to buy a show guide (£5) to get a map of the site, but luckily it was quite easy to find your way once you'd walked round once and got your bearings and there were lots of friendly staff around to ask for directions if you got lost. There were two big shopping tents and some smaller tents where things like drop-in workshops and book signings were happening at various times during the day.

My first stop was the Etsy tent, where a selection of Etsy shop owners were selling their wares and folks from Etsy's UK team were running business workshops and answering peoples questions about opening a shop.

I loved Neon London's bright stationery, Anna Wiscombe's charming wooden jewellery and Spin City's yummy handspun yarn. 

 

 

Throughout the day I bumped into lots of lovely people I know from Etsy and blogging, and spotted lots of famous faces from the world of crafting - including Tilly who was teaching a sewing masterclass.

 

As well as taking part in drop-in workshops and the three sessions you signed up for as part of your entry ticket, you could buy tickets on the day for extra "grand makes" and "skill workshops". Each tent had a blackboard up outside listing the times and details of the events happening that day and the number of tickets left, so you could see what was still available. 

Lush were running drop-in workshops including one on making hairpieces with fresh flowers which really added to the "crafty festival" vibe of the day as there were lots of people walking round with flowers in their hair!

 

Food-wise there were lots of food trucks and a vintage-themed tea tent (with live music, which was lovely). The food was a bit on the pricey side but there was lots of variety and I had some seriously delicious icecream (yum).

 

The two shopping tents were packed with a mix of different vendors - handmade and indie-designed products rubbing shoulders with vintage loveliness and crafty supplies like fabric, sewing kits, yarn and scrapbooking supplies.

Here are some snaps of just a small sampling of the wares on show... 

... vintage pretties at Simply Vintage Designs:

 

... awesome giant knitting needles from Rachel John, handmade treats from We Make London, paper loveliness at Paperpoms, and sweet homewares by Jessalli:

 

... coastal-themed decorations by The Wooden Fish Company and fab dolls & felt mobiles by A K Traditions:

 

... colourful craft supplies from one of my blog sponsors, Blooming Felt:

... gorgeous block printed designs by Molly Mahon, deliciously scented soap by Odds and Suds, colourful haberdashery from Millie Moon, and beautiful homewares & prints by Sarah Hamilton:

As always at events like these it's so nice to be able to chat to the makers and artists about their work. It was especially delightful to see some printing and painting in progress at Red Hen Originals.

After lunch it was time for my "skill workshop": lino printing with Zeena Shah. This was a huge amount of fun - I blogged about it earlier this week - but it was a shame we didn't decorate something that we could have taken home with us.

Finally I met up with Fiona for a cuppa and a chat about bloggy stuff in the Hotchpotch Vintage tea tent.

 

Just look at those cakes! Yum. Our tea was served in vintage teacups too, which was lovely. 

Then it was time to head home, tired but happy. I have my fingers crossed that there's another Handmade Fair next year as this one was a lot of fun!

Disclosure: I attended The Handmade Fair as a guest of the organisers who sent me a free ticket.

Lino Printing at The Handmade Fair with Zeena Shah

I had a very fun day out on Friday at The Handmade Fair - a new, crafty fair with a focus on learning and making. One of the lovely bloggers I bumped into described it as being "like a crafty festival" and it really was, with lots of tents for workshops and talks plus shopping and eating... lots of famous faces from the world of craft and sewing... and lots of bunting! :)

I'll be blogging about the day later this week, but in the meantime here are some snaps from the workshop I attended: lino printing with Zeena Shah.

I'd never tried lino printing before so I was quite excited to give it a go at the Fair - although I was a teeny bit nervous about using the sharp lino cutting tool! Me + sharp objects = usually a bad combination.

We started by drawing a design we wanted to print. I had a bit of creative block but I eventually settled on a simple star design and drew it onto my lino. 

Then we carved out our designs, leaving raised areas where we wanted to print and cutting away the sections that would be white space. The lino was easier to carve than I expected but still quite hard work after a while (I suspect lino cutters elbow might be a thing!) and you had to be very careful with the cutting tool as it was indeed very sharp - as proven by one of the ladies on my table who cut herself (ouch!)

It was really fun to see the design gradually appearing in the lino and really nice sitting and chatting with the other ladies as we worked. We laughed about the mistakes we were making, admired each others designs and talked about the things we'd done at the Fair earlier that day.

My design was finally finished...

... just in time for me to do a couple of prints before the workshop ended.

I used too little paint (oops) then a too much (double oops) then my third print was just right. Hurrah!

Trying new crafty things = so much fun!

If you'd like to try lino printing, Zeena runs lots of lino printing workshops.

Disclosure: I attended The Handmade Fair as a guest of the organisers who sent me a free ticket.

Getting Crafty with Kirstie Allsopp

A few weeks ago I got invited to a lovely "taster" event for Kirstie Allsopp's Handmade Fair - a new craft fair being held in the gardens at Hampton Court this September.

Would I like to come to the V&A (one of my favourite places in the world) to drink tea, eat cake and do some crafting? Um, yes please!

After discovering a few days earlier how horribly hot the Tube can be in the very hot weather, I walked to the V&A via Kensington Gardens and (thanks to a delayed train) got there just in time for the start of the event.

Kirstie Allsopp welcomed us all and introduced us to papercutter Poppy Chancellor. Poppy gave us some useful papercutting tips (use a sharp blade, cut details first and always cut towards yourself) and we got cutting!

Poppy had designed pretty bunting flags, inspired by the V&A's Wedding Dresses exhibition. We each cut out a few flags and then they were all strung together to make the bunting at the end of the afternoon.

 

It turns out that papercutting is a huge amount of fun. I was pretty pleased with how my flags turned out - though they were a bit of a mess if you looked close up! Professional papercutting is probably not a career path I will be pursuing :)

It was really nice to sit and try something new, while chatting to the ladies sitting near me (lovely to meet you all!).

 

After we'd done lots of crafting it was time for a cuppa and some cake. The cupcakes were provided by the Hummingbird Bakery and they were quite delicious... and it was lovely to bump into Claire in the cupcake queue! 

 

 

Kirstie then told us all about The Handmade Fair, the joys of crafting and how she hopes every visitor to the fair will be able to experience that joy for themselves.

She said she'd wanted making and learning and community to be a central part of the day so the ticket price includes a skill workshop, a creative talk in the "super theatre" and a "grand make" with hundreds of crafters making together. There will also be free "sewing masterclasses" and Etsy will be running business workshops.

Kirstie and the team are also hoping to break the Guinness World Record for the longest line of pompoms - a challenge they're calline World Pomination.

At the end of the event, we were given the chance to visit the Wedding Dresses exhibition which was rather gorgeous, with a wide selection of very different dresses. It was especially nice to see photos of the dresses being worn alongside the garments themselves, so you could peer at the delicious textile details of fabrics and lace and beading but also see how they suited each bride.

 

After a quick visit to the V&A's fabulous shop, I went for a short walk around Kensington...

 

... and visited the Travel Photographer of the Year exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society.

Last year's exhibition was one of the things I visited on my first Nice Day Out last year! Just like last year, the photos were wonderful. The exhibition is also dotted with entertaining signposts pointing you in the direction of places near (the cafe) and far (Beijing, San Jose), real (the moon) and imagined (Mordor and Wonderland). 

 

I wanted to wait out the worst of the rush hour before catching my train home, so I sat near the Albert Memorial (looking particularly shiny in the sunshine!) for a while reading my book...

 

... then strolled back through the park enjoying the views.

Of course, I also had to stop and watch the bunnies (spotted a few days earlier) for a while before finally heading homewards.

 

Many thanks to the folks at the V&A and The Handmade Fair for the lovely crafty afternoon! If you're interested in attending the Fair or reading more about it, click here to visit their website.

P.S. Wanna see a little video filmed at the event? If you can't see the video below click here to watch it. I'm not in the video, but you may be able to spot me in this photo :)