Our day at The Handmade Fair {2016}

This weekend I had my annual trip to The Handmade Fair. I went with my sister last year and had a brilliant time so was really keen to go again. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a bit like a festival for crafty people, about appreciating the beauty of handmade, and learning the skills to become a maker yourself. The price of your ticket includes The Super Theatre, a Skills Workshop and Grand Make and there are also huge tents full of crafty shops to look around and buy from.

Some of the workshops book up really quickly but I was pretty happy with our selection. We got up nice and early (after our trip to see the new Bridget Jones film the evening before) and off we went to Hampton Court.

Our first session was called Toadstool Magic with Quilting Antics at 10am. We made it with plenty of time and took our seats. We were given everything we needed to make a sweet little toadstool badge from felt. I love working with felt so found it quite easy and finished with time to spare. The tent was full of people of different abilities but I thought this was a really fun make.

After this session we had time to look around the tents. Several of the headline sponsors had tents and we visited the Hobbycraft and Mollie Makes ones. The Shopping Villages were in two huge tents and I really enjoyed looking round them. I don’t have much money so had to be quite restrained. I bought a sweet felt baby penguin kit from Corinne Lapierre, a paper cutting kit from Firy Paperart and Mandy Shaw’s How to Make Christmas Wreaths & Garlands. I picked up lots of business cards and have been through them, following lots of new people on Instagram.

There was no time for lunch (except for some churros!) and we soon headed to the huge Super Theatre for a Mollie Makes Mash Up with Matt Chapple vs Zeena Shah. In 50 minutes they were tasked with decorating a lampshade with some supplies from Hobbycraft. Whilst they were doing this they were interviewed and it was interesting to hear what inspired them and what they’re working on.

We went straight to making Confetti Crackers with Zeena Shah which was fun. I normally make our own Christmas crackers and they are pretty easy to put together if you buy ready made supplies. We stamped our own designs on a sheet of paper (using the rubber on the end of a pencil and an ink pad) then cut out our crackers. We made our own confetti using paper stamps and tissue paper, then put it all together.

Our final workshop was making a Felt Flower Brooch with Dandelion Designs. This was a fast-paced class and I made a leaf and couple of flowers but ran out of time to finish my make. We were able to take everything home so I still need to finish this.

We stayed around for another hour, re-visiting some stalls and making some last minute purchases. The weather was colder than last year but it didn’t dampen our spirits. I can’t wait to go again next year!