Shopping at The Handmade Fair

A couple of weeks ago I went to The Handmade Fair at Hampton Court, and I thought you crafty lot might enjoy hearing about it!

When we bought tickets to the fair we had the choice of signing up to loads of different classes. In the end we went for a furniture painting session, a gift wrapping class, and finally a talk in the super theatre about quilting.

I particularly enjoyed the furniture painting class. To be honest I rather thought that I already knew all of the tricks, but Out Of The Dark had tons of fantastic tips for us. My favourite was that you can re-use sand paper again and again if you just hoover it! Who knew!?

Aside from the classes there was a huge amount of awesome food and drinks suppliers. Of course we had to stop off for a glass of prosecco on our travels.

But obviously, the main event had to be the shopping! There were SO many amazing crafty stalls, I ended up spending a small fortune!

First of all I spotted this fantastic dress pattern from Sew Over it, based on Betty Draper from Mad Men.  Unlike normal sewing patterns, this one has a step by step tutorial on the Sew Over It blog, so I thought that it would be a good one to try as a novice dress maker!  I also bought myself some fabric to make the dress out of from a separate stall.  I didn't realise at all until I got home, but the fabric I bought is identical to the fabric they have illustrated on the front of the pattern!  Weird!

I stopped by Designosaur's stand as I follow them on Instagram and I love all of their jewellery. It was great to meet them in person.  I decided to treat myself to a mammoth necklace after much deliberation. Pretty cool huh!?

Whilst in the Etsy tent I also had a nice little chat with Alice Tams from Birds in Hats. Her illustrations are super cute, and as you might have guessed, they all feature different birds in different hats! I am seriously taken with this Walking Dead inspired crow!

I also said hello to Zoe from Ladybird Likes, who I had met once before at a Southampton Etsy party. I bought my friend one of her lovely butterfly necklaces for her Birthday. I didn't get a chance to photograph it myself so this is the picture from Zoe's Shop on etsy.

I've been looking for prints to go in our new study, and when I found this ice cream print by Ros Shiers I decided it must be mine!  I am a bit of a sucker for ice cream and ice lollies. Mainly twisters, feasts, and Ben and Jerrys mint chocolate chunk.

If you are an avid TV series watcher, and you haven't come across Kate Rowland yet, I seriously urge you to check her work out! From Breaking Bad to Twin Peaks, she has got some amazing pins and jewellery!  I spent an age deciding which one I liked best, but I eventually settled on this Nights Watch badge from Game of Thrones. I could wear every single one of them!

I had such a lovely day, which was made all the better by wonderful company. I even managed to catch up with Claire from  Claireabellemakes , who, by the way has written a great post on the day, and was much better than me at capturing pictures of the actual event! So go and check that out if you want to see some more.

I hope you have enjoyed living vicariously through my shopping experience, if not, go and buy some for yourselves! 

Laura xXx