NEC Craft Fair !

Hello,

My mum has always been wonderfully creative, especially with making hand made cards, so every year since I can remember we've visited the HobbyCrafts Show at the NEC . But this year, me and my girlfriend went together and we had an absolutely wonderful day ! I've not smiled so much in ages :)

There were hundreds of stools selling all sorts of wonderful crafts but rather than buying lots of stuff, we headed off to book ourselves into lots of the workshops that were available. In each workshop, we made something to take home with us, each using a different craft and it was so much fun trying out all the different ways of making things and they all turned out far better than expected hehe !

Here are a few of the things we made :

This was the first workshop we went to, we were taught how to do Chinese paintings. I'll be completely honest, I was a little apprehensive about it at first ( I only booked the workshop because I love cats ) but in the end I really loved it ! We used a special kind of paint brush made with goat hair and bamboo and the lady showed us lots of techniques using different pressures on the brush. We were so happy with how they turned out :) The Top one is mine and the second is my girlfriends ... I think mines best .. she cheated , she does art ... well that's what I'm telling myself haha ! 

In another workshop we made these gorgeous flowers out of this weird clay like stuff , when they dried they feel like foamy paper , it's the strangest thing ! But we were both pretty proud of them and they were surprisingly easy to make ! 

There was this really cool stall with an extremely funny man who made flowers out of ribbons... we did both attempt to make a rose with him but ummm well Georgies fell appart and mine was ... well it's probably best we don't talk about mine haha :) However the man running the stool was very kind and made us a beautiful ribbon flower to take with us , he even put perfume on it ! 

The next workshop we went to was very important to us because last year when I went to the craft fair with my mother I made a little wooden plaque with " My Best Friend" burnt into it and this year ... well that plaque is outdated . So we both decided to make each other new ones ( luckily the wood burning workshop was there again this year ) and we were very happy with how they turned out .

At our final workshop of the day, we made bunny rabbits out of this thing called jumping clay ! It was so much fun and we really enjoyed it ... plus the guy giving the instructions had an amazing accent, I've no idea what it was but I loved it hehe :) What do you think we should call them ? 

After all that, we had a look around the cake decorating part of the show ( Someone had made an amazing Starwars Bake Off cake ) and then bought ourselves some delicious home made ice cream. I couldn't of been happy than I was sat on the floor together eating ice cream and smiling in each others arms :)

What's your favourite way to get creative ? I'd love to hear about your favourite crafts and hobbies in the comments because the craft fair made me realise how much fun it was to try out new crafts .

Stay Strong <3 Stay Smiley :) 

Lots of love, Marianne xxx