February has been a super busy month! When I’m not making up lampshade orders I’m organising the Makers Cornwall Spring Fair with two of my maker friends Sarah Drew and Sally Atkins. It is going to be an online event to celebrate spring, and to give our customers a chance to buy Mother’s Day gifts.
We’re a group of contemporary designers and makers based in Cornwall: we normally put on a brilliantly sparkly, modern Christmas fair full of handmade gifts in November; but since last year we have moved our events to online after making the decision to keep everyone safe and unstressed.
The first three Etsy Made Local Cornwall Christmas events were held in St Ives with 40 stallholders; then as they were so popular, in 2019 we moved to Penryn Campus where we hosted 70 stallholders and over 5,000 visitors during the weekend: everyone who came loved the fantastic buzzy atmosphere and fresh, modern gifts and treats they could find there.
We made a couple of major changes last year. Apart from moving online of course! Firstly we made the decision to drop the word Etsy from our event, to make it more inclusive to allow makers who don’t have Etsy shops to take part. Secondly we built a website that would act as a signposting hub to make it easier for customers and visitors/viewers to find all the makers taking part in events, and to build upon as a Directory of Makers.
Our 40 talented local makers will be hosting Facebook Live Shopping experiences on their own Facebook pages on Saturday 27th February 11am to 12pm. You can watch them live, ask questions, ask to see things close up, check sizes, have a chat! Then if you’d like to buy anything you can just sort it out with each maker via their website, Etsy shop or bacs/paypal: it’s pretty straight-forward and relaxed and fun 🙂
As usual, we wanted our event to give back to the community, so each maker has donated a third of their ‘stall’ fee to help homeless and vulnerable people in Cornwall via Daisy Duke’s CIC in St Austell.
To find out more about all our wonderful makers taking part, have a look at our website makerscornwall.co.uk
