fair | Angel Eden Blog

With the festive season rapidly approaching fairs of every creative nature seem to have sprung up. Just last weekend I visited Lustre at Lakeside Arts in Nottingham. I’ve been for the past couple of years and it’s always a wonderful mix of new and old talent. Although I think my favourite has always been Steve Handley and his wonderful cupboards and hooks. This year seemed a little overrun with jewellery designers, which I appreciate may sound a little strange coming from a jewellery business myself, it just felt a little lacking in variety in comparison to previous years.

This weekend Anne is busy working away at Banks Mill winter open studios. I would have liked to have been there too, but I’m a bit bruised after a jolt earlier in the week, so decided I was better sitting at home eating chocolate pudding (oh the hardship!)

But that’s not the end of the weekends offerings. In Derby there is also the Fabulous Places Christmas Market which promises to be an amazing shopping experience in the run up to Christmas. We were truly quite gutted not to be able to attend as we were already booked at the mill.

But if you think that means a restful few weeks will follow you’d be mistaken. We are also attending the Christmas Craft fair at Kedleston Hall next weekend.

Then we have a smaller fair coming up the week after. Not exactly sure when we Santa will fit in all our his Christmas shopping in amongst all this, perhaps we can rope in a husband elf or two with a very specific list.

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Yesterday morning both members of Angel Eden plus one daughter/grandaughter got up at a very unreasonable hour and made our way to the train station. We were off to London to visit the first ever Selvedge Magazine Summer Fair.

Once we had walked back and forth several times trying to work out the tube (the Northern line wasn’t running from St. Pancras) we made our way to Archway tube station. We had a map book of London which quite cleverly showed everwhere apart from where we were and none of the locals seemed to be able to help. We were getting a bit desperate when finally a European tourist pointed us in the right direction.

We arrived with 15 minutes to spare and the queue was already building. The fair was being held inside an old church which had white balloons tied to the railings. Up the stone steps were jam jars holding pink roses (I made a special effort not to knock these over, but I wouldn’t be surprised it they hadn’t lasted the day).

The first 200 visitors received a goody bag. We were a bit over excited when we both got one. It had in it a Volga Linen Company teatowel, a burt’s bees pack, a Burda badge, pen and measuring guide and some bath scrub.

By this point we’d been awake & travelling so long that we had an unreasonable need for a cup of tea. So we headed straight for the stage area which had been transformed by ‘Vintage Party’ to look like a village fete. We had to make the difficult choice of which cake to have.

Then we sat on a pew and talked to other visitors who came to sit near us. I loved the decorating, it was like something from my childhood (I grew up in a quaint country village) mixed with tea at Grandma’s. The decorations and flowers were all beautiful & I congratulate everyone who put hard work into the ‘look’ of the event.

Once we made our way back down to the stalls it got ridiculously busy, completely understable of course, with so many wonderful artists under one roof the guests had piled in. Unfortunately this made viewing all the stallholders a bit difficult. My daughter led us determindly to The Black Rabbit, she seen them on the way in and we had to buy two ‘blobs’ I’m not sure of their real name, but they are now affectionately nickednamed the lavender blobs in our house.She also wanted a hair clip kit from RoseRed & Blue.

We spoke to many of the stallholders and they were all very friendly and relaxed. I wish I could have bought more, but it was a bit difficult to see with so many people. However I grabbed all the exhibitors cards as I compiled my mental Christmas list (I hope Santa’s feeling flush this year!) If Selvedge hold another fair make sure you visit, although hopefully next time the venue will be bigger with even more to offer!

Here’s a list of my favourite exhibitors and their websites: