SECC Hobbycrafts for Christmas 2011

Alice and I left at 9.30am on Saturday and headed off to the Scottish Exhibition & Conference Centre for the craft show.  First of all we safely left the fee (in case we spent it) for a piece of ground called a car park, paying £6.00 for the privilege of parking in the grounds of the building. 

I got parked nice and near and we eagerly took our shopping trolley bags ready to fill up with what was on our shopping lists. 

Within the SECC there are units with rows and rows of stalls displaying many craft products from across the UK. It is great fun going round each mini-shop looking for Christmas bargains. It ran from Thursday 27th to Sunday 30th October, with hundreds visiting each day. It was therefore surprising that on the day we went, we met four people we knew!

I was torn between buying the craft stuff and filming it! I asked permission at the stalls I filmed and most folk were quite happy about it. I must say it is pretty difficult to film one-handed with an ordinary camera; I felt my video-camera with its wonderful rotating screen would be too heavy to carry around along with everything else. Happily we met Laura in the Christmas gifts hall and she filmed the two of us having one of our little chats (no crafting involved!). 

It is always a good day looking at craft -- "do I really need that?", "yes of course I do!" and by the afternoon I stopped debating with myself as it was a waste of time. Goods purchased and two tired ladies ready to go home to phone the others in the group to find out what they had bought.

We bought quite a lot for our money and have shown our purchases in previous posts. Personally, I'm delighted with my Copic Ciao pens and, having been to some art classes, feel better-equipped to try out proper shading when colouring-in my rubber stamping. I was disappointed with the storage case I bought to keep all 48 in because the pens were too fat. [Yesterday I purchased a Tatty Teddy toiletries bag instead, and used the other case for watercolour brush markers I already had.]

However, it is such a pity that with so many people having  paid to visit the craft fair there were only a handful of tables and chairs for so many crafters. Many people with disabilities craft and they had to stand to have their lunch. How much better it would have been if visitors had been able to have a chair rather than the floor to sit on! We were sitting on whatever seats and floor space we could find.

Alice's crafty-bags-to-go

In a previous post, Ruth was highly amused at my omnigrid difficulties, so we were delighted to find a stand selling a host of omnigrids, which we brought into our filming.  [If you look at the photo of the crafting bags I take to the group, you will see that I have one especially for them - no! - it's really for patchworking, but being flat it is great for carrying A4 card without bending, along with a cutting mat and scoreboard.]

We have enjoyed getting all our purchases and I hope we might actually use them before the next craft fair in March 2012! 

Clarity Scotland stamp

Surely nothing that we won't use at some point? - we get around to it eventually in the craft group - and have great plans for 2012's project evenings!
PS On Monday, I ordered for us both a Clarity Scotland rubber stamp, that had been sold out at the fair. They arrived yesterday; here is mine, still lovingly wrapped in tissue paper. 

CraftyWhippet & craftyalice chatting 

We hope you enjoy this taster of what the fair was like: