Last week I had a most wonderful day out at the NEC Birmingham. It was the Creative Craft Show and Sewing and Fashion, two huge halls full of crafting loveliness and jam packed with people who love to make - heaven! 

The day was busy, busy. I'll start by sharing some lovely things I saw/bought and then share some of the lovely things I did. 

This caravan from Egg Nogg is just SO much fun. They hire it out for parties in the Bristol area - isn't that just a fab idea? They also have a lovely range of colour in tablecloths, bags, fancy dress outfits and more. 

There is a big trend for laser cut items, I was especially impressed by two stands, First is Buttonpic, a company from Spain that hand finish all their buttons, they are then perfect for making into lovely little pictures - I'm loving Frida. Their website doesn't seem to be up yet but they have a facebook page here. 

I got these 3 super sweet little buttons from them, I'll share what I make with them as soon as I've decided what that will be! 

The other stand I especially liked with laser cut items was Button-it by Craft Wood Creations . They have an amazing selection of buttons, all plain wood so I guess you can use them as they are or colour them yourself. They also had lots of kits for dream catchers, fairy doors, steam punk style things and loads more. 

I met up again with the lovely people at Amazing Craft (remember their uber cute Jackson Mouse kit that I reviewed last year?) They have some brand new kits to make sweet little brooches, I've got the piggy one to try, I'll let you know in a week or two how I got on. 

I watched a demo with a super cool product from Marbling4fun. It's like the nail varnish marbling I tried a while back but on a whole different level! It was mesmerising to watch and they say it can be used on most unsealed surface. I saw it used on a piece of cotton but there were tiles, notebooks, leather goods, all sorts of items that had all been marbled beautifully. I'm going to give this an iron and make it into something .... not sure quite what yet but it's too pretty not to use.

Bob Neil Pyrography were offering a chance to give pyrography a try. I've always fancied having a go so I grabbed the chance. They had pre printed items to make it easy for us so I made this little coaster for a special friend. Not to embarrasing for a first attempt, althought the writing was more difficult than I expected! 

I also had a go at soldering to make a hanging glass ornament, kind of like a stained glass technique but much simpler. Turns out I may have found a craft that is not for me! Me and soldering are definitely not best friends, even though it was fun to try. I can't share photos of that here though as it's a gift for a friend who visits the blog here sometimes! Spoilers! 

Possibly my favourite workshop was the printing I did with The Arty Crafty Place. I was lucky enough to be sat at a very friendly table and we all had such fun. The wooden blocks print so beautifully. I have one of them at home (you can see what I've done with it here) but it was very exciting to have so many lovely designs to play with. After experimenting on a sample piece I opted to print a bag (because you can never have too many bags) 

It just needs an iron to set the textile paints (and to smooth it out!) then I'll have to decide if I'm going to keep it or give it to a friend. 

Right at the end of the day, as I waited to be able to use my off peak train ticket home, I joined the Grans on the Make at their Knit & Knatter and made a red and a green square. This is an amazing collaborative art project; they are creating 2 huge wall hangings that will be revealed at the Creative Craft Show in November. One is poppies made up of 1,568 squares, one for each day WW1 was fought. The other is to celebrate 100 years of votes for women in the UK and will be purple, white and green.

It was nice at the end of a busy day to sit with a hot drink, a ball of yarn and a hook and have a chat with some other makers. 

This is the show that I ran the ticket giveaway to a few weeks ago, so it was lovely to receive messages from some of the winners over the weekend, hearing how much they enjoyed their day.

ICHF Events organise a number of shows all over the UK throughout the year. If I've made you super jealous maybe see if there is one near you soon?