Rescued and Revived: August 2009

We did the BUST craftacular at Bethnal Green, London yesterday. We were up til midnight the night before attempting to start a sofa throw - and drinking a little wine in the process.... Roxy drove and miraculously found the way with just her memories, nerve and me with a tiny A-Z - set up our table in the big old York Hall and admired all the trendy young things setting up stalls with us... we were probably the oldest crafters there! (as we thought we would be...) there was some very lovely stuff and we were pleased to see The Seaside Sisters set up their fabulous seaside inspired tent opposite us - complete with fairy lights, buckets and spades, bunting and even "guess the number of teabags in the thermos" and "pick the lucky lolly stick" games.... not to mention their lovely outfits (see photos)- their stuff was very beautiful and clever and we had a nice time chatting to them. Other highlights were the fabulous New York lady "Hand of Fatima" - her stall was mobbed the whole time and I bought I necklace, Mandy (Feltbug) bought some earrings with the jawbones of a mink hanging from them - she had dressed her table very cleverly with old cases open to display her wares, old photos, old medicine bottles, her jewellery was fashioned from found objects, mostly Freemason's badges and religious bits and pieces and the odd small animal bone, all very beautiful and stange and different. I could happily have come away with at least 4 necklaces but reined myself in and settled for one. She has a shop on Etsy and should be checked out! Another favourite were Lost at Sea who make beautiful tattoo inspired brooches and necklaces from handdyed and veneered wood, very talented. There were lots more but I forget their names..... There was a queue round the block to get in at 12 noon so we were very excited and everyone who thronged in seemed to be young and very interestingly dressed - lots of vintage outfits and we enjoyed people watching from behind our pile of blankets and cushions. We sold 4 cushions and a corsage and had a blanket reserved by someone - we could only take cash on the day so it was hard to sell the blankets as not many people are walking about with £120 plus on them for one purchase. We had lots of great positive feedback from people, everyone loved Roxy's latest cushions "Don't Panic" with original Australian artillary army badge on it and her "relationship cushions" - "Love you forever and ever..." "Sorry I over-estimated forever..... Goodbye" - two of which were sold and also her "Everything is coming up roses" cushion and my "Fly" cushion. It was a very long day, packing up shop at 8pm and getting home at 9.30pm but we had lots of fun and met lots of lovely people. Our one complaint was the DJs who were playing on the stage next to us during the afternoon/evening - it was too loud (we are OLD LADIES after all!....) and we did not understand the ladies in the lurid ponchos who were having a little party of their own on stage for a while - was it meant to be an act? - (see photos!) It was great to see our bestest mate Mandy who always shows up for us and her lovely daughter Jamila and friends, she told us to enter for the show in the beginning and we are very grateful to her. We are going to be setting up a website in the next few weeks and putting more stuff on our Etsy shop - making lots of sofa throws and some more cushions and the odd wall-hanging. We are keen to do the BUST show in December - if we get picked again.... !