Manmade, the modern craft fair

with Crafty Fox and Mr Wingate

Here in the office we love a craft beer fair as much as anyone else so when we heard about Manmade from Jamie Mr X Stitch we though well we simply MUST go along and view all the Kraft textured letterpress laser cut handicrafted goodness and above all, the lovely geeky bearded crafty blokes. Because we love a crafty bloke. Our number ONE favourite artist there was El Horno AKA Richard Horne with his quirky Print Vend machine. We were MOST excited to receive not one but TWO pieces of Real Art by using smooth golden tokens and twisting a special handle which went CLUNK. They came in beautiful little boxes with badges, too. We printed our own words on notebooks using an Adana Letterpress with Sort Design. Mathieu I-Perles printed one that said "GIT" and I went for the simpler "DAD". We pulled the handle of the press ourselves and it was a pleasure to watch the thick ink print so neatly and crisply, biting through slightly to gently deboss the next page. Such beauty for only £1. Go do it yourself here We wanted to get a personalised beard comb but I don't have a beard (yet?!) We fell in love with Neverwhere all over again when we saw Tomsky's beautiful 3D wooden laser cut art piece depicting London Below. He also does wonderful pieces of jewellery that are so well thought-out they somehow take the idea of laser-cutting for jewellery to the next level (we've seen a LOT of laser cutting, m'kay) We ate delicious non-dairy "milk" chocolate made by Ethicoco. Their Coconut Bites (like Bounty bars but as my husband said; 1000 times nicer) were gone within minutes. NOM. Of course we drank cold delicious #craftbeer from Canopy brewery which was superb. Inspired? we were. We saw LOADs more than that too, too much to mention here so get yourself along to the next one and if you fancy a bit of stitching, jewellery making, beads for making or crafting in general, get on down to i-beads.co.uk for some of the most carefully selected and top quality beads and stones you will find in the UK.