I was so thrilled to be able to visit Crafting Live at Doncaster this weekend, even more so because this is the first full-scale craft exhibition I have been to. of course, I did mean to go and have a good luck around and enjoy the atmosphere rather than spending too much, however, I quickly realised that wasn’t going to happen. Let’s just saying a crafter going to an exhibition and not spending money is on a par with a child going to a sweet shop and coming out empty handed and leave it at that!

So what were the highlights of my visit and what did I spend money on I hear you asking…

 My first stop of was at the Hunkydory stand where I just got a couple of Premium kits, On the Harbourside and Dreamy Diorama. I was somewhat restrained due to a small budget and already having an awful lot of kits I haven’t opened yet. I have to admit if the current Christmas Decolarge had been available it would have been purchased.

My next stop was the Dreamees stand, I only really became aware of them within the last year or so and I really love their products they are sensibly priced and really pretty. I bought three sets of stamps so I probably have about 12 sets of stamps and 6 discs now. Find out how I got on starting to play with them here. I am also a big fan of Hayley and Carol Bignall too, their TV shows are always inspirational and much more focussed on enjoying the craft than the hard sell. I was delighted to find they were both as lovely and down to earth in person too. Here is a photo of Hayley and me, she looks cool as a cucumber considering how hot it was in the exhibition hall and I look like I really should consider a diet  😳

I then took a look at the Card-io stand, I have been collecting their stamps (mainly Christmassy ones) for about a year now but haven’t actually used any yet. I think there is a good chance that will soon change, please feel free to remind me if I haven’t displayed any cards in the next couple of months.

The next memorable stop was at the Creative Crafting World stand where Pollyanna Pickering was. Knowing her artwork is so well known far beyond the crafting world I was really honoured that she signed a disc for me and had a photo with me too.  The disc I bought was the Winter’s Tale which features some beautiful wildlife in winter settings.

The final purchase I made was a set of adhesives from the Affixit stand. I mentioned in a previous post about adhesives that I wanted to compare their sticky pads to the Hunkydory ones, so now I will have the chance. I’ll let you know the results when I have done this.

Well, I have to say that the visit took a lot out of me, I felt completely shattered in the afternoon afterwards and have not managed to do an awful lot today but it was completely worth it, using the spoon theory I have used up all the weekend’s spoons and probably borrowed some from the coming week.