There Ain’t No Party Like an Etsy Craft Party

Picture the scene- a quiet corner of Boston Tea Party on Corporation Street, Birmingham on an ordinary Saturday afternoon. The little cardboard ‘reserved’ signs giving little clue as to what’s to come. Slowly, but surely the corner fills with slightly tentative crafty locals, shyly greeting each other, settling down at the tables, and then……KAPOWWWW!!! Yarn, paper, glue, ink, tea, cake, pom poms, flowers, bunting everywhere! This, ladies and gentlemen, is the IDEAS Birmingham Team’s Etsy Craft Party.

Once a year, Etsy invite their Teams around the globe to join in with the Craft Party Event. It’s really just an opportunity for like-minded Etsy sellers to get together and make things, simple as that! Now, you may have already noticed that we at IDEAS Birmingham have ever such a slight obsession with cake; we may have mentioned it once or twice in previous blog posts…we may also pose the very important question ‘What is your favourite cake?’ on our Ice Breaker thread on the team forum….indeed, many of us may consider it the most important food group. I think it’s only natural that our Craft Party be held somewhere we could simultaneously craft and cake. We chose Boston Tea Party on Corporation Street for our venue. We were given a lovely little corner of the cafe, tucked away just enough so that we weren’t disturbing anyone with our paper and yarn rustling, but still close enough to be part of the lovely cafe atmosphere. The staff at Boston Tea Party were very welcoming and accommodating, and the tea and cake was just as I like it- delicious and plentiful! The gluten free choices looked pretty impressive too!

Our event was sponsored by The Pink Pig , who provided us with lovely mini sketchbooks for our goody bags and a beautiful selection of their Thai tissue papers in an absolute multitude of colours! The papers were put to good use making honeycomb paper pom poms, and Lottie from Simply Charlotte B gave our teamies some demos on paper flower making. We had more paper crafts in the form of printed paper bunting, Fiona from Made by FeFiFo brought along digitally printed flags that she designed, along with her own beautiful hand carved stamps for the team to use. We also got our pom pom on; it was just like going back to Primary School days- although pom pom makers have moved on a bit since the old corrugated cardboard double doughnut affairs, and a zillion hours spent looping the yarn round with a darning needle!

The whole event was really well received; not just for the cake and craft, but also the knowledge and tips, sharing our small business stories with one another too. It was altogether a very lovely afternoon- good cake, good craft and good company, it’s really what IDEAS Birmingham is all about!