London's First Renegade Craft Fair

Designs by Tee & Toast

I’m desperate to go to America…for crafting purposes. It’s home to huge mega craft stores, houses oddles of indie crafters, craft celebrities (Martha Stewart, Crafty Chica) and new crazes and products you can’t get over here. When I first saw images of the Maker Fair in Craft magazine (one of the fabulous US craft mags that is distributed in good book stores on these shores) I was amazed by the standard and originality of the work being sold. Then a couple of years ago I was first in the queue when Bust magazine came over and hosted their first ever Craftacular (another great American craft fair.) It was held inside York Hall, Bethnal Green and was HUGE!

The renengade queen

This Autumn (last weekend) it was the turn of Renegade to visit us and bring their quirky indie craft vibe to bustling Brick Lane, east Londen where crafters from around the globe gathered to sell their wares. I was so excited, I visited (and shopped) both days!! Pictured is one of the organisers who insisted on looking anonymous. Renegade started back in 2003 in Chicago and focuses on DIY craft culture of the highest standards. Any old crafter, can’t just pitch up a stall, they have to prove their work is original, unusual, and carries with it the full DIY ethos. The selection of work is balanced offering prints, textiles, fashion, jewellery, interiors and papercrafts.

Milliner Janine Basil

I was soooo happy to meet Janine Basil in person, she is a milliner extraordinaire who’s Batman inspired work I discovered in her Etsy and Folksy stores. As regular readers of my blog will know, I am Batman obsessed and I treated myself to a beautiful glitter Bat hat from her stall. Image to follow when I wear it out. (Someone invite me to a Halloween party please!!). Check out her work online, it’s fabulous!

Art collector Matt

In tow I had Art collector Matt who is always on the look out to extend his ever growing collection of fine art and prints (he nearly owns enough to fill a gallery and has been known to queue for 'buying' at 4am in the morning on more than one occasion.) Completely overwhelmed by the standard of the work, he was super excited but found it hard to decide. In the end he opted for three pieces. The first one is to remind him he should buy a dog one day.

Artist Katie Mac

Then it was on to another wonderful print stall where Katie Mac’s colourful creations including one about fidgeting, were on his list.

Artist Todd Stewart

Finally he bought a screen-printed poster (the Man Man one) designed by Todd Stewart. I suspect he would have bought plenty more if he’d brought extra money!

Illustrator Kate Sutton

Inspired by the feeling that maybe I should own more ‘art’ and not just crafts, I bought this adorable hedgehog picture by Kate Sutton. Oh my! Her work was outstanding, I wanted to buy everything! If someone wants to buy me a present, you can get me anything she has designed. (Thanks!)

My free alpaca bag!

Kate was very sweet and gave me a free alpaca tote bag to carry it home in.

The Make Lounge crafternoon

London’s crafty hub The Make Lounge were one of the stalls running free workshops where  needle felted woodland animals were the order of the weekend.

Janine felting an Ecuadorian bird

My craft pal Janine and I couldn’t get into the British 'woodland' mood (she had just returned from Ecuador so her mind was filled with tropical images) and I was drawn to bright pink felt so she made a jungle bird and I felted a flamingo.

Huge blooms decorated the walls

For such a huge space, the fair was smaller than I expected (not on the same scale as the Bust Craftacular) but this had it’s benefits that you could properly focus on each stall. It certainly set the bar for craft markets in the UK to measure up to, it really was ‘high end’ DIY crafting yet extremely well priced. 

Renegade: you're welcome back

Until Renegade come back and see us in the UK again you can either attend one of their fairs in the states or shop for art and craft by their favourite designers in their online store. 
Thank you for visiting the UK! 

Red Velvet Cake Recipe: Tried & Tested

When my gym buddy Ruby announced she was moving back to Hong Kong a Ruby Red leaving do was in order so I took it upon myself to organise the bash...held at Cafe Rouge of course. As well as imposing a strict 'you must wear red....even if it's just a coat of lippy' dress code (luckily my hair was all I needed so I wore my new green dress from Brick Lane Vintage market) and sprinkling shiny red hearts every where, it gave me the perfect excuse to finally try the Red Velvet cake recipe from The legendary Hummingbird Cook Book. 

Hummingbird Bakery are an American cup cake chain who pretty much revived the Cupcake obsession in the UK. These days you can't go anywhere without seeing a cupcake or some kind of cupcake memorabilia. (I remember the days when we called them fairy cakes and reserved them for children's birthday parties and school fetes.) I'm not much of a cupcake kind of girl. Give me a proper slice of sponge cut from a big round cake any day. One cupcake is never enough and 1/2 of it tends to be topping, so I took the Red Velvet cupcake recipe and converted it into a giant gateaux (the bakery sells both kinds.) 

Btw, just because I'm a crafter does not automatically make me a baker (these days there's so much pressure for crafty girls to be domestic goddesses and baking is on top of the list.) I rarely bake and even more rarely follow recipes. I'm a 'bung in anything and measure nothing' kind of chef but as I knew 20 people would be eating this creation and it was for a special occasion, I focused and tried my best to whip up something worthy of a place on the Hummingbird shelf. Try it for your self (recipe reproduced from the book):

Ingredients (1/2 these measurements to make a tray of 12 muffin sized cupcakes)

120g  unsalted butter

300g caster sugar

2 eggs

20g cocoa powder (Green &Blacks)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

240ml of buttermilk (stored in supermarkets near the single cream)

300g plain flour

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of baking powder

3 teaspoons of white wine vinegar (I left this out and it didn't matter!)

(Frosting and filling) 250g cream cheese (full fat Philadelphia)

500g icing sugar

100g unsalted butter

(Most important bit) 40ml red food colouring

This is what makes the cake red but remember you're competing against dark cocoa powder so you need the red to override the brown. Commonly found red food colouring in supermarkets won't work, you need to get a quality one from a cake decorating stockist. Hummingbird recommend Dr Oetkers and Nigella Lawson recommends Sugarflair in 'Christmas Red' which is a paste not a liquid. I went with that, which I bought from The Make Lounge Shop. One jar was the perfect quantity.

You also need 3x 20cm round tins, lined with greaseproof paper and to pre-heat your oven to Gas Mark 3, 170 degrees.

 Method

Beat the butter and sugar with a whisk on medium setting either using a hand held one like me, or inside a mixer/blender. The mixture should be light and fluffy. Slowly add the eggs, turn up the speed on the blender and make sure everything is well incorporated.

In a separate bowl mix the cocoa, red food colouring and vanilla to make a dark paste. Add it to the butter mixture and blend in. Turn the mixer down to a low speed and stir in 1/2 of the buttermilk. Add 1/2 the flour, beat again, then repeat adding the remaining buttermilk and flour. Turn the blender back to high and keep going until it's mass of smooth, creamy red mixture. Add the salt, baking powder and vinegar if using, beat well and then for extra measure beat for another two minutes. On a hand blender it takes its toll but it's worth it and I kept going until I was happy it was super smooth.

Split the mixture into your three tins, they should be 2/3s full (as should your cake cases if you are making cupcakes) and bake for 20-25 minutes. Don't open the oven too soon and don't leave them in too long. Insert a skewer and check the sponge on top bounces back when touched to know it's done. Leave to cool down. 

To make the cream cheese frosting, beat the sugar and butter together using a whisk, add the cream cheese in one go then beat it on a medium/high speed until the whole mixture is blended, light and fluffy...again this may take a good five minutes. (NB I am wearing my PJs in this pic, I have not started wearing animal print clothing!)

Spread the filling between the layers and on top, and if you like, over the edges but I decided against this. I finished with a sprinkling of edible glitter across the top.

I didn't get a chance to photograph the completed cake before it got cut but here's the slices as they were being handed out.

I was so happy the cake got polished off! Nothing fills a chef with more pride than knowing their hard work has been appreciated. And here's my Arches Leisure Centre gym crew ( a sample of them!) who did the chomping. Usually we only see eachother looking sweaty in trainers and sports gear (I hasten to add I do wear sequins at the gym but that's another post!) so it's really nice when we have our socials and get the opportunity to glam up. (Btw all those who didn't show up wearing red got made to wear sticky red gemstones.)
Cake verdict: The entire cake cost £10 and took about two hours to make. I remember the first time I tried red velvet in Hummingbird and it was the most divine cake I'd ever eaten. I never imagined I would one day be baking it myself. It's a very straight forward recipe, the topping is sweet but the filling isn't, making it a really good combo. I say give this recipe a go! Just don't burn your arm when you're taking it out of the oven, I now have to live with a 4cm long scar and it's not pretty so it's just as well the cake was!

FAB Printing

Yum!

After working 16 days straight without so much as a teeny weeny lie-in I found myself on Thursday night (a day normally reserved for the gym but no way was I in the mood for pulling my stomach in and lifting bar-bells), visiting The Make Lounge for an evening of cordial, cake and crafting thanks to the lovely folk at Snapfish, who organised a stamping workshop for crafty addicts like me. Of all craft techniques stamping is my least favourite, I cannot understand how they make entire stamping magazines, nothing about it has ever appealed to me. I generally think it's because the stamps in existence are so awful. In HobbyCraft they have a huge aisle dedicated to stamps but I've never found one I like and believe me I have looked and looked. I've seen other crafters on websites like Folksy saying they have 'made their own stamp' something I couldn't get my head around, it just sounds so pointless and complicated.....but how uneducated was I???????

Pricey but amazing

Bring on Speedy-Carve, (available online and in The Make Lounge shop), so unlike the horrendous brownish grey lino you used to get at school with its hard surface and woven underside....this bubblegum pink linoish foamy sheet is pricey BUT revolutionary. It makes stamping accessible and gives you the freedom to make your own stamps in minutes. In fact it was so powerful, it totally hypnotised me into a stamping convert.

Lovely books

One thing I always complain about is that I can't draw and everyone thinks I'm being ridiculous. But I 100% stick by the statement, I hate my drawings, maybe it just because I don't do it enough but everything I draw seems to have a childishness about it and not in a good way : ( Some people can draw amazingly and maybe they feel they can't do other things but anyway, the point is I arrived straight from a stressful deadline at work and had to draw something immediately! Normally panic would have set in but it was prevented by three things:

1. The tutor Zeena Shah was gorgeous and lovely and with her huge smile there was no way a person could feel frustrated

2. The whole atmosphere in the class was very relaxed, everyone was beavering away (I arrived 30 minutes late) and I couldn't wait to join them

3. Zeena had some brilliant books for inspiration and both had such beautiful pictures - also she encouraged me to 'trace them if I wanted to.' Zeena I love you for that. It's the best thing to say to an unconfident drawer. If you say to them 'don't copy do your own thing' it's really hard but if you say it's ok, copy if you want, it makes you feel like 'nah i'm ok, I can do it myself' which is what suddenly came over me.

Time for carving

And just like that out of thin air I visualised a FAB lolly and the first step was drawing it on the pink lino.

This beats the gym

Carving was a cinch, the scalpal just glided on and you didn't need to go too deep. It was just so smooth and easy and a million times more fun to use that traditional lino.

Oooh, which colour first?

Then it was on to testing the inks, they were all fresh pads (yum!), and the ink transferred best by holding the pad upside down on the stamp rather than holding the stamp over the pad and pressing it down.

I did several modifications until I was happy, testing the design, then chipping away the background and centre lolly layer before concentrating on the background again where tiny little bits kept leaving marks until I was content that this was the FAB stamp I was going to use for life!

The stationary range

Then I went stamping mad and printed lots of different bits of paper to make cards, writing paper and gift tags. By now I felt like a complete addict and had already decided that I wanted to make a matching ice-cream cone too.

Showing off time

The session was attended by 12 other crafty types and crafy bloggers including:

CeriMakes,Glitter Shim, HmHomecrafts, Blush Crafts

and the ever amazing Deadly Knitshade who runs London's biggest and most successful crafty club Stitch London. We had a nice catch up over cupcakes (as is compulsory at any craft event.) Above is a selection of the creations made by them.

And here's my final stamp which has been glued into a wooden block to make it look professional - beat that Hobbycraft!

At the end of the session Snapfish gave us all a goody bag with a voucher to try out the Snapfish service (which I will report back on when I find something I want to print - the voucher runs out in December so bare with me!) and this amazing mug. Snapfish provide an online photo printing service where you can print photos (or even crafty creations) on to a range of objects, clothing, photobooks etc. Yes I know a lot of companies like this exist but I've tried four in the past and they hugely vary in ease of use - some like CEWE are soooooooo complicated I've had a £100 voucher for a year and not used it because the website is so complex while MOO are super easy. I will see how Snapfish goes and report back.

And so, will I stamp again? Using Speedy Crave and if I ever get confident enough to draw again then HELL YEAH! The internet and books are brimming with craft tutorials and the majority are over complicated and nice to look at and although this wasn't a tutorial, I want to stress that anyone can do this craft. (If they can afford speedy carve and stamps which will set you back over £10), it's one of the simplest and most accessible crafts I've tried in ages and even non-drawers like me will get amazing results. Now that's the kind of craft I like!!!