Craft Central, moves into the Centre of Wellington

For over a year Craft Cent­ral’s been a delight­ful little mar­ket held monthly at Miramar School, one of those little secrets only loc­als know about, like Craig the Chem­ist who always has stick­ers on hand to bring a smile to kids’ faces.  But Libby and Kath­er­ine, Craft Cent­ral’s cre­at­ors, had big dreams, to turn their 100% NZ made mar­ket into an Event Mar­ket, one with all the bells and whistles that has an answer to every prob­lem shop­pers have at fairs, and to cre­ate an exper­i­ence that just made you happy.

This Sat­urday Octo­ber 4th from 10am till 3pm Craft Cent­ral is com­ing to town at The St James Theatre in Court­ney place –  for if you have Big Grand Plans why not have them at a big grand light-filled his­tor­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant build­ing?

For shop­pers there are over 75 stalls each selling NZ-made cre­ations. The per­son you shop from is the per­son who cre­ated what you buy, no imports, no resellers, just authen­t­ic loc­al craft and design across a range of dis­cip­lines like ceram­ic artist Sarah Wigley, fash­ion illus­trat­or Pixel Ink, artist Joe McMe­nam­in, print maker The Paper Bird Soci­ety, fab­ric and wall­pa­per design­er Eef and Ini, design­er Alis­on Blaine and Auck­land based crafter Zip­pity­DooDah ,  and chil­dren’s cloth­ing design­er and maker Hikkepik.

In Libby’s words:

“No oth­er mar­ket offers this level of tal­ent and this range of product, from boutique fash­ion, ceram­ics, home­ware, tex­tiles, design­er wall­pa­pers, jew­ellery, steam­punk curi­os­it­ies, eco products and more, this event will delight and amaze.”

For cre­at­ive types there is an abund­ance of activ­it­ies. The Wel­ling­ton Maker­space Char­it­able Trust will be run­ning free stop-motion anim­a­tion work­shops dur­ing the day. Work­shops are so cent­ral to Craft Cent­ral that upstairs an entire room is devoted to five dif­fer­ent work­shops run­ning all day long. Aimed at bothadults and kids, they are designed to give every­one a go at mak­ing. As par­ents Libby and Kath­er­ine know the prob­lems of jug­gling shop­ping and fam­ily, they wanted “par­ents to enjoy the event with their kids so we designed work­shops that get kids craft­ing allow­ing Mum or Dad to do a spe­cial activ­ity with the kids as well as shop­ping for unique and beau­ti­ful items.”

Down­stairs there’s  a knit lounge where you can take your first stitches into the world of knit­ting, or get some help with a pro­ject your cur­rently stuck on. Or just hang out with fel­low fans of yarn and have a glass of wine or cof­fee from The Jimmy and work on your latest pro­ject.

Finally there are prizes, for the first 50 people through the door at 10am (when the fair starts) are free gift bags pack with treats from Craft Cent­ral Artis­ans, like badges from Super­Very and  ear­rings from Things Unseen.  Sign up for their mail­ing list before the fair and win $100 of Craft Cash to spend on the day, or you can enter  a raffle to win a giant bas­ket of crafts, with all money going dir­ectly to Wel­ling­ton Chil­dren’s Hos­pit­al.

And for Wel­ling­tonista Read­ers, here’s some­thing spe­cial from Super­Very, you can  win a set of these col­our­ful birds. Just com­ment here with the stall you are  most excited about & we’ll draw & announce a win­ner on Fri­day.  The win­ner can pick their prize up at the fair on Sat­urday.

The fair is free to every­one so see you on Sat­urday at Craft Cent­ral!