Craft Show - Eco Chic Craftacular 2011

The Annual Eco Chic Craftacular event is a large 2 day indie craft show, indoors & outdoors, promoting green living, community involvement, handmade art and crafts, buying local to support the economy, and plain old having fun. They have live music, crafts for kids, free swag bags, raffle for AWESOME prizes, live demonstrations and more. I am on the planning committee for this show, and the work that goes into it is a testament to how much we love arts and crafts in the Columbus community. But every year it has so been worth it.

The Eco Chic show is special in many ways:

• "Eco-chic" comes from the ecological focus of the event: Artists who apply are encouraged to bring a more environmentally sustainable approach to their work
• Eco-chic also plays out in the workshops/demonstrations that aim to teach green living techniques to the community 
• It is 2 days, a Saturday and Sunday (unlike the usual Friday-Saturday combo, if any longer than a day), to make it as family-friendly as possible
• Charity: Each year the show donates hundreds of dollars to the Whetstone Community Center (where it is held) in addition to other local environmentally-focused groups
• Community: there is a strong community focus to the show, from gathering sponsorships from locally-owned businesses to having volunteers for the day to giving back to the community when it's done
• Indoors and outdoors: this is a large show. One of the largest in Columbus, at over 60 vendors. By being both indoor and outdoor, you will find crafters whose wares fit great just on a table top, like jewelry and soaps, and also those who like room to expand in the large tents, like clothing and pottery

It also has all the things that make a craft show worth attending:

• Juried entries: all the artists showing must apply and be approved by a panel of judges. This isn't to be exclusive, but to promise to shoppers that what they see will be of good quality
• A mix of things to buy: planners also balance what type of crafts are accepted so that there isn't too much of one type of thing
• Swag bags of free giveaways from any participating artists in the show
• FOOD! Locally-owned food truck and cart favorites
• Live music by local artists
• Kids crafts and entertainment

I also happen to be the web designer for the site, http://www.columbuscraftacular.com Any artists or craft show lovers should click on over and add it to their blog lists, to get all the first news of the 2012 show as soon as it is posted!

Here are some photos of the rest of the show:

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