November / December round up

November and December was a really busy period for us, it seems like they went in a blink of an eye! We'll start at the end of October / beginning of November with Whitby Goth Weekend.

Whitby Goth Weekend

New range of umbrellas on
prominent display

Whitby Goth Weekend was the great weekend that it usually is. It was good to catch up with the people that we don't see at the other events we go to and The Magpie was up to it's usual standard too!

We had a new range of umbrellas which went down really well despite some initial grumbles from superstitious people about putting umbrellas up indoors, Gothic / Steampunk inspired Christmas baubles and a range of telescopes and compasses.

MCM Birmingham Comic Con

This weekend was really, really busy hence the reason there is no photos - we didn't have time to take any! Highlights of the weekend included seeing Virginia Hey from Farscape, who is now selling hand made vegan soap on Etsy, and a really good cos-play version. Liv Tyler was charging £150 for a signed photo, the queues were insane for her and so was her security. It was like the President had visited Comic Con!
The only blemish of the weekend was that we had a few items were stolen overnight, but we're going back in March - we hope to see you there

Steampunks in Space

We went to Steampunks in Space at the National Space Centre to play and let our hair down at the last Steampunk event we would attend before the New Year. The event was really good fun and set in a brilliant setting - we're not sure what was more interesting, the Steampunks or the displays themselves. We plan to go back to visit the Space Center to have a proper look round in the New Year and have bought an annual pass.

A Local Christmas Fair

Our stall

It's not often we get invites or information about local events / Christmas fairs but as we had a range

of Christmas baubles and other Christmas themed items we thought we'd give it a shot. Unfortunately the foot fall wasn't as expected and was well down on last year but we had a good time anyway and met some really nice people and we received a lot of interest in Steampunk and what it was.
However, we did realise the potential of Facebook selling so every cloud has a silver lining. 

Worcester Victorian Christmas Market

Christmas-themed items

I don't think the organisers of the Worcester Victorian Christmas Market could have picked a worse weekend to hold the event on if they tried. The weather was absolutely atrocious - we got completely drenched walking round Worcester. Despite the weather there were some really interesting stalls selling a variety of hand-crafted and other items and was really, really busy.

Without doubt, the majority of the vendors were selling Christmas related items including decorations and unique gifts some of them being hand made by the vendors, such as the items shown in the photo on the left, but as a Victorian Christmas Market, there was a few stalls selling traditional Victorian items as well.

These are just a few of the highlights of the Christmas Fair.

A Goth / Alternative stall

Victorian confectionary

Hand-made Jewellry

A Steam powered...

...carousel

Asylum Steampunk Festival VII

Before we start the blog, we would like to wish Empire Edibles all the best for the future as it transpires that this is their last event... we will savour the last of the fudge with bittersweet feelings.

The Asylum Steampunk Festival VII was a truly awesome weekend, not only because the weather was good for a Bank Holiday weekend with the exception of Monday. But no-one can really complain because it was one day out of four.

Our Marquee by The Banjo

As usual we were in the Castle right on the side of the Banjo which meant we had excellent views of all the activities planned, including the Wacky Races and Jet Pack race.

After last year, we decided that we'd bring leathercraft supplies and leather with us because we kept being asked what we used to make our goggles/masks, etc. These went a lot better than we expected so we will be continuing to offer leathercraft supplies at our future events as well as on-line.

Is this the only Steampunk
Camper Van?

 One thing we love about attending Steampunk events is people's absolute ingenuity on show at every event and this one certainly didn't disappoint.
When the Castle had closed, we went for a well earnt drink but got sidetracked by an innocuously looking grey van with a large group of people hanging around. Of course, natural curiosity got the better of us so we went over and found that the van had been converted into a fully-working, self-sufficient Steampunk camper-van of which some items had been donated, such as the copper coal pan that they'd turned into a sink. There are solar panels on the roof which provide enough electricity for the lights, TV, etc. and the water system includes a filtering system so they can rock up anywhere, but we're not sure what the toilet situation is!

On closer inspection, the only thing that would have given it away was the brass port-hole windows on the outside.

Albot

"Albot" made his debut on Monday, despite the rain and made an instant impact with the kids.

He is a radio-controlled robot with fully moveable arms, head, eyebrows and "computerised" sounding voice so was able to convey a number of emotions based on the tone of his voice and the position of his eyebrows.

No self-respecting Steampunk robot would be complete without having a chimney bellowing forth smoke...

A special mention must be made to the fellow who made a jet pack that emitted smoke with that very satisfying barbecue smell.. particularly as we got quite excited at the prospect of a barbecue only to have our hopes dashed when we discovered it was his jet-pack. His partner said that the kitchen had smelt like it for months as he tried to perfect the smell, he had total dedication and ingenuity that must be celebrated along with the rest of the contraptions created for this weekend.

We look forward to next year to see what you all come up with next!

Celebrating the Magna Carta

This year was the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. To celebrate, Lincoln Castle had commissioned someone (I never found out who) to create a stunning sand sculpture to commemorate the anniversary. The level of detail in the sculpture was amazing and I'm not surprised it took 2 weeks to complete however, I don't know when it was finished but do they use some sort of binding agent afterwards to make it last? It stood up suspiciously well to the pouring rain on Monday...


On our travels, we have spoken to many people who attend the Whitby Goth Weekend but for whatever reason have not been into the Spa Pavillion. As we prepare for this event we would like to take the opportunity to encourage you to visit us (and the other traders) because we are constantly evolving our products and will have different items to those at Lincoln or sold out of.

As a final thought, we would like to say thank-you to all the people we met and traded with over what was a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend and we hope to see you again next year.

Facebook chucked us off!

Yes - Facebook chucked us off, during their apparent purging of accounts that didn't fit their criteria of being 'real' names. You may or may not have been affected but we've heard of whole groups, pages and events have been lost because the admin accounts have been removed.

Anyway, after a lot of faffing around trying to get things back into some order, we have created a brand new Facebook page which we invite you to like or follow to get all our updates for our future events and creations. Unfortunately, we have lost our friends list somehow as well, so those of you who were our friends in previous adventures, please send us a friend request and accept our apologies for not sending you a friend request.

Facebook is a wonderful tool, but can be damn frustrating as well!

WGW Nov 2014

not that we're biased...
splendid use of goggles

Wow!! That was one of the best weekends we've had so far at the awesome Whitby Goth Weekend. It's taken us a while to recover what with the excitement of the weekend. There was some amazing outfits being displayed in the most splendid ways and of course it was nice to see some of our regulars.

We always like it when people come back to see us to show how they've used our creations to exquisitely embellish their outfits with our creations. This Lady has used a pair of our goggles with a head-piece complimenting the rest of her outfit wonderfully.

Whitby was closed to
visitors on Saturday

Right from the start it proved to be a hectic weekend with people from all walks of life converging on Whitby in the masses. As you can see from the front page of the Whitby Gazette, the town was full and was closed to visitors on Saturday causing havoc with the Park and Ride and local bus services.

With the sun showing his face pretty much most of the time it gave a more summer feeling to the weekend, with families, steampunkers goths and other genres enjoying the unusually warm weather with a visit to the beach. It was almost warm enough to create an outdoor market!



We do, however, like our quaint setting and as it was Halloween on Friday this year some of our fellow traders decided to take the opportunity to get into the spirit of it by giving their stalls a Halloween theme. The pictures below are of our neighbours Twisted Ivy who are the first stall on the right as you go through the doors into the Spa Theatre.

Twisted Ivy's Halloween
Theme

The Skull was motion
activated

This year we thought we would branch out from our hand crafted goods made with our fair hands. So we are now officially suppliers for the fantastic Nemesis Now and Alchemy. Just a little taster of whats to be expected.

Swaggering Sticks from
Nemesis Now

Steampunk inspired jewelry
from Alchemy

Well once again with all that in mind I thought I would don you with my delights of the weekend. We had our usual Friday night supper with friends at the award winning Magpie fish restaurant followed by an enchanting day trading whilst sharing our wealth of knowledge with the lovely public in regards to our new area on our table display which was........... Drum roll please.............

New range of Leather
crafting supplies

Thats right.... we are now the proud owners of leather crafting supplies. These will soon to be listed in our etsy shop for your perusal. We have loved learning our skills over the years while making our creations. but my favourite part of all is seeing what other people do the items they buy from us. 

So as usual after a very belated update for you lovely people, Thank you for reading and hope to see you all at the next event. Which for us is the switching on of the Bewdley Christmas lights on the 29th Novemberwith one of the best firework displays to watch

Asylum VI

Well.. what a weekend! I'm not sure where it went, time flies when you're having fun. We went to Lady Elsie's Fashion Gala and Oh Dear, What Would The Major Say - both splendid events in their own right but the highlight had to be the comedy burlesque routines performed by Velma Von Bon Bon

Our wares on display

We were in the Castle right by the road which gave a perfect view of the events going on including the wacky races, which wasn't wacky enough in our opinion, and the M.A.D.T display which was amazing. Being in the castle also gave us the opportunity to speak to Steampunks as well as 'normal' people visting the castle and we may have made Steampunks out of a few of them...

Our pop-up marquee

This weekend was the first chance we had to try out our new PayPal Here app for taking card payments. It worked wonderfully and we have high hopes that it'll work just as well at our next event, Whitby Goth Weekend, because they are notoriously fickle, especially in the Spa Theatre in the Pavillion.

We hope to see you all there!