The Fairy Tale Fair

Today we hand over to another guest blogger - Claire Montgomery - to tell us about The Fairy Tale Fair...

The Fairy Tale Fair is a well established and well loved craft fair in Brighton. We launched in 2012 in Patcham, Brighton and we have continued to grow and build a loyal following of stall holders and customers. The Facebook page now has 5,000 fans, twitter isn’t far behind and our blog has had over 60,000 views since launch in summer 2012, which is an amazing feeling. In summer 2014 we launched our new site (www.thefairytalefair.co.uk) and started an exciting expansion for the fair...

Christmas 2014 will see The Fairy Tale Fairs biggest expansion yet! This year we are holding three festive fairs and for the first time venturing into central Brighton. There is lots to look forward to with an array of wonderful craft and vintage sellers. Join us in our established home of Patcham Methodist on November 15th, at the newly regenerated Brighton Open Market on November 23rd, and most exciting of all at Brighton Racecourse on Saturday 6th December! Here there will be 100 stalls plus lots of magical extras, making it Brighton’s biggest handmade craft fair this winter. Highlights include Santa’s photo booth, free vintage hair and make up, the Snow Queen from Frozen performs ‘Let It Go’ live, face painting by fairies, singers & dancers, goody bags and lots more!
 

We see the fairs are the perfect opportunity to get your gifts handmade and one off this year, and avoid the stress of the high street. You’ll also be supporting the talented designers and makers, many of whom are local, and waiting to sell their creations to you!

We are lucky enough to have been chosen as one of American Express’ top 100 small businesses of 2014 for Small Business Saturday UK, which is on Saturday 6th December (the day of our Racecourse fair). Small Business Saturday is a grass-roots, non-political, non-commercial campaign that supports, inspires and promotes small business and encourages people to support small businesses in their communities, both on the Saturday itself and beyond. We are honored to have been chosen by a global company as prestigious as American Express out of all the small businesses who applied across the UK it feels very special. So where did it all begin?

The Fairy Tale Fair is the creation of myself, Claire Montgomery (aka Cat-a-Cake Creations). As a designer and regular on the craft scene myself I decided to set up my own craft fair. I love taking part in craft fairs but felt there was a lack of community based fairs for all the family to enjoy. After a few months planning and hounding craft-y contacts The Fairy Tale Fair was finally born! The first fair was in August 2012 and was in fact the hottest day of the year! It was held in a little hall in Patcham, Brighton and despite the blazing sun saw a huge turn out! It was quite stressful in the lead up to the first event, not knowing what the response or turn out would be but luckily it all went well. Stall holders and visitors very much enjoyed their day- eating alice in wonderland themed cakes, drinking gallons of tea and selling or buying wonderful handmade creations. One thing was for certain though- we needed a bigger venue! And now here we are just over 2 years later with 3 big fairs on the way and 180 stalls filled for Christmas 2014!

For further information and a full schedule of each of the fairs head over to the fairs website: www.thefairytalefair.co.uk. Hope to see you there, looking suitably festive!