Last Chance to Bookmark Artists from the 2011 Indie Craft Parade

The 2nd Annual Indie Craft Parade had amazing vendors. Besides the fact that they are a group of talented artists with fabulous products, they're just great people. So we want to give you one last reminder to support them before we close the links to their websites. We're well under way in planning the 2012 Indie Craft Parade, and it's time to make room for a new lot of artists and crafters. The links on our Participants page will be live through this weekend. We will close them on Monday, January 23. Now is the time to bookmark or pin your favorite artists from the 2011 show.

Here's a little recap of our vendors work.

Letterpress card from Racing Snail Press.

Custom paper dolls from Jordan Grace Owens.

Eco-friendly bears by Pogo Shop.

Sculpture by CME Studios.

Pet clothes and accessories by Tree Parlor.

Pendants by Cameoko.

Thanks again to all of the 2nd Annual Indie Craft Parade participants. We loved having you, and we hope to see you in the future!

2011 Recap

On this last day of 2011, we're looking back on our festival stats for this year. It's always fun to see these numbers in graphic form. This data comes from applications and from a post-show vendor survey, so keep in mind that any of the vendor information is based only on those who responded to the survey. Click on the countdown graphic below to view all of this year's charts on Daytum — including Exhibitors by State, Entries per Category, and more!

Thank you all for your support of Indie Craft Parade this year and of 'our' artists through this holiday season. We'll see you next year!

Giveaway Winner Announced!

Congrats to Summer, commenter #29! You are the winner of the Christmas giveaway as chosen by random.org. We'll be emailing you with instructions on how to claim your prize.

Thank you so much to everyone who entered, we so enjoyed hearing what you love about Greenville. Our city is very lucky to have the support of people like you!

2011 Scholarship Winner

A few months ago, we announced the creation of an Indie Craft Parade scholarship fund. Today, we are pleased to announce that the 2011 winner of the $500 scholarship for art funding is Brook Glenn Elementary School in Taylors, SC.

An art project from students at at Brook Glenn.

While we knew it would be hard to choose just one school, since every art program needs extra funding, the board was impressed by the thorough plan submitted by art teacher Laura Shaw for utilizing the money in her arts curriculum. Laura's passion for inspiring students was very clear, and we're excited to partner with her and her school this coming year! Check back early next year for an update on the school and their program!

To introduce you to Brook Glenn, we wanted to share a few of the art projects the students have been working on and some quotes from their application:

"I believe that visual art is a language, one we encounter on an everyday basis and children need the ability to decipher and communicate through art."

Giant Holiday Card, Brook Glenn 5th Grade Class

"I have seen firsthand the joy and confidence a child receives from creating."

Primary Colors bubble wrap print, by Daniel (Pre-K)

We are excited about this new way that Indie Craft Parade can give back to our community, and we want to encourage each of you to remember your local schools too. Through this process, we were reminded that many art programs are lacking basic supplies and even a small donation of $25 or $50 could help greatly. This need prompted our board to contribute an additional $100 for art supplies to a second school, Gateway Elementary.

We've seen a glimpse of how much need there is for supporting the arts in our schools and while we can't fix everything, there are ways each of us can make a difference. Donate extra craft supplies you might have lying around the house, or encourage your church or workplace to contribute unused paper and supplies to a local art program. If you have more suggestions on how to help art teachers and their programs, add your comments below!

Christmas Giveaway!

Update: This giveaway is now closed. Congrats to Summer, the winner! In the spirit of Christmas, we wanted to do something special for you, our wonderful supporters. You know there are two things we love: handmade art and Greenville! So, we put together a lovely basket of handmade goods created by Greenville artists, and some of them inspired by our amazing city. One of you lucky readers will take home this basket of goodies!

Let see what's inside...

Some cozy fingerless gloves made by erin elizabeth

A set of three ceramic pear ornaments created by Crave Studio(photo by Crave Studio)

A box of peppermint bark artisan marshmallows by Malo

The limited edition "What If Greenville" screen-printed poster by Shed Labs(photo by Shed Labs)

A set of six butterfly gift tags created by Royal Buffet

And a "Love Greenville" screen-printed tee shirt by Parachute Clothing(photo by Parachute Clothing) (Winner will specify shirt size)

To enter to win this basket of goodies, leave a comment on this post and tell us something you love about Greenville. A random winner will be chosen and announced Thursday, December 15.

This giveaway is open to anyone in the continental US. If the winner is local, we'll ask them to pick the basket up  in downtown Greenville, SC. If not, we'll ship it to them.

A HUGE thank you to all the wonderful artists listed above, who generously donated these items for the giveaway. Please remember to support your local artists this holiday season. Be good & buy handmade!

Be Good & Buy Handmade

Whether you're a shop owner or a shopper, it's always good to be reminded to seek out handmade. Buying mass produced items may be easy, but seeking out something handmade is better for everyone!

To help us remember this, Cory Godbey created a beautiful graphic for us this holiday season! This phrase was borrowed (with permission!) from Micah Coston and the Illyria Pottery holiday show that took place a few weeks ago. We liked it so much that we've immortalized it in official Indie Craft Parade lettering!

And we created a few easy ways for you to share and enjoy:

You can download this graphic in one of three sizes: Huge: high-resolution image you can print for your home or shop Medium: sized for desktop backgrounds! 2560 x 1440, 1920 x 1200, 1440 x 900,  1280 x 800, 1024 x 768 Tiny: 200 x 200 px badge for adding to your blog or site

There are still a few weeks left until Christmas — plenty of time to be good, buy handmade and encourage others to do the same. We want people to remember artists and makers this time of year, so feel free to share, reblog, or print this for your own personal use. Spread the word and remind people how important it is to support handmade art.

Winners announced!

Congratulations to Stephen Crotts, commenter #2 and Robin Asire, commenter #10! You are the lucky winners of the ad space giveaway, as chosen by our good friend random.org. Check your email for instructions on how to claim your prize! Thanks to all who entered, we loved hearing about the special gifts you've given and received. Even if you didn't win, we'd love to have you as sponsors of the Indie Craft Parade blog. Click here to learn more!

We Are Giving Away Advertising Space!

Our goal for the Indie Craft Parade blog is to bring you useful information all year long, whether you're a buyer, a seller, or just an admirer of all things handmade. Besides our posts, we also have ad spaces for sale. Yes, advertising helps us raise a little bit of money, but hopefully it also keeps you up to date on events and lets you know about great shops and handmade goods outside of our own annual festival. We know that a lot of artists and entrepreneurs are running Christmas sales and that they're figuring out how to get the word out about their shops this time of year. So we have a little holiday special of our own.We're giving away two half-size blog ads for the month of December. All you have to do is leave a comment below for a chance to win.

These two winners will be chosen randomly and announced on November 28th. If you're a winner, keep in mind you will need to give us artwork for your ad by the 30th. We know it's a tight turnaround, but we want to make sure you get the full month of December on the blog!

Please note. This isn't limited to artists. It could be for an event, a business-- anything that you think our readers would like to know about.

To enter to win free ad space, answer this question in the comments below: What is the most meaningful gift you've ever given or received?

It's official! Dates for Indie Craft Parade 2012.

We're quite excited because we recently got confirmation on our dates for the 2012 Indie Craft Parade. The festival will be held Friday, September 7 through Sunday, September 9. For a while we were afraid we might have to change our venue or drastically alter the dates due to renovations on the Huguenot Mill (our location for the last two years). However, our dates are in the clear. We'll be back at the beautiful restored mill, and we're so ready to begin planning our work for next year! Stay tuned. All of the new information for next year will be available on our home page within the near future.

Indie Craft Parade Scholarship

We're so excited to announce the Indie Craft Parade Scholarship Program! Since we started Indie Craft Parade, we've wanted to do more than just put on a great show in Greenville. We want to make a lasting impact on our community. One of our hopes for Indie Craft Parade is that we can inspire another generation of artists by getting involved with the art programs of Greenville County schools. Our hope that this scholarship program will not only help fund a school's art program that is lacking in resources, but also expose students to a greater spectrum of art than is typically available in a classroom setting. For 2011, one scholarship of $500 will be awarded to a school in Greenville County. We want our scholarship to extend beyond just funding. We hope to establish a true partnership with the school that is selected and work together to create opportunities for students and local artists to connect. This may include demonstrations, assemblies or field trips.

Any school located in Greenville County can apply for these art program funds. Applications can be found online, and must be submitted by October 31.  Let your school know about this opportunity! Applications will be selected based on three main criteria, including:

• Educational impact of the scholarship
• Need of the applying school
• Proposed use of the funds

Read all the details about this program at our Scholarship Webpage.

The Indie Craft Parade scholarship is open to all schools, both public and private, in Greenville County. All schools are eligible for funding without discrimination due to race, religion, or socioeconomic status.

Featured Sponsor - Metropolitan Arts Council

If you've been to many art events in Greenville, then you've probably seen the Metropolitan Arts Council logo. MAC is a local organization whose mission is to support every aspect of the art movement in Greenville. Over the past few years, they have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to advance the visual arts in our area. Indie Craft Parade is especially appreciative of MAC--not only for their generous support of all our city's art endeavors but also for their partnership with Indie Craft Parade this year.

MAC's vision from their website:

MAC’s vision is a vision for the community, and MAC will be Greenville County’s trusted and visionary champion of the arts. Our role is to gather support from the community and provide it to member arts organizations - with the outcome being a nationally recognized arts environment enjoyed and patronized by an ever-growing regional audience.

Their vision for Greenville County is quite inspiring, and we can't thank them enough for everything they've done for our community.

Photobooth Galleries

The free photobooth at Indie Craft Parade is always a hit, and this year was no exception. With fun props like mustaches, elephants, flags, and chalkboards, everyone seemed to have a blast in front of the camera. We're so thankful for our generous sponsor, Oh Snap Photobooth, for donating this awesome service! The photobooth galleries are now online, and you can browse them here:

Friday, September 9Saturday, September 10Sunday, September 11

Here's a few of our favorite photo strips!

The Indie Craft Parade Booth

Here's a few shots of the Indie Craft Parade Booth! We had our fabulous merchandise, free temporary tattoos, sign-up sheets for volunteering, participating, or sponsoring next year, and free felt flags for the kiddos.

Photo by Peter Crane

If you missed out on picking up some sweet ICP merchandise, you can get it over at our online store for a few more days. We'll be closing up shop Sunday, September 18, so don't delay! All orders will receive a free set of our temporary tattoos.

These awesome people made the cool stuff you see above:- Plush Elephants (Hugo, our mascot) made by Three Bad Seeds- T-shirts & tote bags were designed by Cory Godbey- T-shirts & tote bags were printed by Dapper Ink- Notecards were designed by Elizabeth Ramos- Tattoos were designed by Cory Godbey and Elizabeth Ramos

Indie Craft Merchandise

Photo by Heidi Heilbrunn, The Greenville News

We had so much interest in the goods at our Indie Craft Parade booth that we've set up a (very) temporary online store for a few of the most popular products. Since we sold out of the red Indie Craft Parade shirts on day two, we'll be printing more for those who missed them. The two Indie Craft Parade tees pictured above and our Buy Handmade totebag will be available to order online, but just until next Sunday, September 18th!

Note: If you pre-ordered your shirt at Indie Craft Parade, you don't need to submit another order. You should have already received an email from us detailing the completion of your order.

Thank You from Indie Craft Parade!

Thank you so much to everyone who participated in the 2nd Annual Indie Craft Parade this past weekend. We had so much fun, and the event was absolutely amazing! We're working on getting all our pictures in order, so we'll be sharing those soon and recapping the event. In the meantime, if you have any photos from Indie Craft Parade and are willing to share them, please add them to our Flickr pool. We want to see all your pictures too!

Because we know you're all wondering, here are a few stats from this weekend: We had 5,000 wonderful attendees, 74 fabulous exhibitors, 32 amazing volunteers, 10 talented musical groups, 7 scrumptious food vendors, and 2 exhausted but happy organizers.

Thank you all again for an incredibly successful festival! We're so grateful for your support. We can't wait for next year!

Exhibitors setting up their booths before the event.

The 2nd Annual Indie Craft Parade is Here!

Just wanting to remind everyone that Indie Craft Parade starts tonight with our VIP Gala. We still have a few tickets left, so don't let this opportunity slip by. The food, music, and giveaways are going to be amazing! Buy your tickets here.

If you can't make it tonight, don't forget the festival is going on all weekend. Admission on Saturday from 9 AM to 7 PM and Sunday from 11 AM to 5 PM is FREE and completely open to the public.

We can't wait for you to meet all of our vendors. We've given you a sneak peek of just a few artists' work, and believe us--that's just the beginning. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

2011 Indie Craft Parade Musicians

We feel that live music is an essential part of the Indie Craft Parade experience. Last year, many of the musicians that played at Indie Craft Parade were new to us, but we came away from the weekend with a whole set of new favorite bands! This year, we have a few returning musicians, but with an extra event day to fill, we've also got some great new music to introduce you to as well. Thanks to all the great recommendations we received, we're pretty sure you'll find a few new favorites of your own this year.

The schedule of music for this year's Indie Craft Parade is below.

The Bent Strings

Friday's VIP Night 6pm-9pm: The Bent Strings

Esther Grace Ellis

Saturday 9am-11am: Lindsay Morelli 11am-1pm: The Ragged Orchids 1pm-3pm: Esther Grace Ellis 3pm-5pm: Jentry Rose 5pm-7pm: Corey Pelton

War Jacket

Sunday 11am-1pm: B Natural Jazz 1pm-3pm: War Jacket & Joel Madison Blount 3pm-5pm: Jay Albright

Many of these musicians will also be bringing CDs to sell at our Indie Craft Parade booth, so if you like they way they sound, you can take it home with you!

What to expect at Indie Craft Parade

You might be wondering what you as an attendee can expect at Indie Craft Parade, so hopefully this post will answer your questions!

Who is this festival intended for? The whole community! Indie Craft Parade is for anyone interested in purchasing handcrafted goods. Indie Craft Parade will feature the best handmade art in the Southeast, featuring 74 independent artisans. We invite the public to attend this festival and enjoy high quality crafts, local food, live music, and getting to know the artists in their community.

When is the 2011 Indie Craft Parade? This coming weekend, September 9-11. The VIP Gala is Friday night from 6 - 9 pm and is for ticket holders only (see details here).  The rest of the festival is free admission, and is open Saturday from 9 am-7pm, and Sunday from 11 am-5 pm.

Where is the festival being held? Indie Craft Parade is held indoors at the historic Huguenot Mill in downtown Greenville, SC. The mill is located at 101 W. Broad Street, next to the Peace Center. The venue is handicapped accessible. There is street parking available, and several parking garages with easy walking distance.

Is this event family-friendly? Absolutely! Saturday and Sunday are both free admission, so bring the whole gang. If you've got small children, we suggest you leave your stroller at home if possible. The aisles are a bit narrow, and can make maneuvering a stroller a little difficult. The only time alcohol will be served is at the VIP Gala, and attendees must be 21 years or older to partake.

What type of goods can I expect to see? At Indie Craft Parade, you'll find the best handcrafted goods in a variety of categories, everything from paintings to children's toys, paper goods to jewelry, ceramic mugs to artisanal chocolate. You can get a sneak preview of some of the work by checking out our Etsy treasury lists, like the one pictured above. We love seeing what the vendors have made, and had a little fun by making some color-coordinated lists. Check them out here: Blue,Green,Yellow,Pink,Red,Purple,Black & White.

Will credit cards be accepted? Probably not. This is primarily a cash event. Some vendors may have the ability to accept credit cards or checks, however you should be prepared to pay cash for most of the items you purchase. There is an ATM on site in case you forget your cash.

Will I have to wait in line? Maybe. We've expanded our hours and added an extra day to better accommodate the crowds, but depending on the turnout, you may have to wait in line before you enter. Obviously, our goal is to get everyone in as soon as possible, but we do have to respect the venue's fire code. If there is a line, we'll do our best to keep it moving quickly, and aim to have everyone in within about 15 minutes. If you'd like to avoid the line, you should attend our VIP Gala!

Is there food and drink on site? Yes! We're delighted to have the offerings of several local establishments available to our attendees. You can purchase items from FiggyWhigs Cupcakes, O CHA Tea Bar,The Bavarian Pretzel Factory, and Fresh Tamales on Saturday and Sunday. Our VIP Gala guests will receive complimentary food and drink from The Community Tap,Coffee & Crema, and Ribault St. Catering.

If you have any questions, please check out our FAQs. Or, leave a comment below and we'll reply!

Giveaway Winner!

Congratulations to commenter #31, Kathy M! You are the lucky winner of the 2 VIP Gala tickets, as chosen by random.org. We've just emailed you the tickets, so please let us know if for some reason they haven't come through. Thank you so much to everyone who entered the giveaway. If you didn't win, why don't you go ahead and get yourself a ticket or 2? You can purchase them right here. There's not too many tickets left, so don't wait too long or they may be sold out. (In the event that we're not sold out by the time the Gala opens, we'll sell any remaining tickets at the door.) Attending the VIP Gala not only gets you an amazing evening filled with fabulous handmade goods, free food and drink, live music, artist demonstrations, and giveaways, but you're also able to to support the arts community and the mission of Indie Craft Parade.

If you're not able to attend the Gala, please definitely join us on Saturday or Sunday. Both days are free admission, so bring the the whole family! We will be open on Saturday, September 10 from 9 am - 7 pm, and on Sunday, September 11 from 11 am - 5 pm. Stay tuned later today for a post detailing what attendees can expect at this year's Indie Craft Parade!

Getting Ready for Indie Craft Parade: What Exhibitors Should Expect

It's hard to believe that Indie Craft Parade is only 1 week away! We're so excited about our vendors coming together: seeing old friends, making new ones, and finding out all the fabulous goods that everyone has been working on.

In today's post, we've put together a few details that our exhibitors should be aware of. Many of you are exhibiting for the first time at Indie Craft Parade and a number of you for the first time ever. Craft fairs are an awesome way to build your business, but coming prepared is really the best way to enjoy your experience.

Paige of Lightnest at the 2010 Indie Craft Parade.

The Crowds The biggest unexpected factor we encountered last year was the crowds. This means bring more items to sell than you think you need. Many of our vendors last year sold out or came close, and with an extra day this year, this seems even more likely. The Friday night gala will have a quiet, relaxed atmosphere where you can get to know the attendees and talk to them about your craft. However, we're prepared to be slammed Saturday and Sunday. Come with a backup plan for taking custom orders. Also, bring plenty of business cards that direct people to your online shop in case you run out of anything.

Volunteers will be making their way around each room to relieve you for 30 minutes at a time. Feel free to use this break to do some shopping, meet other artists, eat a meal, or just sit down!

The Music There will be live music playing throughout the event. Depending on where your booth is in relation to the musicians, it may or may not be loud. We'll do our best to keep it at a comfortable level, but please let us know if it's causing problems for communicating with customers at your booth.

The Perks Each artist will receive a goody bag when you check in. We're filling these with great items (i.e., no junky fliers) for your weekend in Greenville. This includes basic like bottled water and aspirin, as well as some coupons and discounts for local businesses, such as a $25 gift certificate to be used at a few of our favorite restaurants!

While we can't provide every meal for you, we do have food vendors on site that you can conveniently purchase food from. Each of them will be giving you a free voucher (found in your goody bag) for something at their booth. It might also be a good idea to pack snacks in case you're unable to break away from your booth.

We will also have a special meet and greet time for artists only before the doors open Friday night. We know the weekend will fly by, but you'll definitely want to make time to meet other artists while you're here!

If you're a craft show veteran and have any tips to add, please comment below!