Craft, Hobby & Stitches 2014

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I managed to head to the annual craft trade show in Birmingham this year for two whole days. This enabled me to spend more time looking for things and to take a few classes.

This year the organisers had a Seminar stream to support businesses. I felt that these were under attended but I'm not entirely sure why - was it a lack of advertising or a lack of interest from retailers?

Of the Seminars, I got to attend four. The first was by Intelligent Retail on how to optimise your website for Google. It was very dry and full of techy speak. Being a techy speaker, I was struggling to follow it so I have no idea how easily a non-techy speaker would have coped, and they ran over time so there was no opportunity to ask questions.

One of Lisa Pavelka's samples in her class.

The second was from Bounti in association with ActiSmart and the description said it was on "how to leverage mobile technologies to build meaningful and valuable customer relationships, without the impersonal side of large scale database systems." It did not come across as that. It was far more useful, in fact, as Jess Cosad spoke about the best ways to communicate with your customers, using digital technologies.

Next, we heard Sara Davies' of Crafter's Companion story of her journey in the craft industry. It was amazing to hear first-hand how having the right idea at the right time and the tenacity and perseverance to push it through paid off.

The last seminar was from Craig De Souza of CHA-UK who spoke about the research that they have done into the craft industry in the UK. There sounds like a huge amount of incredibly valuable information there and support for retailers building there that if you're a craft retailer and not a member, you should be.

I also use Stitches to refresh skills and so I enrolled on some of the courses on offer. Each class is only 45 minutes long, so not really enough time to get a huge amount done but it is a great taster into a particular craft. Lisa Pavelka gave an extremely good, quick class on creating jewellery using Magic-Glos, Leandra Franich refreshed me with the use of paints, stamps and stencils, Wyatt White of Beadalon showed us how to make a simple necklace and earring set and Kim Thittichal showed us how simple the Hot Spots! from Vilene are to use to great effect with glitter and foils.

Nearly every vendor had new products to display but they were all extensions of product lines already in existence. There were a few exceptions.

Once Upon a Stamp have released their own die-cutting machine and thin plate dies to the market under the name Jus-Cutz. I have a few to play with so stay tuned for my review of their thin metal dies and I hope to be able to get my hands on the machine soon.

Photomate were new to the show but launched to great success in the US just recently at CHA. Their product is a photography backdrop and display stand for improving your photos for use in advertising and on your website. Nothing new you say, well the difference is that Photomate is inexpensive at £29.99 and folds flat easily for storage. It is small enough that you can have it assembled at one end of your craft table while you work and quickly move over to take step-by-step photographs of your project. Tina, who owns the company, is a cake crafter and wanted something that would fit her bill so invented it. I hope to be able to do a full review on the Photomate soon, so stay tuned for that too.

Spectrum Noir pens (left) with pencil (right)

If you're a fan of Crafter's Companion's Spectrum Noir alcohol pens, then you'll need to think seriously about investing in the new pencils. These are a wax medium in pencil form with colours directly matched to the alcohol pens. They blend beautifully on their own or you can use the blending solution to almost melt the colours together.

There was a lot more that I saw, but for me, these were the highlights.