Creativity and crafts has always been a pastime of mine that I loved to do when I was a child. I would always ask for the jumbo colouring sets with ALL of the glitter glue and ALL of the colourful pipe cleaners for Christmas or my Birthday and I would spend hours, if not days on end, creating mediocre (but magnificent for a child of 7!) models, images and artwork. I would sit by my little desk and it was if I had entered my own world, where crafting was the main task and nothing else mattered.
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| Photo taken by 100 Ways to 30 |
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
Much like all those years ago, my love for crafts and it's calming effect on me remains the same, so when I was invited by the lovely Jennie from
Search Laboratory to an arts and craft workshop with
Viking direct I squealed with excitement and of course said yes to attending!
Last Saturday, armed with my trusty Boohoo dungarees and H&M headband, because nothing screams arts & crafts like some dungarees and a headband! (outfit post to follow soon) I made my way down to the beautiful Southwark, an area in London that I go batty over. It kind of reminds me of places like Farringdon and Angel, it's busy like the city, but still residential in a I-would-definitely- like-to-live-here-one-day kind of way!
The weather was muggy, but nothing could ruin this craft -filled day, no. Not even the fact that I was running about half an hour late - cue all of the scared screaming face emojis! However I finally reached and was greeted by the lovely Alice also from Search Laboratory who was waiting outside to direct us all in.
As I climbed the stairs to the second floor, I already knew this venue was going to be amazing. Bunting lined the rails leading up the stairs and a large window on each stairway, letting in all of the light and bringing in all of the views from the outside!
Once I finally reached the room where the event was to take place, I instantly fell in love! It was a haven of plush upholstery, exposed brickwork and all of the #instagramworthy interiors that us Bloggers know and love so well!
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
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| Photo by100 Ways to 30 |
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
There were to be three workshops to which we were to spend an hour at for each. We were placed in to teams and off we went! The order of workshops I participated in were Mindful origami, Block Printing and Calligraphy. I found Origami the hardest - namely because I didn't have my glasses on and struggled to see his tutorial on the screen at the front of the room ha! But I got there in the end and managed to construct a cute little flying crane and envelope - although the envelope didn't fly! This isn't Hogwarts you know!
Block printing was the workshop I felt I could be completely creative with. We were given blank storage boxes and were told we could choose to decorate it with any print we liked. Naturally I chose lightening bolts a.k.a Harry's lightening scar, because I'm a HP fangirl and I'm not even sorry!
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| Photo by 100 Ways to 30 |
The final workshop was calligraphy, which was perhaps my favourite one out of the three, I found it incredibly relaxing, soothing and very much a reference to the writings of yester-century (totally just made that word up, don't judge me!) which filled my soul with joy, because if you didn't know already I was born in the wrong era, but anyway, more on that later! Writing with a calligraphy pen and using potted ink, definitely made me feel like I was at Hogwarts sending a letter to my family back in Goodrich's Hollow, telling them I wouldn't be able to make it home for the christmas, on account of having to defeat Lord Voldemort for the umpteenth time!
Put them altogether and I would say the day was a roaring success, it was one of the best Saturday's I had in a while. Jennie, Alice and all of the team involved on the day were the best hosts you could ever ask for. They were friendly, personable and very fun and they all helped to make the day one that was ran smooth and fun at the same time!
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| Photo taken by 100 Ways to 30 |
I would also like to thank the lovely Sam from MindFOLDness (see what he did there?) for the amazingly insightful & almost spiritual mindful origami workshop, the awesome Suzie from A 'Laise for the Harry Potter-esque, magically calming calligraphy workshop and finally the lovely Jane from Tea & Crafting for the creative and hands on block printing workshop, it was a fun-fillled afternoon and I was able to learn lot's of new skills!
Did you go to the Viking Arty Party? Are you a fan of crafting?
This sounds like so much fun! I am such a crafty girl at heart and definitely need to make more of an effort to do something creative once in a while! Great post Heather, you look so cute! XO -Kim
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