FIELD TRIP! Renegade Craft Fair

www.renegadecraft.com/san-francisco

Renegade Craft Fair: Reason #493 why San Francisco rocks!

Let me set the scene...The San Francisco Marina District on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Cool winds blowing in from the west.  Hundreds of crafter geeks (myself included) armed with Visa cards and 100% recyclable tote bags, ready to make major purchases and get inspired. 

A little historical trivia for you: The Fort Mason Center is the same age as our country - it was built by the Spanish in 1776.  Our founding forefathers would be so proud of us for putting this building to such good use!

The Renegade Craft Fair is home to about 200 Etsy crafters.  Here's the complete list of artists: http://renegadecraft.com/san-francisco-artists?site=sf

If you don't have time to check out all of the Etsy stores, here's the quick and dirty:

There were four main categories of goods for sale:

1.  BIRDS!! bird clothes, bird cards, bird pictures, stuffed birds, painted birds, hanging birds, and...

lots of artists with avian names.

2. BEARDS! Yes, that's me, but don't get distracted.  We're here to look at the crafts.

This crowd has a serious fascination with facial hair.  Several artists festooned animals (yes, even birds) with facial hair.  This particular artist sells posters of mustaches...Just mustaches.

3.  TSHIRTS! Lots and lots of hipster tees with witty sayings and neato drawings of things like boomboxes, animals (yes, birds) and various city skylines...which brings me to the last category:

4.  HOMETOWN LOVE! Several artists were offering items that had specific locations on them.  These necklaces have tiny maps of Bay Area cities like Berkeley and San Francisco.  Such a good idea.  Which brings me to the "things we can attempt at home" part of our field trip.  I don't know what sorts of tools would be involved in making these necklaces, but they seem doable. 

Another super cute idea that looks easy enough to attempt at home are these felt animal silhouettes glued to pillows.  I can handle cutting felt, so I am tempted to give this one a go.

For advanced felt cutting, I LOVE this idea:  felt camio brooches.  They look really pretty and don't weigh anything.  So clever.  My favorite is the little pearl necklaces on the ladies.

This looks way more complicated than cutting felt, but the idea is cool - take a nifty old timey picture, glue it to balsa wood and cut it out to make a funky necklace. 

This was the most unique booth in the entire fair.  (Wait - no it wasn't, the "Prick Cushion" booth was more unique, but it's not very PG rated, so I'll leave you to check them out on your own.)  Girls Can Tell has a really interesting style - scientific diagrams of all sorts of things from human hearts to old school cameras. 

Yikes! I haven't given the yarn artists any love.  They were at the fair too - with all sorts of fun knitted and crocheted goodies.  The avacado scarf got my sis-in-law's attention.  Without proper yarn skillz, these could look really lo-fi.  Which brings us to the "things we should NOT attempt at home" stop on our field trip: 

Thread drawing. (I have no idea if that's an actual term, I think I just made it up, but it looks like what he's doing - drawing pictures with a sewing machine...so let's just go with it.)  This sounds complicated to me, but maybe it's because I can't work a sewing machine to save my life.

I hope these super talented artists inspire you to Get Your Craft On!  If you live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Brooklyn or Austin, go check out the Renegade Craft Fair!