Craftparking was FANTASTIC!

I have been wishing for a long time to write a title like that and I'm so glad I can do that now! Time to finally show off all the hard work from the last few weeks! The location was way out of the city in an old factory and at first I thought 'not many people will make the journey to visit' but boy was I wrong! In the old factory, lots of cultural happenings were taking place for the summerfestival and it was happy busy.
The girls who organised this, Moon & Jasmijn, just have been wonderful. Apparently prior to the fair, they walked their feet off to distribute flyers and made promotion like hell!
It was supposed to start at 1pm but at 12am people were already starting to come in & it didn't stop until very late on the day. Really busy & an amazing atmosphere.

As you all know, lots of European Streetteam friends from Etsy were going to be on the fair. And that really was the most amazing thing for me: meet everyone and realise that I 'knew' them even though we never met before! It's hard to explain how virtual friendships can be so close. Wow, such a nice feeling!
Since I didn't have much time to visit the stands, I asked my friend Veerle who came with me to help me out on the stand, to go around and take some pictures for me.
Come talk a walk around the fair & meet my friends...

Maria & her husband Jim from LeelaBijoux

Vanessa (pet buyer on Etsy & Kerrin's friend), Kerrin from Sigmosaics and Nicole from Babongo & Babongohome.

Veerle from NevousinstallezpasKarla from Karlita

Ahum, Nathalie from Dinafragola is shopping obviously... ;)

Myrte from Mirthquake

Maartje from Mamutopia

Ina from DeerLola

Kim from Viltalakim

Petronella from Kraplap
(sorry, unfortunately no picture of Peggy, the little cute dog)

Greet from Fleurfatale

Mitsy from ArtMind
(I got that brooch from one of my blogreaders - supercute and nice - thank you purplerabbit)

Personally, it was the first time ever that I showed my work to the public and it was very exciting and fun to talk and explain the '99-feelings' project.
People were very much taken by it and it felt good to get this token of appreciation! Wow, still blushing here! ;)
Here you can see how my stand looked in the end... I didn't paint the wooden boxes but I hung the wall art on them. Looked nice I think! :)

Nicole from Babongo & Mitsy from ArtMind

In the evening we went to the restaurant together.

Ready for dinner, chatting and relaxing...

It was then that we gave Kerrin's goodbye gift. If you have not read the post about the secret suitcase, than you probably don't know what this is about so go and read it first! ;)

Kim's beautiful girls, Janna & Meg with the secret suitcase and bag because it didn't all fit in...

Of course I messed up while explaining what was happening because I said it all in Dutch and then I looked at Kerrin and she looked like she didn't understand a word... and of course she didn't understand a word...

Laughing because I was explaining in Dutch instead of English

Being supersurprised when I translated...

And even more surprised when she opened the suitcase...
Oops, wiping a tear from emotion... but that's perfectly OK, I was wiping too! ;)

Not only a suitcase full of gifts, but also a suitcase full of emotions. The unexpected gift made Kerrin speechless, grateful and amazed and... she'll tell you about it when she gets back to Portugal, I'm sure of that!

At our home while sitting at the kitchen table opening the gifts - how fun!!!
Thank you dear Euro friends for participating in this fabulous secret gift giving. You are all extremely wonderful and sweet! :)

So, all in all it was unforgettable! It was an experience that will be cherished and when we said goodbye we all said: 'see you on the thread' of course! :) ('the thread' is our chatting thread on the Etsy forum)

Sorry this has been such a long post but I just wanted to share our experience a little bit 'cause I know how curious you all are! ;)