SATURDAY
Saturday morning, my sweetheart and I drove up to Merchantville to check out the Mystical May Holistic Street Festival, where I was delighted to see vendor friends Dot Pakstis (Dorothy Claire Crystals) and Jody Thorpe (Mystical Blossoms) and to meet Jeannie Francis of Spirit to Sole Connection and do a bit of shopping at Aradia’s Treasure. And then we drove down Route 130 to head to Woodbury, which is where the wonderful creator space MADE Artisan Marketplace is located.
MADE Artisan Marketplace is in the process of moving into a renovated building at 65 N. Broad Street in Woodbury, between the Courthouse and Charlie Brown’s, if you know Woodbury at all. It will contain selling space for local artists, classroom space, gallery space, space for Say It With Clay, and spaces for artists in resident. PLUS there will be coffee—PAINTED BRIDGE Espresso Bar will be located in the space as well!
Below you can see my artwork set up on a couple of shelves. I will also be dropping off greeting cards, which will go elsewhere in the space. You can also see me with MADE’s indefatigable owner, Jamilah Damiani.
BUT WAIT! That isn’t all we did on Saturday. Because once Morris and I left MADE in the early afternoon, we drove down to Cape May, where our first stop was at Olde Pear Primitives. I had a great time catching up with owner Genevieve Lugo, and I dropped off some new stock. Below you can see a photo of Genevieve and I taken by Morris, and some pics of the products I made taken by Genevieve. (I didn’t make the cool metal tree, nor did I do that awesome painted woodturning image of the state of New Jersey, which was created by the talented Ashlesha of Henna by Ash.
I hope you noticed the super cute red, white & blue heart garlands that are on the tree and lined up in a box. I hand-painted those papers and drew every single star myself, then punched out and strung the hearts on baker’s twine. They look so charming on that metal tree!
After we left Olde Pear, Morris and enjoyed a nice stroll over to Beach Avenue, where we walked along the sidewalk that skirts the dunes and looked out over the ocean. We eventually made our way down to the Rusty Nail, where we had adult beverages (a mojito for me, a bourbon-based drink for Morris) and a tasty dinner. Eventually we wandered back to our car and drove home, where I spent the next several hours packing and working on pricing for my event on Sunday.
SUNDAY
Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY! (I totally just said that aloud like the announcer for a local speedway, in case you wondered.) If you’ve been keeping up with my blog, then you may remember me mentioning Decompress South Jersey. You can read my last post, which was all about it and included photos of my kids when they were (extremely small and) at Will-Moor Gymnastics old location.
I really loved my setup at Will-Moor, which you can see from two different angles above. And it was great to catch up with other vendor friends, including April of Willow Moon Candles, Rita of Jularee, Aimee of Relics Revisited, Jody of Mystical Blossoms, and Margeaux of Proud Mary Designs. It was inspiring watching Alisha teach Zumba, Stacia doing aerial yoga, Cheryl leading Buti yoga, and oh, it was magical listening to Jody do a sound healing session with her singing bowls.
And that’s, to paraphrase Walter Cronkite (yes, I am old—he was an extraordinarily popular and famous newscaster when I was a kid), the weekend that was.