Charleston Craft Crew: Guest Post from Joy Sims

Hello LAM friends!  I’m Joy and I’m the founder of Charleston Craft Crew.  We’re a group of women in our 20’s and 30’s here in Charleston who love all things crafty.  We try to meet at least once or twice a month to get together and let our craft flags fly.  We work a variety of projects, anything from sewing to making jewelry or creating our own artwork.

I had always heard about the LAM events but sadly, never attended.  With the June event, I knew I wanted to go this time around and then thought it would be the perfect opportunity for my craft group to meet up and check out some local art vendors. However, we wanted to add an extra element of fun to the event.  We knew we’d have fun shopping together but we also wanted to add a little friendly competition to the mix.  We thought “let’s make it into a photo scavenger hunt!”  We all met up at noon by the Music Farm, broke up into 4 teams of 4, and gave out the list of 50 items.  Game on!

While we shopped and met all the great vendors (who were all super nice and great about us taking our photos, thanks vendors!), we checked off items along the way. 

Some of the items were things we could easily find at the different vendor stations such as:

Something chevron:

Two animals kissing:

An item that includes all the primary colors:

There were also items on the list that were a bit more silly, such as:

A team member on a food truck:

Side note:  Thanks Hello My Name is BBQ for being extra cool and letting us on your truck even when we might have made up random excuses to get on your truck ;)

Two team members with a vendor doing goofy faces:

This next photo actually documents three separate items on our list.  The first is a group photo in front of a LAM poster.  The second is one team member “photo bombing” another team.  The last is to put bunny ears on a person from another team without them realizing it.

After about an hour and half, we met back at our meeting point and declared the winner.  My team won!  I swear it wasn’t rigged!  Although, full disclosure, I did, personally come up with most of the items on the list.  In the end, we all had a blast, got a little crazy and went home with some great new goodies!  And speaking of goodies, boy, did I score!  As most of you already know, Kristen held a contest starting a couple of weeks prior to the LAM that would give one lucky winner a gift from 5 of the participating LAM vendors.  I swear I never win anything but holy bananas, I actually won!  Woo hoo!  Here’s what I went home with:

Some cool postcard art from Artwork by Kristen Solecki that I went ahead and stuck in some frames as soon as I got home and are now residing in my bathroom.

Super cute earrings perfect for summer by Lauren Amos Designs which I promptly wore to work the following Monday.

It was really hard to choose which scent I wanted to go with by SheSells Candles because they had some really great ones.  In the end, I love lemon.  So it’s no surprise I chose the Lowcountry Leisure soy candle which has a blend of lemongrass, black currant, sugar cane and patchouli. 

This trendy artwork by Forest and Fin.  I’m also planning to hang this in my bathroom and then these birds will be neighbors with my owls.  The owls will go “Hoo, hoo…are those birds over there?”  Sorry, that was really cheesy.

I have surprisingly slender wrists.  This is a problem when I try to buy bracelets.  Some of you may be thinking “boo hoo, cry me a river with your tiny wrists” but do you realize how many amazing bracelets, albeit mostly bangles, I’ve passed up because I know they’ll fall right off my wrists?!?  This is all to say that I’m so thankful for this perfectly dainty silver bracelet by Nicholas Lane Jewelry.  It’s a great everyday bracelet I can wear by itself or layer it up and most importantly, I can wear this bracelet confidently knowing it’s going nowhere. 

I truly love all my swag.  So a huge thanks to Kristen and all the participating vendors for the contest, and also for putting on a great event!  We all had a blast and can’t wait to do it again! 

Psst….If you’d like to see more pictures from our LAM Scavenger Hunt, they’re all posted on our Facebook page.  Also, you can visit the Charleston Craft Crew main page for information about becoming a member and our future events.  We always welcome new members!