With a Spring Fever Craft Lounge, a weekend surrounded by both a snowmageddon and a blizzard, and the biggest variety of crazy talented makers around we celebrated the 9th Annual Unglued: Craft Fest Feb 22-23, 2019 at the historic Plains Art Museum in downtown Fargo. Catch our photo recap below thanks to the amazing M. Schleif Photography!
Friday night kicked off with our 2nd ever Craft Preview Party! This ticketed night allowed for meeting our 70+ makers, artists, and crafters in a more chill shopping world with a cash bar, delish food, AND 3 DIY projects for attendees to create up a storm themselves with (and $5 Unglued cash to spend at the maker booth of their choice!).
Buttons were made thanks to The White House Co., totes were screen printed with the Print Studio at the Plains with images by our poster designer Catie Miller(!), and affirmation votive candles were crafted up with Artist Nichole Rae!
This party evening included the sweet vinyl tunes from DJ AP and food by some of our local favorites Taco Bros (omg is it summer yet?!), Milk Made (with mini cheese platters!), and Fargo Fillies (hello philly cheesesteak sandwiches to die for!).
And, yes, we got a ridiculous amount of snow during this fancy fun evening but the people still came out because #ilovefargo!
We woke up Saturday morning to a pretty and snow-filled scene and our swag line started forming before the Fest opened and got to enjoy the annual tunes of Randi Kay’s music!
At 9am the Fest was open, 100+ swag bags full of coupons and goodies from vendors were given out, and the crafty creative day kicked off!
70 makers, artists, dreamers, and doers filled the Plains Art Museum’s 3 levels showcasing their craftsmanship. From handcrafted crayons to butterfly wing jewelry and geometric reclaimed wood art to leather fanny packs, this year was especially bursting at the seams with creativity and talent with makers from North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. 37 were actually new to the Fest from last year and 35 were from the Fargo-Moorhead area (’cause we all love stats, don’t we?!).
Returning to the Fest was our Creative Plains Foundation Young Makers’ Market that featured 5 makers from the area ages 14 and under!
The Red River Market joined us with a Mini Winter Market for Saturday featuring hot drinks, cocktails, and more!
Artist Nichole Rae created the Art Lounge into an affirmation tag creation station with her sister Ashley that kept the creative fun flowin’ all day!
Fargo Pinball set up camp with 3 pop up pinball machines, too!
The Center for Creativity building of the Plains Art Museum was HOPPIN’ with the Crafty Beer Garden and loads of free workshop and project opportunities for kids and adults! Baker Garden and Gift made kokedama moss balls with participants, flower crowns were crafted up, macrame planters were made, the Spring Fever Craft Lounge was crafty as all heck, Jen’s Bakery made kid’s cookie decorating pretty dang sweet, and the Plains Art Museum showed off demos of craft processes that you can dive deeper into with their workshop load!
On the way back to the main museum building attendees could catch a selfie in front of our poster designed by Catie Miller, enjoy museum galleries of fine art, and head back to our incredible craft vendors (while they search for all kinds of fun in our scavenger hunt!).
(Psssst Brick above from Bismarck also won our Best in Show booth prize, too! Seriously, he even built a revolving compartment hiding 2 restored dope axes!).
We cannot thank everyone enough for making this wintery weekend still one for the books! Thank you to our kick ass vendors for sharing their creativity with us, our community and visitors for trekking out to support them and get creative yourselves(!), our mind-blowing awesome crew and volunteers for helping us create this weekend, the Plains Art Museum for their collaboration and partnership, and our amazing sponsors this year!! Looking forward to our TENTH fest coming up in February 2020!!
Catch some other Fest fun:
Also catch our live Facebook videos pre-fest to meet some of our makers in their spaces!