The festive season has well and truly begun with the exciting return of Winterval and the annual Christmas Craft Fair in Garter Lane.
Waterford Crafts hosts their Christmas Craft Fair in the Garter Lane Arts Centre, O’Connell Street Waterford starting on Tuesday 28th November and is open every day up to the 23rd of December. The craft fair has become a significant part of Christmas in Waterford City with many locals making a visit to the Craft Fair in Garter Lane part of their Christmas traditions. This annual event has seen huge growth in the past ten years with sales up 15% in 2016 and their aim is to build on this success for 2017. The Waterford Crafts group has found that hand crafts are striking the right chord with consumers who are looking for unique gifts and have a real appreciation for local talent. Committee member and local crafts person Mauney Doyle says “People are conscious of buying local, quality products and the feedback from our customers is that they love the unique variety, high quality crafts and always find it value for their money.”
‘Waterford Crafts’ was announced as the brand new name for the 33-year-old craft group formerly known as Waterford Homecrafts earlier this year. The group felt that the new name would better reflect the continual evolution of the group, its members and its future direction.
This Christmas Craft Fair covers a wide breadth of creative disciplines created by 44 crafts people from all over the South East of Ireland with a vast array of high quality craft products to suit all budgets. The high standard works created are of an international standard with many of them members of the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland. The excellent selection of products available ranges from delicious home baked cakes to hand cut silver jewellery, exotic walnut and Irish ash wood skate boards to quirky hand painted ceramic bowls, handwoven rainbow wool rugs to hand stitched leather handbags, hand crochet cuddly mice to aromatic festive wreaths and much more.
Entering under the archway at the Garter Lane Arts Centre and into the historic building, you will clearly see why the Waterford Crafts has continued to host such a magical annual event for the past 33 years. The superb range of high quality products available makes the Waterford Crafts Christmas Craft Fair a must see during your visit to Winterval.
Open from 10 am to 5.30 pm Monday to Saturday and 12 noon to 5.30 pm on Sundays, there will be ample time for customers to browse, shop and revisit at their leisure in a warm relaxing venue.
The Craft Fair will be officially opened on Wednesday 29th November at 11.30 am by Senator Grace O’Sullivan and all are welcome. There will be 10% off all purchases available on the opening day only, so it’s not to be missed. Everything you need to complete your Christmas shopping is all under one roof.
For more information on the Waterford Crafts, go to www.waterfordcrafts.com or @waterfordcrafts on Facebook and Twitter. For the full Winterval programme check out www.winterval.ie and listen to WLR to hear more.
https://soundcloud.com/wlrfmwaterford/the-waterford-crafts-christmas-craft-fair-is-back-this-november
