Handmade Art At The Craft Market, Part 2 - MarketFriday

Today is Friday again, which means #MarketFriday for many of us. If you are not familiar with it, please check out my dear friend Denise's post here Market Friday Goes to Camping World.

I started a series about a Romanian spring welcoming tradition a few weeks ago. Feel free to check them our if you've missed them:

• Handmade Art At The Craft Market, Part 1 - MarketFriday
• Romanian Spring Welcoming Tradition for MarketFriday

On the 1st March, men are gifting women, their loved ones, colleagues, friends, family members with so called Mărțisoare, which is for spring welcoming and also for good luck. Years ago these mărțișoare were mostly snowdrop flowers, horse shoes, chimney sweepers, clovers etc, always with a red and white string attached. Nowadays you can find all kind of things, from the elephant to Mikey Mouse.

Today I'm going to post more photos I took at the market but only about handmade products. I'm going to make another post with the other products that are not handmade.

Let's start with these flowers made of leather waste. When you're working with genuine leather, whatever you make out of it, you can't avoid having waste. This waste is usually not thrown away but used for something else as the material is good quality. I find it a very good idea as you can utilize it for a very good cause to create an artistic product.

You can choose any color you want, there is plenty for each taste.

Little baskets with flowers, these are all handmade too, made of straw, paper and other materials. On this day men also give flowers to ladies and some choose to buy these as they don't fade and you can keep them as a nice memory in your keepsake box.

These flower compositions are mostly made of paper and dry flower and placed in a ceramic pot. I'm always admiring these and would buy one if there was enough place in my house for everything I want.

Another example of how times change. These are fridge magnets. You could not see these ten years ago, now you can give your mother or your girlfriend a fridge magnet that is made or straw, dry flowers and paper as a spring welcoming gift.

If you prefer a flower in a golden round box, you can choose these roses made of some kind of textile, which is most likely a by product, waste material.

Flower compositions can often be kitschy and most of the time they are but you can find nice ones as well. I don't like those that are too crowded and too colorful. These are nice though. I love the red and the orange.

Little dry flower compositions as brooches. These are cute but I don't know if you can wear them as they are very fragile but they look good.

This is another cute one, little handmade crochet dolls for girls. I can really appreciate these because I know how hard it is to crochet miniature things. This is the perfect mărțișor for young ladies.

You can create wonderful things using waste material, you just need a little bit of creativity. Here is the proof. These are flowers, I think they are pansies made of textile. I find it very creative.

More fridge magnet for you, wood decorated with dry flower and shells. I find it a bit odd to see dry flowers associated with shells but but that doesn't mean others won't like it.

Folk costumes, flowers and animals made of very small beads. I haven't seen such thing before and I told the woman whoever made them, did a good job. The woman told me she's the artist :) I don't know if you're familiar with this technique, I am, so I can tell you from experience that it's not easy. You're working with very tiny beads and you need special needle and thread to do this. The needle is so thin that you can break it in a split second. I broke two or three till I got used to it. It's also tiring to the eye, so imagine how hard it is.

Looks like I underestimated my collection of photos, I need to do another post because this post is long enough already. So I'll be back next week. I hope you don't mind, as it's still spring :)

Thank you for reading my post. This is my entry for #MarketFriday hosted by our dear friend Denise @dswigle. And also my entry to #seasonchallenge hosted by my dear friend @roxy-cat.