As the weather cools, the holiday season heats up. Instead of buying handmade gifts online, Bloomington Handmade Market offers hundreds of choices of handmade gifts all in one place.
The Bloomington Handmade Market will take place from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 10 at the Monroe Convention Center.
The holiday market allows people to get a jump on their holiday shopping while supporting artisans.
“I mean it’s the holiday season, so people are in the mood to buy,” organizer Talia Halliday said. “It's cool outside so it's just a really nice time to get out and do things.”
Halliday said the market has grown a lot since it started in 2009. The market started with about 30 vendors and now has about about 75 vendors and 4,500 people in attendance.
Organizer Chelsea Jones said it has also grown in how far artists come from to sell at the market.
“It's actually physically grown, but we are actually still getting artists from a little bit farther out who are really excited to come to Bloomington and share their wares here,” Jones said. “So we’ve expanded in that way too.”
Halliday first got involved with the market because one of the original organizers found her Etsy page for Conduit Press, where she sells leather notebooks and crafts.
She was one of the vendors at the first market and started on the organization team in 2011.
“As I continued to participate in the market and in other markets like ours, it just became apparent that these were my people,” Halliday said.
Jones started helping organize it four years ago. She owns the jewelry company Tactile Melodies and is friends with Halliday.
The two only get one month off a year in between planning the summer and holiday markets.
Planning for the holiday market starts in July and is a very involved process. Jones said an important part of the process is deciding what vendors to have at the market.
“We make sure we don’t have a ton of soap vendors or a ton of jewelers,” Jones said. “We try to keep the balance of various products to make sure there are not two people selling really similar things just to keep everyone kind of in their own little niche.”
J.D. Grove with Granola Girl Skincare owns a shop in Greencastle, Indiana, and has been coming to the Bloomington Handmade Market since it first started. She sells natural soaps, lotions and facial care items.
Halliday said the event also serves as a family reunion of sorts for Indiana artist who have built a community.
It was this community that convinced Halliday to open and run Gather. The idea for Gather, which was opened in 2014, was to have a place that was a mini handmade market year-round.
Grove said they all look forward to seeing and supporting each other.
“It’s a festival to a lot of us,” she said. “It’s a big community.”
