Handmade Holiday Shop ‘pops up’
The Handmade Holiday Shop, a local pop-up store, will open for its 11th holiday season today through Dec. 29, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day, located at 1304 Central Ave.
Selling handmade jewelry, soaps, pottery, bird feeders, tonics, teas, sewing kits and “upcycled” items, shop co-coordinator Corina Fedorowicz said the money made goes back into the community because the vendors are all local.
“I think that is one of the biggest things about shopping local,” she said. “That kind of goes with anything. We’re not a big corporation, we’re individual, so that money actually pays our bills. It doesn’t go to shareholders or anything like that.”
Fedorowicz said the items at the shop are of good quality.
“For the majority, handmade is going to have a better quality than the manufactured longevity like the leather bags we have this year, will probably last a lifetime,” she said. “It’s probably a piece that can be passed down, where I’m not sure that you would find that quality commercially. The quality matters. … We have handmade soap, so there’s high-quality ingredients going into that. Some people might be concerned about that, what they bathe with.”
The items are also unique, she said.
“Definitely almost everything in here is one of a kind. You won’t find it anywhere else, so that makes it special,” she said. “I mean yeah, our stuff might be a little more expensive if you could buy it at Walmart — which you can’t because it’s all one of a kind — but let’s say the equivalent of a pottery bowl, you could get a pottery bowl at Walmart for a lot less money, but you know I made it and you would hopefully get to meet me. A lot of thought goes into the stuff the artists’ make, so there’s that process.”
Fedorowicz said they were “very lucky” in the shop’s location this year.
“Hot Springs used to be so empty so it was easy for us to find space, but it’s getting harder and harder,” she said.
“We didn’t choose this location, this location was offered to us by Blue Waters (Fine) Art and Design. … She is sponsoring us this year. We’ll take anything we can get anymore. Last year we were at the mall and some people felt like that was too commercial but I think we did well and put ourselves out there to a whole other part of Hot Springs that doesn’t necessarily shop downtown.”
Although not open any abnormal hours for Black Friday, there will be a Customer Appreciation Day later in December, Fedorowicz said.
“That’s when we’ll do door prizes because we do appreciate our customers and we try to give back to them somehow with a little party, music,” she said. “We’re looking at maybe some artists to come in and do quick sketches for people. We try to do something different every year on our Customer Appreciation Day.”