I was lucky enough to be sent complimentary tickets for the Crafts for Chritsmas Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham last week.

I've never been to anything like this before so it was a bit of an eye opener.  My book "Crafting a successful small business" (working title) will be out early 2012 and this type of event is going to be top of my list of places to be next year promoting the book.  So my trip was very much from a market research point of view.

Here are a few snaps of me trying out some paper crafts - origarmi and card making - 

So what did I think .... 

• there are an ENORMOUS amount of magazine publications on the market for craft hobbies!!!!  
• there is an incredible amount of paper crafting materials ... I could almost hear the rainforests crying!!!
• I was shocked about the very poor visual merchanidising of some of these exhibitors.  They were poorly laid out, too many products crammed into small areas, and there were lots that didn't 'invite' me in to have a look around.  

However I do feel I want to go to more now .. see how others do it. See if this is the norm!! 

I'd be interested to hear what other people think of these events?? Especially if you went to Crafts for Christmas last week.