Orange County Blog

The Gettin' Made blog feature is moving to the Heard Mentality section of the OC Weekly site, make a note of it! Heard Mentality is transforming like your fave yellow Camaro into an all-emcompassing culture section.

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Renegade Craft Fair is finally coming to Southern California, and it's one of the larger sized awesome craft shows (think of the annual Felt Club extravaganza at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles) that goes on yearly in the United States. Up until this point, Renegade has been held in such far-away fabled lands with exotic names like Brooklyn and Chicago. Admission is totally free--and with Pabst Blue Ribbon as a sponsor, there's most likely some free beers on the horizon, too.

So with such vast territory to cover, what exactly should you check out at Renegade? Along with all of the demos taking place and awesome raffle prizes, there's gonna be some amazing goodies by local and not so local artisans. Indie crafting is all about getting back to a better time when things were made by hand and you bought them directly from the creator. In that vein, indie craft shows are all about getting out of the mall, finding unique one of a kind items for the whole family and getting to know the folks who took the time to screenprint a tee, sew a sweet stuffed animal, cook up a batch of all-natural soap, and much more.

After the jump: Just a couple of my do-not-miss recommendations.

Hi, folks! I'm Steph Calvert of Hearts and Laserbeams and the Long Beach Craft Mafia and I'm super excited to be a brand new blog contributer for OC Weekly. In upcoming posts, I'll be sharing the inside scoop on both local and not-so-local indie artists, crafters, events, indie business tip, craft tutorials, giveaways--you name it, I'll share it!