Kathy Carpino, 68, has had a long love for crafts. She enjoys learning new skills and sharing her knowledge with others. This is how she came up with the idea for the her church to host a Craft and Trade Show.
“There’s so many people in this church, and its growing so quickly,” Carpino said. She suggested hosting a craft fair as a way for members to get to know each other “because there may be women in our church who have trades and businesses we don’t know anything about.”
“If we all get together, we can get to know each other and see what others do,” she said. “It’d be a way for people to find commonality and maybe encourage women to be entrepreneurs.”
After receiving approval from The Bridge Church, she helped organize the Craft and Trade Show, which took place the evening of Oct. 17 and the morning of Oct. 18. From 7 to 10 p.m. on Friday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, 27 vendors sold their goods to over 200 attendees in the BC room.
The Bridge Church Women’s Ministry hosted the show under the leadership of Women’s Ministry director Pastor Karen Chavez and Pastor Barbara D’Ambrosia, coordinator of Women’s Ministry events.
“We’re very excited and very please with how everything went,” Carpino said. “People had wonderful, encouraging things to say.”
“It was wonderful to see what women make and what they do,” she said. “That they have their own little businesses and most of them sell them from their homes or online. That was really interesting.”
Carpino said the event created a space for The Bridge Church’s two communities to come together. The Bridge Church is part of the Church of the Nazarene and hosts two services each week, one in English and the other in Spanish.
Fees for tables ranged from $5 to $20, depending on your membership in the church and the type of business a vendor had. “It really wasn’t about making money for the church,” Carpino said. “It was about bringing women together.”
“Everybody was trying to help everyone out,” Carpino said. “Everybody was trying to talk up the other people there. It was lovely.”
Vendor sold handmade crafts and products, including jewelry, floral arrangements, ceramics, watercolors, paintings, and more.
“These were real quality pieces,” Carpino said. “Everyone was doing beautiful work and that’s what you want to see at a craft fair. You want to see quality stuff.”
