Eye candy festival and Mr Bird's Emporium

Mr Bird's Emporium and sights from around the Custard Factory

A signed print by Luke Pearson

Some of the things we saw at Eyecandy Fest

Our haul of goodies from BZF!

On my birthday weekend, I was really chuffed to find out that two brilliant events were being held in Birmingham. 

First we headed to the Custard Factory in Digbeth where Mr Bird's Emporium was opening it's doors. I had been following the progress of the shop on Instagram and liked what I saw, so I was very eager to get down there.

Mr Bird's calls itself a 'independent fashion, vintage and creative arts store' so I was sold! It was brilliant. There was a lovely buzz around the place, and we got given free goodie bags and custard creams, to fit in with the theme. For those that don't know the Custard Factory is called that because it was originally the Factory for Bird's Custard. There was also a huge sponge custard cream to be sat on outside. 

The actual shop unit houses 13 permanent traders, and there was a lovely host of vintage goodies, (including a Catherineholm pot, which was snapped up very quickly, unfortunately not by me!)  and work by independent designers and artists. There was also a bunch of stalls around the shop. The plan is to have these stalls trading every Saturday, and I hope it continues.  It provided a much nicer shopping experience to The Bullring, which we walked through later on in the day and couldn't wait to get out of!

If you are interested in having a stall head here for more info.

After a stop at the Yumm Cafe we headed onto the Eyecandy festival, a visual pop culture festival. The highlight of which for me was The Birmingham Zine Fest. This took place in The SideWalk bar, and was quite cosy, there was barely room to move at points, but everyone was lovely and friendly so it didn't seem to matter. Every stand was awesome here, I could have spent a fortune! Amongst the wonderful exhibitors, there was Luke Pearson (a personal favourite of mine), Sandra Dieckmann and Lizz Lunney. Ruddy brilliant I say!

We also got to see some live art taking place and got to have fun joining in with some Exquisite Corpse drawings. I just wish we could have stayed longer. I also loved the installation by Filthy Luker, which took the form of some bright green tentacles escaping from some windows in a building on Birmingham's Southside.

I hope it returns next year!