Hello! I’ve been a busy bee lately, spending the last week in London then Leeds. Today I’m skipping to my weekend t’up North, as I was kindly invited to an intimate blogger event in Manchester for Preloved. I was so excited to receive the email from the wonderful Terri Lowe because I have been a fan of her blog for a long time and always wanted to meet her. I headed over to Manchester for the day, with my fellow blogger pals Kel, Simone and Sammie, for some lunch and blogging.

Preloved are a company I was already aware of as our dog was listed on there as a puppy – something I will be talking about in more detail in another post. Basically put, you can list anything you wish to sell, unwanted or second-hand for free. It’s a great website to check out at this time of year if you are spring cleaning! To keep with the ethical and DIY ethos of the website, the event centred around some craft activities. I love getting crafty and trying out the various DIYs from my Pinterest account, so this was the perfect event for me.

We started by creating our own coffee body scrub. These have been floating around to buy on Instagram recently and I couldn’t understand why you would pay for something which is so easy to do yourself. It was great to try and make my own, although it was a pretty messy task! I was a little sceptical of this, I must admit, until I tried it. Oh wow, I was genuinely blown away. My legs were instantly smooth, soft and hydrated and I couldn’t stop touching my legs all day. I promptly bought a huge tub of coconut oil as this is now going to become a major part of my skincare routine.

Then, Terri’s granddad had kindly provided us with a pile of keys to paint and turn into necklaces. We used some nail varnish to add some colour to our keys and then threaded them with a pretty ribbon. I love quirky jewellery so this is something I will genuinely wear – in fact it went straight around my neck to wear home!

The event was one of those lovely, friendly events and I had a wonderful afternoon. The venue was also really interesting. It was called Ziferblat and is an exciting new concept; tea, coffee, cereal and biscuits are all free but you pay for your time. It costs 5p a minute to do whatever you like in the café, whether that be study, hold a meeting or turn a key into a necklace! I thought the concept was great fun and something I would definitely use to study. It is a different way of looking at things, much like Preloved, and I had a lovely day out in Manchester as a result. So thank you to Terri and the Preloved team!

Have you used Preloved? Do you have any favourite DIYs to
share?