Made With Hartt - Community Fusion
By Mike on Wednesday, October 8, 2014, 22:48 - Permalink
October 2014 - Gift shopping can be really tiresome and it often seems like every place is the same as the next, but every once in a while, I stumble across a little pocket of unique and inspiring difference.
Here's an example of that - a little shop in Portsmouth called Made With Hartt.
What Is It?
It's a charity-run shop selling a really interesting and diverse range of quirky, handcrafted gift items - many of which are recycled or upcycled (and as you may have seen elsewhere on Atomic Shrimp - I love upcycling).
Proceeds from the shop help to support Community Fusion - a local charity aiming to inspire and encourage young adults to make positive changes in their lives through commmunity volunteer projects - so it's not just good because it's interesting, it's also doing good stuff in a broader sense.
Where to begin with the range of items on sale?... there are handmade toys, picture frames, ornaments, keychains, phone cases, candle holders, badges, handmade cards, bookmarks, jewellery, clothing, cross stitched and other needlework items, handmade soaps, decorated furniture and wooden items, wall hangings and much, much more.
In fact, the assortment of unique, handmade items is so diverse that it's really difficult to describe - and in all honesty, I'm not sure I saw everything - because every little corner I looked in contained new and distinctive surprises.
It's the sort of place that is just perfect if you've completely run out of ideas for a gift, because so much of what you'll find here, you won't find anywhere else - and what you find may very likely be one of a kind.
(In fact, because of the odd, one-off handmade nature of the stuff here, you could probably buy something and pass it off as something you made yourself - I won't tell!)
It's not just a gift store though - it's part of a community project that does a whole load of things - for example, on Saturday afternoons, they have a free story time for kids. What a great idea!
Take a look further below for more information about the place - but now, I'm just going to let the pictures speak for themselves...
Recycling
The shop is all about recycling, upcycling and handmade crafts - which I just love, but one other thing they do (which is a bit like recycling) is to give away free books.
Free Books
Inside, there are shelves of secondhand books, for free (3 per customer per visit) - many of these books are old and worn, but of course still readable - and most importantly, they're categorised.
As an avid reader of Science Fiction, I can't tell you how nice it is not to have to wade through heaps of romantic fiction and spy thrillers to find my favourite reading material.
Location
Made With Hartt is located in the Cascades Shopping Centre in Portsmouth (UK).
Other Resources
There's a Facebook Page for the shop - and another for the parent organisation, Community Fusion.
