By Charly SHELTON

Handmade lawn signs. Artisanal pickles. Electric skull lamps. All this and more were found at the 35th Annual Montrose Arts and Crafts Festival, held last weekend in the Montrose Shopping Park.

“We were very, very busy. I’ve never seen so many people in town both days for at least the last four or five years,” said Dee Ovenden, the event organizer for the Arts & Crafts Festival. “This is the most people I’ve actually seen come to Montrose. So just to guess, I’d say maybe in the two days there probably was 10,000 to 15,000 people there, but that’s a guess. There were just so many people, which was wonderful.”

The two-day festival featured over 200 vendors, offering everything from organic popsicles to paintings to garden furniture, and more. One such booth was Slavic Gifts, specializing in imported amber from Poland.

“I source from 12 companies with very good artists,” said Slawomir Muniak, owner of Slavic Gifts. “Baltic amber only comes from five countries: Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. But Poland – Gdańsk, my city, the best amber [comes from Gdańsk].”

Muniak has been coming to the show for 12 years as a vendor, and loves it every year.

“Some vendors told me Montrose is a good show, Montrose is where you want to be. And I can tell you it’s true, [it was] a really good show,” Muniak said. “Right now, people are scared to spend money and my business [decreased a bit this year]. But hey – if I don’t make any money at least [I’m in Montrose]. Pleasure with business, and today is a pleasure.”

Ovenden has been organizing the show for the last decade and has learned during that time what people want to see and what it is the permanent tenants of Montrose Shopping Park want out of the festival as well.

“We’ve tried to bring in a lot of handcrafted [item vendors] rather than commercial because of our stores. Some of them are very commercial so we don’t want to sell against our stores,” said Ovenden. “We want to enhance the stores by bringing people to town, and hopefully they come back into Montrose and shop in our stores and visit our restaurants. There are some really unique stores and restaurants in Montrose.”

Overall, the event was a huge success, Ovenden said, and she wants to thank all of the volunteers who worked with her to put on the festival.

For more information on the festival and updates on next year’s show as they’re made available, visit ShopMontrose.com.

  Charly Shelton