This holiday season, a Gainesville printing business is asking residents to put their money where their hearts are.
Dragonfly Graphics is asking Gainesville residents to do their holiday shopping locally at its second annual The Loco Bizarre, which will be held on Dec. 23 from noon to 9 p.m.
The free event will take place at the Dragonfly Graphics’ shop, 319 SW Third Ave. The shop is a historical 1927 home commercialized to accommodate the printing press and dryer that make up the 26-year-old T-shirt business.
The Loco Bizarre aims to raise a sense of community in the holidays by bringing together vendors, musicians and residents for a day of family-friendly shopping.
“It’s to encourage folks to spend their holiday money at home,” said Aimee Anderson, 36-year-old sales and marketing director for Dragonfly Graphics.
The event will feature live screen-printing demonstrations of new designs for the store’s Gainesville Nostalgia line. The line recalls classic Gainesville and features designs of old Gainesville staples, such as Skeeter’s Breakfast House, now closed, and Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park.
Guests can make T-shirt orders at the event, see how their shirts are printed and participate in the process. Outside the shop, a wide array of local vendors will be selling their unusual creations by a bonfire.
“You never know what you’re going to find, and that’s the bizarre part of it,” Anderson said.
Of the about 20 vendors that have signed up for the event, guests can expect anything from jewelry vendors to massage therapy to special cooking sauce vendors. Anderson said she hopes to represent the entire spectrum of the community.
At last year’s event, April Burk Clark, 51, used The Loco Bizarre as a first opportunity to sell her crafts, which she made and sold for her booth at the event, called Junque.
Clark converts trash to art. Her crafts include anything from pencil holders to thumbtacks to mosaics. A lover of books, Clark rescues old books and folds their pages into a variety of shapes, such as trees or lanterns.
Many of the vendors were people who made crafts in their spare time, Clark said. The items on sale were useful, whimsical and affordable.
“You can go in with $5 and come out with something cool,” she said.
