* Thank you to Megan Fife & Saffron Johnson for letting me use your pictures *
Around two and a half months ago I took it upon myself to arrange a North East Blogger Meetup Event. I've been to a couple of events in neighbouring towns/cities but there hasn't ever been one in my local town of Middlesbrough. After weeks of being absolutely exhausted organising the event, last Sunday it finally took place when fourty bloggers came together at the amazing Mink Tattoo & Coffee Bar
I wanted everything to be pretty casual as it was quite a few peoples' first event and I know myself how nerve wrecking it can be. For the most part I just let everyone get on with it and chat away to one another. As the lovely Nicola from StylishButSkint said, 'It's nice to say more than 140 characters to someone', which is so true! To help put names to faces I made little stickers with everyone's name, Twitter picture and blog url on.
I did have a few tricks up my sleeve however... The beautiful shop I work in, Pretty Twisted, had a table full of goodies for the girls to browse and buy. Later in the day, I split everyone up and played an old school game of 'pass the parcel' where there was a chance to win a stunning MUA Palette. I also organised a raffle with six amazing prizes including this Benefit Gift Set, a Pretty Twisted voucher*, a Lacuna Apparel tee* and some other prizes!
I also conjured up some goody bags for everyone to take home including products from Skinetica, Tea Pigs, Deborah Milano, some sweets and leaflets for local businesses. All in all I'm glad to say it was a success and everyone seemed to have a wonderful time (I hope!). It was definitely worth all the hard work seeing everyone come together! Thanks for all of those who turned up, it was great catching up with familiar faces and meeting new ones - especially my long lost sister Megan from Talking About M.