Christmas is just around the corner, so nows the time to start thinking about your Christmas shopping! Shopping with small businesses means you can give your friends and family unique handcrafted gifts, whilst supporting local and small businesses. This is also a great way to shop sustainably. We have put together a Christmas gift guide of some of our favourite small and local businesses covering a range of gift ideas and prices.

Liberty Antonia Sadler

About the seller:

With a focus on fat femmes & queer figures, Liberty Antonia’s prints and zines aim to affirm & celebrate through drawings and poetry. From 2020, Liberty added new work to their Etsy affordable art collection, including wearable art such as patches, new zines & stickers. All works are hand-checked & signed by the artist, with everything made with care and sent to you with kindness.

Liberty Antonia Sadler is an artist & filmmaker based in London, working with mediums of drawing, text and moving image to explore issues of body politics, with a focus on the experience of living in a large femme body. Working within a personal-political context, she uses characters, radical softness & raw playfulness to discuss themes of abjection, vulnerability, queerness, gender, food, the erotic & the psycho-sexual. Liberty Antonia is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins & her research explores the power of subjectivity within art practice.

Price range: £ - ££

Where to buy: You can purchase directly from Liberty’s Etsy store, where she offers prints, zines, badges

Social: @libertyantoniasadler

Bigger The Hoop

About the Seller:

Bigger the Hoop make beautiful hand-made earrings in a huge range of shapes and styles there’s something for everyone. Bigger the Hoop started as a passion project in 2018, all their earrings are handmade in the UK by a small dedicated team and of four women!

Bigger the Hoop is environmentally conscious, they collab with many other small independent brands – using their leftover material to create FAB-ric Hoops! Even better all of the packaging is 100% recyclable.

Price Range: £

Where to buy: You can buy directly from their website. PLUS get 10% off your order using the code HOTELELEPHANT

Social: @biggerthehoop_

Marcia Scott

About the Seller:

Marcia has been painting most of her life, mainly in acrylics but has also worked in watercolours and oils. She paints both figurative and abstract paintings. After studying art at school, she has developed her own distinguished style exhibiting in numerous galleries and has won several awards over the years. Her abstract work is vibrant and dynamic and explores the texture of paint creating tactile and engaging paintings.

‘I feel like a modern-day explorer. My work is a search for authenticity; to find a road to personal freedom.’

- Marcia Scott

Her paintings explore the relationship between complexity and simplicity, absence and presence, and abstraction and figuration. These issues and their subsequent exploration through geometry, composition and the materiality of paint, go on to explore the myriad relationships in the world in which we live as she attempts to develop a new language in paint.

Price Range: POA

Where to buy: You can enquire about Marcia’s at the Hotel Elephant Christmas Showcase (3rd to 5th of December)

Social: @MarciaScott777

Make Your own

About the Seller:

Make Your Own are local to SE1, they run makers workshops where you can learn an array of crafts including ceramic painting and decoupage to calligraphy, handmade pottery, t-shirt /tote bag design, illustration, watercolour painting, lino printing, painted ceramics / pottery painting, creative hand lettering, life drawing, paper crafts, macrame, embroidery, string art, festive crafts and more. They truly have something for everyone! They also sell make your own kits including Christmas wreaths, Christmas decorations, water colours, lino prints, embroidery and many more. These are the perfect gift for your creative friends and family or a fun activity for yourself during the festive period.

Price Range: ££

Where to buy: Directly from their website.

Maylene Chou

About the Seller:

Maylene is an Early career illustrator working in picture books, advertising, licensing, and feminist activism. She creates beautiful illustrations. She also offers custom illustrations which would make the perfect thoughtful gift for friends and family. Maylene loves to tell visual stories through her illustration, hoping to bring joy to people through her work.

Price Range: ££

Where to buy: You can buy directly from Maylene’s Etsy.

Social: @mayleneart

David Hopkins

About the Seller:

David is a realist figurative painter, he graduated from Central St Martin's in Fine Art in 1996. His 'Double Self-Portrait with Mobile Phone' was selected for the 2019 Ruth Borchard Competition, and he has been longlisted for many of the UK painting prizes, including the NPG Portrait Award. His work spans a scope of subject including portraits, still-life, nudes and landscapes, his works are and almost always painted from life, in the studio. His paintings are imbued with subtle and brilliant colour, and sensitivity to the mood and character of the sitter, or the form and energy of the things depicted.

Price Range: POA

Where to buy: You can see Davids works in person at Hotel Elephant Studios, SE17 or in East Dulwich, please message via Instagram or website.

Social: @davidanthonyhopkins

Puppet Things

About the Seller:

Puppet Things is a UK-based company specialising in puppet-making materials. They also have puppet kits so you can build your very own puppet! They offer PDF puppet patterns, full make your own kits and also the option for a custom puppet. So why not get your someone a little friend for Christmas.

Price Range: ££

Where to buy: Buy directly from the website.

Social: @puppetthings

Pullens Yard Open Studios

About the Seller:

Our friends and neighbours at Pullens Yard are hosting their open studio from the 3rd to 5th of Dec showcasing a range of artist and makers! It’s a great chance to find some unique and handcrafted presents for Christmas and well worth a visit.

Pullens Yards were purpose-built for designer-makers in the late 1880s. The studios have housed craftspeople, working with their hands, for a hundred and twenty years. Unsurprisingly, over this length of time, what most of the crafts-people produce has evolved: at one time the Yards boasted lace makers, fan makers and cabinet makers; who have been replaced by today’s filmmakers, jewellers and artist potters. A few crafts have stayed, furniture designers and letterpress printers are here now, just as in the days of Queen Victoria.

Price Range: POA

Where to buy: Visit their open studios, more details on their website.

Social: @pullensyards

Pullen’s Yard is just around the corner from Spare Street so make sure to come and check out our Members showcase that weekend at the same time.