[Ad- gifted experience] I am always looking for new activities and ways to connect with other people. I find that as people get older, they find it much more challenging to make friends. I work from home, which is one of the reasons why I go out so much – to have human interaction and continue to meet people. So, when The Pure Social said they were hosting their Spin ‘n’ Paint at The Refinery in London, I was pretty excited to go along with Dann and see what it was all about.
The Pure Social is bringing people together through fun, meaningful and creative social experiences, so that real connection can be made while enjoying a drink and focusing on an activity. It’s meant to be welcoming, giving people time to reflect and take a break from everyday worries, while hanging out together. It’s a very simple idea and one that I feel very much breaks apart busy work weeks or parenting time. Their Paint ‘n’ Sip events do have different things that they are painting from tote bags to canvases to wooden boards. On the day that Dann and I went, we were painting lanterns!
The Pure Social provided all of the needed material (along with one drink token as well) and walked us through how we were going to paint these individual lanterns, starting with creating our shape that would be the “cut out” in our lantern so that you can see the light inside. Once these were stuck on, we got into painting. The collection of individuals at Sip ‘n’ Paint were very welcoming and friendly – it was fantastic chatting to the people at our table and designing our different lanterns. There are a bunch of different paints, beads, strings, charms, and tassels that you could use to design your lantern.
I did a moon and star lantern while Dann made one with birds and different pattern shapes. It was a cute idea! We got to see loads of other people at our table and the one next to ours design their lanterns and everyone had such unique designs in the end. I really loved some of the ones I saw that used markers to sort of design more over their cut out! We each got to pick a charm, tassel, and then as many beads as we wanted. I went with a sort of hanging tassel, so did Dann, but others added a bunch of beads around the top or wrapped their string all around their jars. It was just very interesting! Dann made a handle for his lantern so that he could hang it in the garden.
Everything felt very relaxing, cozy, and well presented at The Pure Social’s event. Even the part where they were drying our lanterns with the heat gun was done well, so that we could keep decorating with marker pens and the like once the paint was dried. At the end of the event, they also pulled a name from a bowl, to win a little prize, and I was picked as the winner! I got a little tapas bowl which was so lovely. Along with making some friends, I went home with a great lantern as well.
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!