This past weekend, UNIQUE USA held it’s 7th annual Los Angeles Holiday Market. UNIQUE LA has grown from one small passionate event of bringing local-made design and art to the masses, to now expanding into cities such as NYC and SF.

As written on the State of Unique:

Hailed the fresh face of a growing Made in the USA movement, Sonja [Rasula, creator of UNIQUE USA]’s mission is simple: “I want to bring modern Made-in-America design to the masses. My goals are to help designers and small businesses grow and become sustainable, to support the local economy, and to teach shoppers the value of conscious consumerism.”

As attendees of the event get the rare chance to personally meet with the 350 hand-selected designers, artists and vendors, a part of UNIQUE LA’s charm is in providing guests with loads of opportunities to give back to their community, locally.

This year provided free drinks from JOIA and The Naked Grape and snacks from LUNA, Clif and Fig Bar all free for the taking. Guests could also settle down at the DIY craft workstations hosted by Veronica Valencia of DesignHuntersLA creating their own gift-wrap paper, or even snap free prints and photos of themselves at the Oh! Snap Studios photo booth.

In recent years, it is quite humbling to see this market grow as new artists and creators are appearing every year and different guests bustle in to get their holiday shopping done.

This large-scale show promotes tons of cool, crafty finds individually handmade by designers you can personally meet and stuff your bellies with artisan foods, chocolates and delicacies; and, the creativity energy, excitement and pure personality felt in each and every vendor and shopper is infectious.

Plus, it’s very cool to see how each vendor makes their shop their own, standing apart from the rest. It just feels great to put your money back into the community through supporting these small businesses.

UNIQUE LA, you’ve done me again.

(And again, thank you to my Mentee Lauren for coming along with me to LA (her family even let us have dinner at her house afterwards)! And, thank you to Meg Frampton of Chandler The Robot for even introducing me to an event like this almost two-years back.)