FAIRBURY - A new consignment shop that opened this weekend in Fairbury is seeking to serve as a home for more than a dozen different vendors of handcrafted items and also serve as a source of pride for the local community.

And Kindled Keepsakes has all come together quickly.

"I was overwhelmed. I posted on Facebook that I was opening a consignment shop for crafters and artisans, and I had probably seven spaces filled within 24 hours. And I started with 11 spaces, and now I’m expanding to my max, which is 15," owner Linda Springer said. "My worry was not being able to find people who wanted to display their wares with me and I’d be stuck with an empty building and not being able to open up and pay rent...but it’s just been amazing."

Moving back to her childhood home of Southeast Nebraska as she prepares to eventually retire from her day job, Linda Springer was searching for a store to house and sell her hand-made candles - but she realized she wouldn't be able to fill the whole space herself.

So in the span of about six weeks, Springer created Kindled Keepsakes, a home base for vendors of all different disciplines, from quilting and crocheting to soap-making and photography, with more still to come.

Downtown Fairbury already sports a thrift store, an antique store, and a couple of boutiques, but now there's also a source for unique items that are entirely homemade.

"If you’re looking for interesting, one-of-a-kind pieces, this is where you need to come," Springer said. "I don’t think there’s any place in town, let alone probably within a decent driving area, that’s going to be able to provide you with all this: stuffies, glass jewelry, wonderful pictures, paintings, soap...their displays are great. I’m just overwhelmed with how they’ve bought into this."

Instead of having to haul their wares to flea markets and craft shows every week, this consignment shop provides a dozen local artists from Fairbury and the surrounding area with a permanent home for their wares.

"I wanted local and regional people, because there’s no real place for them [to sell their stuff]. Besides flea markets and craft fairs, which charge you a lot - most charge you a pretty large booth rental for a day, maybe two days - there’s no place for them to display and sell their work," Springer said. "They're having to pack it up, take it over there, pack it up, drive it home, back and forth, back and forth...here, they can set it up and leave it, and it sells itself."

And more importantly, Springer wants Kindled Keepsakes to be a place that rekindles a sense of local community.

"Our community needs to get back together. We need to start saying ‘this is Fairbury, we’re proud of being in Fairbury,’ and doing what we can to help make Fairbury the place it used to be," said Springer, who spent many years as a child journeying into Fairbury for the weekend from her grandparents' farm near Alexandria. "Nobody is out anymore, they’re all locked in their houses, there’s nothing downtown anymore that people are drawn to, and we need to change that, because the downtown area used to be where everybody came. I’m hoping to help make a little bit of that change – it might not be a lot, but I’m hoping to be a little bit."

Located on the square in downtown Fairbury, the new store held its official grand opening over the weekend. It will purposefully be open until 8 PM, giving people a place to stop in, chat, and browse, after work and dinner.