Copperas Cove Creative Space Holds Downtown Vendor Market

By BRITTANY FHOLER

Cove Leader-Press

Dozens of vendors set up in the streets of downtown Copperas Cove for the new monthly outdoor vendor market hosted by Copperas Cove Creative Space. 

The market featured over 30 vendors selling baked goods, tumblers, shirts, socks, resin items, 3D printed items and more, plus food and drink vendors Rissy’s Slappin’ Sips and Bangin’ Bites and Slow Morning Coffee. 

Creative Space founder, Carlos Armas, partnered with the Copperas Cove Community Farmers Market last month for a two-day Trick or Treat Market the weekend before Halloween. He returned Sunday with another Vendor Market, with plans to bring another vendor market to the area in December.

Armas is a middle school art teacher in Killeen, but he lives in Copperas Cove and wants to see more things happening in Copperas Cove. 

At Copperas Cove Creative Space, now located at 115 E. Avenue E, there is art by 25 different local artists, including high school teachers and students. The space also serves as a meeting location for locals, like the group of Dungeons and Dragons players who gathered in the back room while the market went on outside. 

Armas said that he also partnered with the Central Texas Writers Association last month, pairing a poet with an artist, presenting on stage in an event that was free to the public. 

“The initial goal over there [in former location in the Premier Plaza, above the Leader-Press office] was to bring art to Copperas Cove, but I soon realized that the art’s already here, we just need a place to display. So it’s just to bring the community together using art, and now we’re doing markets.”

 “Community is something I love,” he said. “That’s what feeds me. That’s what drives me, and having all these people together [at the market], I love it.”

Armas said he has spoken with and with the coordinators of some of Copperas Cove’s other vendor markets, like the Norns Metaphysical Market and the Community Farmers Market. He intends to offer an additional option, not necessarily a competition. He said his goal is to keep prices low or at no cost for vendors. 

“Is it competing? if you’re doing it for the money, yes. If you’re doing it for the right reason, no, because I think everybody needs an outlet,” Armas said. “I’m already working with other markets, and I want to continue. I’m a really horrible businessman. I don’t do it for the money.”

He added that the space on Avenue E is a good location, and he wants to bring more to the downtown area.

His wife, Monique Armas, was one of the vendors, with her business, Nikki’s Botanicals, offering loose leaf tea blends, different honey blends, and even potting soil. 

She just started her business this summer, she said. 

“I am a gardener. I’ve always loved plants or everything that’s plant related, so then I also wanted to focus on bringing robust products to people,” Monique said. “You don’t really see a whole lot of people selling- like I have different types of honey that you won’t necessarily see at the store. I have loose leaf tea, which has more, I’d say, more powerful benefits than your regular tea bags. With the loose leaf tea, you can steep it, and they’re not so ground up, and they’re not stale because the ones in the store are pretty old leaves, you know, so you’re getting a watered down version of what you’re supposed to get. So everything’s natural, no preservatives.”

Monique said she would have plants available for sale normally, but the weather has been “wonky”, so she brought her soils that she blends herself.

“My husband is the one that decided, ‘Hey, what a better way to support small businesses and bring life to Cove, we do a market,’” Monique said. “It initially started with the Creative Space. We were actually in the blue building [in the Preferred Plaza]. We grew out of that space. We were fortunate enough to get a bigger space, so we’re just trying to bring, like a spark back to downtown area because everybody goes to Belton, Temple, Salado, why not bring it home.”