ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. —  A little pre-Valentine’s Day fun awaits you this weekend at Lovefest in St. Petersburg.

What You Need To Know

  • Lovefest at Page Boy in St. Pete will be held Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

  • Vendors like Cassie Mrotek, who created the Astra self-care line, will be in attendance

  • Mrotek says small businesses like hers use festivals like the one in St. Pete to meet their customers

It’s happening Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the grounds of Page Boy Vintage Market, Apothecary & Hair Studio.

Along with food and drink, organizers say visitors can expect to see vendors and the shop bathed in objects of love.

“We love to bring other vendors into the kind of the brick-and-mortar space,” said owner Jason Hall. "Especially this market, because it’s all about that collective energy, and we can’t do it alone, nor do we want to.”

One of the Lovefest Vendors planning to attend is Cassie Mrotek, who created the Astra self-care line.

Standing in front of her steam distillation kit in her workspace inside the St. Pete Salon Studio B, she explained the process of creating some of her products.

“So really what I’m doing is extracting all the moisture from this plant and getting all of its spirit into a bottle, to use that then as a facial spray,” she said.

The curving glass tubes of the kit could represent the winding business journey Mrotek has taken since she started her self-care line in the crush of the pandemic in 2020.

Now she’s navigating St. Pete’s downtown development.

“Every time I felt like I was finding a space for myself and getting settled in, then all of a sudden the rent goes up, or 'Hey, we want to move somebody else in,’" Mrotek said. "They wanted to take the building down, they want to sell the building, develop something else."

And while she doesn’t have her own brick-and-mortar shop, Mrotek said events like Lovefest help her meet new customers.

And she’s got retail space in Salon B, where she shares a workspace — a place that she said is always inviting other creators to collaborate.

“So anyone I can sort of bring with me on this journey of amazing small business-ship or whatever it is called, let’s do it,” Mrotek said with a laugh.