A Windsor mum who set up an online project to help small traders and craftsmen survive the pandemic has had an overwhelming response.

A month ago Nicola Bell set up the Facebook Group Windsor and Eton Virtual Christmas Market, 2020 and has already attracted 300 people using it to advertise their artisan gifts, crafts and collectables - while 1,300 people have joined it to browse items on offer.

Nicola, whose children Tom and Lily aged 11 and 12 go to St Edward's Middle School in Windsor, said: "There are so many artists and craftsmen and women who have had all their Christmas fairs and art shows taken away from them by the pandemic and I'm just trying to find a way to let them showcase their work."

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Nicola is also the person behind the Facebook Group Eye Spy Windsor & Eton.

Each day at 8am she used to post a photograph she has taken of an interesting or quirky corner of Windsor or Eton, for Facebook members to track down for themselves and photograph.

Out of that she developed her own small businesses selling collages of the photos she had taken.

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She said: "Of course all the art sales I would have gone to were cancelled and that was what started me thinking about other small businesses in the same boat."

She is planning to start posting the daily photographs again soon, to create a '12 days of Christmas' series of snaps of 'mystery sites' she hopes will get people put off by the weather out and about again.

She also keeps busy helping her husband Jonathan run a company that builds racing car simulators on the Cordwallis trading estate in Maidenhead.

The family live at the Cloisters in Windsor.

Meanwhile you can join her Windsor and Eton Virtual Christmas Market 2020 for free if you want to support a small local businesses or are hoping to sell your own wares.