Dressed in a red cloak and sporting a black bob, Alexa Fitzpatrick, embodying Lord Farquaad, started handing out royal decrees.

The handwritten notes, which she passed out at the Colorado Renaissance Festival in June, were host to witty phrases like “Ogres will be beheaded on-site” and “Pumpkin carriages double parked will be towed.”

Fitzpatrick exchanged the scrolls with villagers who recognized her character from the movie “Shrek,” as well as interested shopkeepers. Often, her gift would be met with a bauble in return. By the end of the day, she had collected a jar full of little trinkets.

The Denver resident has been a Renaissance fairgoer for a decade, but this was the first time she tried her hand at “trinket trading,” after learning about the practice from a friend.

“Trinket trading is a really fun way to connect people and add a playful, spontaneous experience to the Renaissance fair, because you meet strangers and you can laugh, and then you kind of leave the interaction with small treasures that reminds you of when you met,” she said. “I can look at the jar and pretty much remember every single person who gave them to me.”

The practice of trinket trading, or gifting little quirky objects, is a favorite activity of many Renaissance Festival patrons. While trinket trading has grown in popularity over recent years, the concept of “faire favors” has been a festival tradition for decades.

Fair favors could be anything, but most of the time, they were personalized pins that often reflected something about the maker, given to friends. Over the years, the practice evolved into trinket trading. Fair patrons get creative with their knickknacks, which are often handmade.

Trinkets can range from kindhearted gifts to the downright strange — something that Fitzpatrick quickly discovered during her trinket trading journey. One of the coolest items she received: a color-changing mood bracelet. One of the oddest: a piece of latex covered in tattoos, peeled from someone’s skin.

“My friends kind of looked at me with horror, but I was, like, you know, it’s something no one else has,” Fitzpatrick chuckled.

That’s the reaction trinket trader Quentin Farris said he was hoping for. Working at a tattoo shop and adorned with ink, Farris came up with the latex-skin trinket as a way to show his love of body art. To create the “pieces of skin,” Farris layered liquid latex thinly with a flesh color, and once dry, painted a tattoo design on top, including sketches of safety pins, skulls, smiley faces and matches.

“There’s been absolute horror and delight. A lot of good reactions. I’ll go, ‘You want a fresh peeled tattoo?’” Farris said. “I pull a little tattoo out, and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, what is that? Why?’ And it’s just such a fun reaction, because there’s the shock of it. Then I explain, ‘No, it’s latex, don’t worry.’”

Some of Farris’ favorite gifted trinkets: a handmade leather bat clip, a crochet acorn and a mini cat painting.

It’s that uniqueness that makes trinket trading magical, said festival volunteer Elizabeth Lux, whose character, “Trixie the Trinket Trader,” specializes in teaching others about the craft.

Wearing a badge that says “Trinket Trader,” Lux gifts compact tumbled rocks because she works at a crystal store.

“The fun for me is the magic of being able to give people a trinket,” said Lux, who has been a festival regular for the past couple of years. “It’s my favorite thing, to give a tumbled rock to a little kid and see their face just absolutely light up. And even adults. So many people will just light up when they see this trinket.”

A large part of her character, though, is educating others about trinket trading etiquette. While the practice is widely enjoyed here in Colorado, several festivals around the country have banned the activity in an effort to protect vendors and entertainers. That’s why practicing in a courteous manner is so important to traders, Lux said.

It’s key that trinkets are given, never sold or traded for products from merchants, Lux said. And to that point, never give a trinket expecting an item in return. It’s also important to respect vendors by keeping trinkets to wee items instead of something that they may be selling.

Unfortunately, the rise of trinket trading has impacted musicians who struggle with being tipped in trinkets, rather than coins. That’s a big no-no in the practice, and while you can offer a trinket, never replace it with cash.

“You can’t pay your bills with trinkets and whimsy,” joked performer Flynn Flam in a video posted to TikTok.

“As much as we all want to be able to buy food with pixie dust, unfortunately, that is not the reality of the world we live in,” Lux added.

Lux does love her trinkets, though. She recalls getting a Dungeons and Dragons mimic eye button, miniature clay gremlins and goblins, temporary tattoos and even bones in a small jar.

“I adore my trinkets. My whole entire house is decorated with trinkets. … I have blanketed shelves with trinkets,” Lux said.

Trinket traders will sometimes wear badges to identify themselves, while others will wait to interact and offer a trinket. Fun costumes or characters might inspire a trinket trade. There are even pages and online groups dedicated to trinket trading, where festival-goers might alert members of what they’ll be trading for the upcoming weekend.

There’s also plenty of trinket trading among local social Renaissance fair groups. Take the “Crimson Marque Pirates,” for example. The community of pirate-themed fairgoers enjoy the practice, which they call “exchanging favors,” said member Victor Holt.

While Holt has been attending festivals since 2001, he only learned about trinket trading after joining the group 10 years ago. Since then, he’s enjoyed hand-making trinkets that match his character for the day. One of his favorites: small, pendant-sized jars he fills with sand, seashells and seahorses that he passes out when he and his wife dress as merfolk.

“People love giving stuff that they create to others and seeing their reaction,” Holt said. “They love seeing it again when they run across that person later on, whether it’s that season or the next year.”

When he receives a trinket, he places it directly onto his hat. One of his favorites among that collection is a random shower curtain ring he was given from a vendor’s child who was learning about trinket trading.

“That was probably about five years ago. Then this past weekend when we went, their daughter gave me a 3D printed dragon,” he said. “So I have that now looped through the shower curtain ring and attached to my hat.”

And while the creations might vary among collectors, the spirit is the same: meeting new people and sharing some magic. Just remember to be polite, good sirs and ladies.

“I definitely think there’s a lot of magic with it. But I also think it’s important to not lose sight of the real magic of the fair, which is the incredible artists and crafters and shopkeepers who are local to Colorado, because while the trinkets are fun and free, they shouldn’t replace the value of supporting the hard-working vendors who make the fair what it is,” Fitzpatrick said.

“But, it’s probably something that’s not going away anytime soon.”