Tag Archives: Island County Fair

Pictures from our Island County Fair booth

Aug 27, 2011

Ok!  I think the last pictures I posted about our booth at the Island County Fair kinda looked like underwear, right?  Something like this:

 

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and this……                                                                    

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But it's about time to showcase the FUN stuff, don'tcha think?

So here's what I've got for ya today….

First, an overview of the whole space:  

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And then……

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This was the logo I'd designed with "My Digital Studio" (Stampin' Up!'s digital design program) and we used in various forms throughout our displays.  Man, oh, man, it took me HOURS of digital manipulation to create the basic of this, but I had a ton of fun with it and thankfully My Digital Studio was up to the task! 

There's a version of it on the colorful banners that hung above us, and we had it on our name tags, and also a piece of it on the labels we placed on the backs of our give-away favors.  (More about those favors in a moment.)

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And well, ok, here's what we were making on site and handing out to those who would stop to talk to us.

The Fair's theme this year was "See EWE there – at the Island County Fair".  And after absolutely knocking ourselves out *last* year and decorating our entire booth with their theme, only to receive no recognition at all for it, this year we decided to scale it back, focus mainly on Stampin' Up!® instead, and just give a single "nod" to the theme:

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And they turned out pretty cute, if I do say so myself!

More coming later in future posts, but in the meantime if you visited our booth or got one of our favors, I'd really love it if you would leave a comment with your thoughts!  And out of curiousity, also let me know if your favor still has its candy inside, lol! 

Just click the "comment" link below and type up a little message.  Unfortunately because of the proliferation of automated spamming comments these days, I've had to set my comment system to "moderate", but as soon as I review your comment I'll authorize it for posting.  Thanks very much in advance!

 

It’s FAIR time!

Aug 18, 2011

Hello Island County!!! 

Just checkin' in here with a quick update.  You may have noticed my relative silence recently; that's because I've been spending every waking moment of the past several weeks laser-focused on getting our booth ready to open on time this morning. (And we "almost" made it, lol!)

Are you excited for the Fair?!?  Or are you just dragging yourself and the kids HOME from there with tired and aching feet?  Either way, I sure hope we either had a chance to chat – or will soon!

If you HAVEN'T already been there, I wanted to let you know I'll be in our booth every day from mid-afternoon through closing, and all day on Sunday.  Yep, that's over half the hours the Fair is open!  You can find us in our usual place in the Turner Building; just look UP above the tops of the booths for the familiar Stampin' Up! logo!

This is what our booth looked like Monday morning (the photo is actually of our next-door-neighbor booth, but ours looked exactly the same); come see how Michele and I've transformed the place this week!  🙂

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And a couple other things you might like to know…..

If you have picked up a 2-for-1 coupon, you can read more about my Card Classes here.

And if you've been wanting to view that My Digital Studio Overview video again, we'll be streaming it from time to time throughout the run of the Fair.  You can catch that at:

http://www.gvolive.com/conference,stamptherock

Just sign in with your full name (and leave the password area blank), and then you may have to wait several minutes for the video to start.  (Unfortunately it will probably begin wherever the master video is running, rather than from the beginning, but technology is not yet totally perfect, lol.)

If, after several minutes, the video does not begin, then go ahead and sign out and try again later.  The PLAN is to have it looping throughout the weekend, but of course technological gremlins may do their best to interfer with that……

Added Sunday morning:

THANK YOU to all of you coming to meet me this weekend!  I've met so many fun, enthusiastic crafters and crafter-wannabees this weekend, and look forward to working with you in the future!

 If you haven't yet had a chance to drop in, today is the final day at the fair.  I'll be doing my drawing on Monday – from everyone who has given me their email & phone info since Thursday. 

So that means if you've filled out a form to join my email list, you're IN. 

If you join my list before the end of today (just click on the green button at the top of the next column to the right) – you're IN. 

Or if you email me with your info before the end of today – you're IN, too!!!

And if had asked about My Digital Studio, please be sure to watch that video at the link above.  Today is the final day I'll be streaming it online.

Now scroll down for my other recent posts, and…….

I'll see you at the FAIR!!!!

Watermelon card – Island County Fair

Sep 6, 2010

  P8190006 Well, some people have asked how I made that watermelon card we had on display in our Island County Fair booth. 

So even though it's long past watermelon eating weather around here (yeah, like we ever HAD watermelon weather this year, lol), I'm gonna try to explain.  Wish I could demo with a video, but I'm still not set up for that around here.Watermelon

It's all about sponging.  Specifically, "burnishing" color with a sponge.  There's actually no stamping involved at all.

I started by tracing an everyday dessert plate onto Whisper White cardstock.  That gave me a circle about 5-1/2" across, so it fits fine in an envelope.  I cut out the circle with the Craft & Paper Scissors….. then folded in half along the grain of the paper.  (Translation:  in the direction it folded easily.)  That gave me the basic card shape.

Then I started sponging/burnishing with Regal Rose Classic ink.  Taking the ink up on a quarter of a sponge, I began by wiping a couple strokes of excess ink off onto my scrap paper.  Then with the ink that remained on the sponge, I started sponging in tight continuous circles, at first starting off my cardstock and then moving up onto it over the fold.  I started with light pressure, and as color was applied, gradually increased the pressure.  Every time I needed to reload the sponge with ink I began back at the point of wiping the excess off on the scratch paper and then began the circular burnishing on my scratch paper and then working up onto the card again.  Same process – over and over – working in tight circles to within about 3/4" of the open edge of the card as shown by the pink area.

When that area was totally covered with Regal Rose ink, I switched to Melon Mambo and repeated the entire process – right on top of the same pink area.

Finally, on top of that, I applied Rose Red – with the exact same burnishing technique.

Then it was time to work on the rind.  I used the same burnishing technique, except instead of approaching from the folded edge, I worked up onto the open edge of the card.  The initial layer is Certainly Celery – and applied lightly right up to the very edge of the pinks.

Then came Wild Wasabi – applied up to about half-way between the edge of the card and the pink area.

Finally, I used Garden Green – just barely up onto the very edge of the card…. and then finished off with some deliberate strokes of that same sponge right along the edge to darken it.

Gradually building up these layers of color gives the whole thing a more "alive" look – with depth to its color, closer to real-life.

For the seeds, I just cut a template in a Window Sheet using a Hobby Blade – freehand.  It took several attempts to get the size and shapes I wanted, but the "loser" holes I just covered with Scotch tape.  I eventually had 3 sizes that worked – and applied a deep saturation of Early Espresso ink with a Sponge Dauber – in a few random directions and sizes.

I've never actually sent this card to anyone, but I could easily see it used as an invitation to a BBQ or summer picnic. 

Hmmm….. "summer" picnic……. wonder what THAT might be like?  Maybe next year…… 😉

On the back side of the Fair

Aug 25, 2010

Well, we (Michele, Christie, Leslie and I) survived the Island County Fair once again!  We had lots of fun, and spoke with lots of great people.  (WELCOME to those who may be visiting here for the first time!)

Of course I have several souvenirs to remember the 2010 Fair by:  a house that looks like a hurricane hit it as I grabbed *this* table and *that* trinket, and *this* sample and *that* tool.  And piles and piles of scraps and supplies to sort through.  Most of the booth contents have made it no farther than the garage so far, so that means that for the time-being the StampMobile has been banished to the driveway….. which probably isn't that big a deal anyway since it's filthy after having sat in the dust for a week and then *really* turned into a hopeless mess with Sunday's sprinkles. 

So I've definitely got lots to do to get life back on track.

But in the meantime I've come down with a cold…….which I suppose was bound to happen after shaking dozens of hands and handling hundreds of kids' grimy passports, lol.  Last year we had the H1N1 scare going on at Fair time so I was using hand sanitizer every couple of minutes.  This year I guess I was a bit more careless- and get to pay for it afterwards.  Oops!

Anyway, in between picking through and straightening up the messes that extend in every direction, over the next several posts I'm going to share some of the projects we featured in our booth.  The Fair's theme this year was "Island County has a Fair – E-I-E-I-GO!"  So, as has been our usual practice, we built our booth's main displays around that theme.  (We've won awards a couple of times for doing that – although not as often as we *should* have, given we're generally the ONLY commercial vendor who promotes the fair's theme, lol.)  Anyway, this year we spent several months "thinking" about the theme, because it was definitely the toughest one ever…. and thanks to an idea my Dad ultimately thought of, we've spent the past couple of months hard at work preparing our displays.

So the bulk of our display depicted "things people enter into the Island County Fair" ("Island County has a P8190001 Fair"), and then our give-away pinwheels and our nametags echoed the "E-I-E-I-GO" element of the theme.  When the fair opened and we once again saw that we were the only commercial booth to decorate to the theme (that we could see, anyway), we knew we probably had the "Best Use of the Fair's theme by a Commercial Vendor" ribbon "in the bag", so to speak. 

But it's never a good idea to count one's chickens before they're hatched, and it appears ribbons were awarded based on different criteria than indicated by the score sheet they'd sent us only a couple weeks earlier. 

So we have no award ribbon to show y'all this year – and given that our theme-efforts have only been recognized 2 of the past 5 years (in spite of virtually no theme competition among our peer vendor booths), we've decided that this will probably be our final year of trying.  Promoting the Fair's theme adds a TON of work and time…… and consumes space and money that could otherwise be used to market our businesses more effectively.  So next year we may have an entirely different focus.  Stay tuned to see what's in store; we're excited about the possibilities!

So for those who weren't able to visit us, we had 6 shelves of "things people enter into the Fair":  quilts, fruit, cakes, candy, flowers, and animals.  And all of those projects were constructed of Stampin' Up! products…. as were the blue ribbons that were also part of the displays.  I'll be sharing those projects here in the coming days.

P8190004 Our top left shelf previewed an exciting product that will be available September 1 – and can be seen in the upcoming Holiday Mini Catalog:  FABRIC that coordinates with our Designer Series Papers!  Christie is the quilter on this year's booth team, so she created this pinwheel-design quilt (which coordinated with our give-away pinwheels), out of one of our packages of new fabric.  (We'll be carrying "extra-wide" fat quarters; pieces measure approx. 28" x 18".)  This particular collection is called "Candy Cane Christmas".  I love it's fun stripes and polka dots in Real Red, Blushing Bride, Baja Breeze, and Garden Green.  And doesn't that Real Red button in the middle add just the right punch?!?

And here's some more good news!  Christie has said she's willing to teach this quilt this upcoming season – if enough people want to take the class!  So if you have an interest in taking this class, please either leave a comment here or email me directly and let me know! If we get enough interest, we'll do it!!!