Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Artfest Forever! Day One

 I'm just back from a crazy busy week at Artfest in Port Townsend, Washington.  What an incredible event
 - I am already counting the days till I can return to my own version of heaven.  Just a few quick snippets of day one here.  The above picture is on the Bainbridge Island ferry, on our way to the Fort - really quite pretty weather, and that was a preview of the glorious days of sunshine to come.  I was very lucky to carpool with some wonderful new friends to the event - you meet just the nicest people at Teesha and Tracy's events.

Two hours of ferry riding and navigating later - here's the Fort Worden Commons!  Time to get checked in and pick up our adorable goodie bags - these were very useful tote bags (for your grocery shopping) and water mugs that were incredibly handy for making sure you remembered to hydrate with all the swirl of gypsy art madness going on.
Ok, there was one hitch in the proceedings.  The US postal service apparently sat on my box of paints that I shipped - with an explosion of gesso as a result.  Yes, that was me cleaning gesso of of EVERYTHING in the bathroom of dorm 225 for an hour or so.  I did have lots of tea and sympathy from my fellow artists though, and the use of a scrubby sponge.  Everything pretty much got cleaned up, and I learned a valuable lesson about the powers of ziplock bags.  Lesson:  use bags for paint!  And, Akamai Art Supply to the rescue - one tub o' gesso later, I was all set again.  Yay Akamai!

After the opening meeting, I went for a quick walk on the beach - this is what the real Twilight in Washington State looks like.  Nary a vampire in sight...  More of the story soon!

Monday, April 4, 2011

Artfest Trades!

I'm getting ready to attend my first Artfest!  I have been to Journalfest before, so I can't wait to get back to the magical Fort Worden, now packed with 500 of my fellow mixed media artists.  I'm told Artfest is like a really amped up version of Journalfest - I think my muse is going to be spinning about a hundred miles a minute....

So one of the big events from what I've read on the Yahoo group is trades - and these are the ones I'm bringing.  They are hand made, hand painted, enameled pendants with handmade 'yarnpeltery' tassels (that's what I call my collage knitting and fiber endeavors).  Some of them even have Swarovski crystals on them, others have moonstone and amethyst beads - I'm so looking forward to sharing them!

I'm also including my artwork on Moo Cards with the pendants, (see below) I think this will be awesomely fun.

Really looking forward to meeting my fellow Artfesters and trading with you all!  (as a journalism major a few moons ago, I think all these apostrophe marks would probably get me in trouble with my old professors, but hey - it's a goddess tribe gathering!)