East Lansing Art Festival Day One

Today was the first day of the East Lansing Art Festival. I parked at the office of my friend Terry and headed for the MSU Union Art Fair. The prices on the Union side of the Art Festival are usually more reasonable and my favorite jewelry maker, Renate Favour of Etc. Designs has her booth by the Union Building. I own several pair of earrings and three pins by Renate. Her jewelry is made of niobium. Before finding Renate's booth, I ran into my brother, Doug, and his son, Xander. Pretty soon Shelley arrived with baby Jessica. Shelley had purchased a magic wand and tutu outfit for Jessica to wear to her 1st Birthday in November. The theme will be "fairy princess" and all she needs now is a tiara. Xander and Jessica also had their caricature portraits drawn by an artist. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera with me, so I couldn't take their pictures. We visited a bit and then I ran off to find Renate. I found her booth and purchased three pair of earrings. I later found another artist, Beth of Designed by Beth, who makes earrings from sterling silver and gold. I couldn't resist a pair of gold swirl earrings and another pair with hoops of silver and gold balls on the hoops. Here they are..................

I ran into Terry and her daughter Erin, and then met up with Lisa and her grandson, Jacob "Cubby". We met at the concert with Jen Sygit. She is a local singer and has a great voice and a great band as well. Linda joined us at the concert. She bought some jewelry from Renate as well. Lisa and I and Cubby traveled back to the Union for MSU Dairy Store ice cream and to check out more art. The weather started looking ominous so I headed for home about 3:00 pm. I saw lots of wonderful artwork. There was much less pottery than in years past, only a few quilt booths and many, many booths with jewelry and beads. Lots of beads. Did I mention there were lots of beads?

Speaking of beads, I have been collecting beads for several years. I have added them to quilts, beaded wedding dresses, made jewelry etc.

This past week I made these three bracelets. Click to enlarge.

Lime green, my favorite.

Lime green and turquoise dichroic glass.

Whimsical black and white.

Tonight I started several more bracelets after getting very inspired by the beaded bracelets at the art festival.

The sky looked like rain for quite awhile and we had very high winds, but no rain.