Marana Art & Bluegrass Festival

A little roadtrip today....That's the problem with Casa Grande, you have to drive about 45 minutes in any direction to get to see things once you've covered the local area attractions. We drove to Marana today (about 2/3 of the way to Tucson from Casa Grande) to see an art/bluegrass festival. It was called at Crossroads/Cortera Park in Marana. It sounded like there were going to be a lot of vendors and attractions--food, music, and people...my favorite combinations...but I think a lot of people stayed away because of the cold..it was in the mid fifties with some brisk wind so quite chilly for outdoor music and entertainment. The music was 5.00 extra, so we chose to browse the vendor tents instead as we could hear the music while walking around.

There was just a very small area of vendors, but they were a little more unusual than what you normally see at a craft show....lots more stones and lapidary types of crafts...I saw some beautiful jasper stones that a gentleman mines in Oregon. It made me even more anxious to start our trip for the northwest as he talked about the night skies and the beautiful country he sees when he goes there. The jasper stones were a beautiful teal greenish blue. He polishes them with graduated grits of sandpaper by hand. He had many different kinds of stones from all over the world. Another lady had beautiful photography prints...

There were unusual serving pieces--forks and spoons that had beaded and silver wrapped handles, custom designed purse hooks...you are not allowed to take photos of craft shows according to some rules and regulations set up by art guilds in some cities, but I managed to take a couple of photos once I explained that I wanted to mention the craft show today in a blog. I can understand why some artists would not want you to take photos of their original designs, so I tried to take "generic" photos--not too close! Here is some interesting metal work...I see a lot of this on homes here at the Casa Grand park homes.....

I met a really nice lady who sells iron on "bling" for clothing. She custom designs all the shiny bling designs by hand, then painstakingly adheres each tiny little rhinestone thingy by hand onto paper. There is hot glue on the back of each tiny "stone" and you buy the design preset on paper, you peel off the paper and iron it onto your clothing. She was very sweet in sharing how she finds designs, how she makes everything and then sells it. She seemed to be doing the best of anybody at the show today...

I bought a nice copper hummingbird feeder that is "bee proof". She had some nicer ones with more copper wire and large beads on them. I think I could add copper wire to mine to make something like that. She very kindly told me how to do that!

Overall, it seemed to be a very small show but I'm sure the chilly weather had a lot to do with the low turnout of vendors and people coming to see the show.  But we enjoyed getting out and seeing what was there today...probably more so for me, than Eldy. He's not that much into craft shows, but he knows how much I enjoy them. Plus, he knows I'm trying to get some ideas to make a little extra money!

Looks like the rest of our week here is going to be great weather. A warmup is coming....see you later!