Fair Wrap-Up

Fair season is over for the deRosiers... and what a season it was!  Back in June, I judged Paper Crafts and Arts & Crafts, we made and entered cars in a Pinewood Derby, and Trevor entered 7 craft items and a tablesetting competition at a nearby county fair.  In July, we visited the State Fair and prepared entries for our county's fair.  Last week we found out how our entries did.

Steve earned 1st place for his corn bread.  It is outstanding and the 1st place was no surprise.

 

Steve earned 2nd place for his white flaxseed machine bread.  It is also outstanding.  I would love to be able to taste the bread that got 1st place, because if it's better than Steve's it is really something special.  

 

Steve got 2nd place for his peanut butter cookies.  

 

I got 2nd place for my coffeecake (a version of this recipe). 

My Chocolate Heaven Bars earned 2nd place.  

My final entry was chocolate cupcakes that looked like little campfires. This is what I turned in:

Cute, right?  Little logs, little flames?  Campfires?  This is what was on display at the fair:

Apparently when you put these cupcakes into a ziplock bag, terrible things happen.  (For the record, I did not submit them that way.  I had plastic wrap draped loosely over the orange plate.  The judges move everything to white plates and ziplocks for display.)  I am dying to read the comment card to find out if they looked this hideous when judging took place or if they melted into a worm-like puddle of orange goo after judging.  Either way, they earned a 3rd, so I suppose I can't be too upset.

Trevor entered 8 items.  I should mention that the children's entries are judged using the Danish system, which means that each item is judged against itself rather than against other children's.  (The adult entries are judged using the American system of one 1st, one 2nd, and one 3rd place winner.)  When judging Danish, the judges have rubrics and check how each item stacks up against the rubric.  In theory, every child's entry could earn 1st place, though that never happens.  The standards are fairly high, so a 1st place is definitely earned.

Trevor earned 1st for his Toilet Paper Roll Owls.  At first I thought that Best of Show sign might have been for Trevor's entry, but upon closer inspection it was obvious that the altered bucket with the chicken on it earned Best of Show.

 

Trevor earned 1st for his Bunny Napkin Ring.

 

Trevor earned 1st place for a snowman intarsia project he made from scraps in my dad's wood shop.  

 

Trevor earned 1st place for both his stamped gift bag and card.

 

 

Trevor earned 1st for his Sunset Art.

 

Trevor earned 1st for his Ramona Owl.

 

And his final project, the Mixed Media Lion, also earned 1st.

 

He was thrilled to have earned 8 blue ribbons.

 

We left the fair very happy with how our entries did.  But when we got home, we had a pleasant surprise waiting for us - a letter in the mail, addressed to Trevor, inviting him to return to the fair for the awards ceremony.  He'd won a special award!

It turns out that Trevor won the Sweepstakes for Recycling!  In each division, the total number of points earned by each child is added up and whoever has the highest score earns the Sweepstakes.  Trevor entered three recycled items (the Ramona Owl, the Toilet Paper Roll Owls, and the Bunny Napkin Ring), and earned enough points on those to be the top winner!  His first trophy!

Here is the group photo of all of the children who won special awards.  Trevor is at the front right.  As is obvious from the picture, he is MUCH younger than all the other winners.  That kid of mine has a really bright future.  I couldn't be more proud.    

Bye bye Fair!  We'll miss you!  See you next year!

Kylinn at Six

As promised, here is the layout of my goddaughter Kylinn at 6.   

 

And here is the coordinating card.  

I had a heck of a time making this layout.  Ellia's came together quickly and easily, but this one was quite the struggle.

The problems started with the picture.  Kylinn's mom Courteney emailed me the picture she wanted me to use.  As I always do when I need to complete a layout but don't have a hard copy of the photo yet, I printed out a quick copy on ordinary paper using our home printer (which is not a photo printer).  It looked like Kylinn's shirt was blue, so I designed an awesome layout based on a specific piece of glittery blue floral paper.  Then I picked up the developed photo and learned that the shirt was actually purple and clashed horribly with the paper.  Aargh.  

I ended up chalking the paper to make it work. Unfortunately, when you chalk a glittery paper, you end up removing huge amounts of glitter. And the sharp glitter tears up the applicator / kleenex / cottonball that you use to apply the chalk. It took FOREVER just to get some hints of the right shade of purple on the paper. The left is the original paper, the middle shows it with sweeps of purple chalk, and the right shows the huge amount of glitter that ended up on my table instead of the paper where it belonged.

 

But the paper was only Problem 1.  The next problem was the pale blue bling-string (that's what I'm now deciding to call it).  It looked great with the blue paper but looked terrible once I chalked the paper purple.  Fortunately, the solution to this problem was faster and easier.  I added a tiny dot to the top of each rhinestone using a black sharpie.  Here's the side view (original on the left, dots added to the ones on the right):

Here's the exact same thing, but from the top view.  Amazing how adding one tiny dot of color to the tops changed the whole look.  Once I added it to the layout, it reflected some of the purple and totally worked with the page.

It was quite a relief when this layout finally came together!  In the end, I'm very happy with how it turned out.  If you'd like to see them, here are the other layouts I've done for Kylinn's 1st through 5th birthdays.

Happy 6th birthday, Kylinn!

Ellia at Three

In between the Fiskateers challenges, I worked on this:

That's my goddaughter Ellia.  Each year for my goddaughters' birthdays, I make them framed layouts with a list of their best qualities at that age.  You can see the two that I made for Ellia's previous birthdays here.  It's fun to see how she has grown and changed.    

Each year I use the scraps from the layout to make a coordinating card.  I was hoping there would be a Fiskateer challenge that would inspire the card and indeed there was.  The "How Does It Feel?" challenge required us to make a project with three different textures.  The background paper from Ellia's layout is flocked and the solid paper is beautifully smooth, so I was 2/3 of the way there.  I decided to emboss the sentiment to add a third interesting texture.  

 

 On Monday I'll share the layout and card I made for my other goddaughter, Ellia's sister Kylinn.

Fiskateers CCC Crop (Part 3)

Yesterday and Tuesday I showed you 10 of the 16 projects I made during the recent Fiskateers online crop.  Here's the next batch.

The "These Are My Other Favorite Colors" challenge asked us to make something using black and white, plus one other color.  I opened my new Bubbles border punch to make a card.  I really like how it turned out.  I think it has a Disney feel to it.  I'll have to remember that the Bubbles punch makes really cool confetti.

 

The "Layer 'em Up" challenge required us to layer multiple border punches.  I used the Bubbles punch from the previous card and then searched through my punches for one with the same size repeat.  Upper Crest was just about perfect.  

The "Christmas in July Tag" challenge seemed easy enough, except we had to include lace and buttons.  I don't work with either of those very often.  I decided to wrap my entire tag in lace, then punched the grommet right through it.  Not only did that give it a clean look, but it helped secure the end of the lace. I handcut some holly leaves and added red buttons for berries. 

 

I struggled with the "Who's Who" challenge, which asked us to celebrate a special relationship.  I was working on birthday layouts for my goddaughters and sent a message to the challenge hostess asking if those would work for the challenge, but because the layouts didn't show me with the girls (and thus didn't show our relationship), they weren't suitable for the challenge.  I decided to celebrate my relationship with Steve by making this very simple card.  

 

The "Sew Special" challenge required sewing, which we have established is NOT my strong suit.  Fortunately, hand sewing was allowed.  I can do that!  I decided to make a really simple candle from cardstock and sew the edges to provide some texture and definition.  I think it turned out really cute.  I'll be making this again for sure- I can imagine doing this with different shapes as well.

 

Tomorrow I'll share the last of my Fiskateer projects and my goddaughter's birthday layout that I managed to finish in the spare minutes between working on the other 16 projects! 

Fiskateers CCC Crop (Part 2)

Yesterday I showed you five of the sixteen projects I made for the recent Fiskateers crop. Here are some more!  

First up is the "Would It Really Be a Fiskateer Crop Without It?" challenge.  Fiskars is, of course, famous for their orange handled scissors, so every Fiskateer crop has some sort of orange challenge.  This time we needed to make something that was 50% orange, 30% green, and 20% some other color.  I used the same circle stamp as on the "Round" challenge to create this card. 

 

The "Getting Back to Basics" challenge was tough!  We were allowed to use nothing but cardstock, one sentiment stamp, one ink pad, and adhesive.  No patterned paper, no bling, no extra stamps to create patterns on the cardstock.  We could use whatever tools we wanted though, so I used my new Jenni Bowlin Scalloped Banner punch to create flower petals and a circle punch to make the flower center.  For the zillionth time, I realized how nice it would be to own a flower punch!   

 

The "Fabric Fun" challenge asked us to make something with fabric.  Not my forte, to say the least!  I found some plain white cotton scraps and spritzed them with mists.  When it was dry, I followed this tutorial to make fabric flags.

 

Then I used the rest of my fabric to make a butterfly card.  

 

The "Furry Friend" challenge asked us to use our favorite furry friend as inspiration for a bookmark.  I dug through my extra pictures of Trouble and chose one with his back turned.  I fussy cut him out and attached the picture to black cardstock.  I added a fluffy white tassel to go with his fluffy white cottontail. 

 

The "It's Hot Out There" challenge required us to make a project using one Fiskars tool and one Fiskars punch.  I used my paper trimmer and my heart squeeze punch to make this layout.

Tomorrow I'll show you more of the projects I made during the crop!