It was my favorite week of the year again. The State College arts fest! Once again we laid our chores and cares aside and indulged in art.

This year’s festival was special. The kids decided to sell art at the children’s sidewalk sale. After some thought, we came up with a novel idea. We made necklace pendants out of oven baked clay encased in resin. To further explore resin art, we used alcohol ink in resin and tried various color combinations.

Resin is quite a difficult medium for beginners. There are many issues that you encounter. On our first try, I mixed the resin with the hardener too fast. This resulted in many air bubbles getting trapped in the mixture. You can pop surface bubbles with a heat gun but the ones trapped inside are impossible to reach. Slow mixing was key to reducing bubble formation.

Slow mixing has its own problems. The resin hardens in about half hour so it’s a slow but mad scramble to get the pieces done before it starts hardening.

Our process was as follows. We mixed the resin and hardener in disposable cups. We would also preheat the mold in the oven for 3 to 4 minutes. This helped in getting rid of bubbles. Once ready, we would pour the resin half way into the mold, then place either pre-made oven baked clay pieces or alcohol ink. We would then fill up the molds with the remaining resins.

The necklace sale was quite a success. The girls sold 55 pieces! Not bad work for a day. It was exciting, but also exhausting.

The next day was my day at the fest. We started on the street painting. We had an exciting theme this year. On our road trip, we had visited the Manzanar national historic site close to Death Valley in California. There I found this lovely gallery of Native Americans painted by Steve Cavallo. We decided to paint an image from this collection. The artist, Steve, was kind enough to give us permission to reproduce the painting.

With much apprehension we began the difficult art piece. It turned out quite good and Steve was excited to see our final work. It was the most satisfying experience for me, in terms of positive interaction with the artist and the outcome.

Other than the painting, we walked around and enjoyed discussing various art ideas with each other. We ate festival food and at the Indian restaurant. It was a lovely festival for us.

Kylo Ren the dog: I didn’t like the fest. It was noisy and I wasn’t allowed to make the same amount of noise. Hmph. My noise is so much nicer than the festival noise. Besides, they had meaty smells everywhere but I got none of it. Tanya was gone all the time and Leena also left. The only positive thing that happened to me was that I got to hang out with my girl friend. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have a girlfriend now along with a wife. I have not told my wife Rosie about it or she will bite my head off. But my girlfriend lives under a truck in the junkyard and she is a German Shepherd like me. She is so beautiful. Oh, I am in love. Leena has promised me a divorce party soon, so I am all set.

Crazy cookie the chicken: Is the arts fest nice?

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Oh yes. There’s art to eat.

Crazy cookie the chicken: Umm, but, Lazy Laurie, we don’t eat art, do we?

Lazy Laurie the chicken: When will you little ones learn? We chickens eat everything!

Crazy cookie the chicken: Oh ya right. We chickens eat everything. I saw felt art and paintings of birds and frogs. So we can eat that?

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Sigh. Yes. Everything.

Crazy cookie the chicken: Oh cool. I also saw my sisters, on a stick. They called it, chicken on a stick. The humans were lining up to eat it. What about that?

Lazy Laurie the chicken: Ulp. Bed time.