We have a great outdoor fair in Colorado (one outside of Denver, one in Boulder) that occurs once a month from May – October. It’s a shabby chic meet country farmhouse antiques and art show.
Perfection. Totally my thing, ah!!!
I first learned of this event, the Paris Street Market, last year and attended one of the shows and fell in love. I started thinking about how I could find a way to present at this show in the future (but the thought overwhelmed me and there were barely any artists there unlike this year). I’m thinking that having to mass-produce for and merchandise a display at The Barn, a similar though indoor and permanent venue, is a great first step to eventually participating at a fair like this one day (hopefully next year!).
The monthly fair occurred this past weekend and we made our way down the hill to not only shop it, but to do a “reconnaissance” mission – that is, really pay attention to the way the booths are set up, see what is on trend, watch the crowds. Problem was that is was WAY crowded…so much so that I skipped a lot of booths; it was just too crowded and I was always worried that me, my messenger bag and my camera would knock something over trying to squeeze around people.
Nonetheless, there was lots of eye candy…like chippy rusty patina laden gates, mantels and pieces of hardware:
And beautiful, distressed curves:
Quirky tin art among other art booths:
And quirky food vendors (I want this VW bus!):
I would’ve taken more photos, but it was so unbelievably crowded that people kept jumping in front of my camera…not so great for me, but plenty great for sellers who I’m sure were loving the crowds. The best part of all was that I found several vendors that I sell with at The Barn so they were helpful and will continue to serve as a wealth of information and advice should I take on this fair next year.
Throughout the week, I had a bunch of things I had set aside to paint and after the fair, I was definitely inspired. So I brought a ton of projects onto the sunny deck and started painting under the protection of our umbrella. I love to paint things over as it’s such a cathartic thing for me, like a Zen practice. I had a bunch of frames, home decor goods and odds/ends that I wanted to paint to give new life to old items or items that were otherwise the wrong color for what I wanted it for (to sell or decorate my booth with or decorate my home with).
I started dry brushing over a bunch of dark items to give them an aged and different look.
Here’s a close-up that allows you to see the dark underneath the whitewashing
I also used this process on a piece of wall decor I bought a while back (you can see on the far left what it looked like before):
Though the clouds looked beautiful against the blue sky, the distant thundering was a sign of what was to come…
And within 15 minutes of this photo it turned very dark, the wind started to whip and huge droplets of water began to fall as we dashed around trying to get everything inside in time. I still had a very wet frame in progress that I had to toss inside and within a minute of getting everything inside a full on hail storm came through. As ticked as I was having to stop my painting, I was that much more concerned about those poor vendors down the hill who were to receive that storm 30 minutes later.
Now, I might have to rethink an outdoor festival!
