I went to the Fair today, and took some pictures of Creative Activities. Competition results are available online; find “bead” to see the winners of the beading divisions (no pictures). Pieces aren’t labeled by artist’s name when they’re displayed, and sometimes the groupings are creative so items competing against each other are not displayed together; i.e., items with a flamingo for a theme were displayed together, whether it was origami or a quilt.

I was four hours into wandering the Fair, and tired, so I know I missed pieces in the Creative Activities building. One display, for at least the last few years, is of work by Diane Fitzgerald and some of her beading friends, who also do the testing for her books. This year’s theme was Bling. It was an overload of Swarovski. I recognize the candy dish of Swarovski beaded beads as hers, I do not know about the necklace. The bracelets may be from several members of her beading group.

These were just a small percentage of the pieces in the Bling display.

Following are a few pictures of assorted beaded pieces entered in the Fair:

One of the things this Fair is known for is its food-on-a-stick. For your amusement, here’s a video BellyDuJour made of all 59 foods-on-a-stick that were available last year. I have entered the State Fair once, and my entry was a giant pickle on a stick.

I’ll end this with a piece from the Fine Arts competition, very difficult to jury into. Pieces are usually serious; there were two excellent pictures and a painting of the collapse of the I35W bridge in Minneapolis, where 13 people died. On the lighter side, an artist with a lovely warped sense of humor made this sock monkey creation. (Edited to add, the artist is Rebecca Yager, the creator of the sock monkey dresses I admired last year at the Fair.)