Spring Arts Crafts Fest 2018lawrence Ks 66046

photo by: Mike Yoder

Maxine James, a 79-yr-old retiree, will brand her arts-and-crafts fair debut at Sabbatum'due south Spring Arts and crafts Fair. James, seen here in her Lawrence home, creates busy vases and bowls with jute rope and fabric which she fills with cacti and succulents. She calls her business Cactus in a Jar.

Maxine James is still getting used to the occupational injuries of her new hobby.

"You burn your fingers on the hot mucilage," she says, explaining the messy practice of wrapping jute rope around vases and bowls. "It's like sewing when you lot run the needle through your finger."

At 79, subsequently years of handcrafting pep-club uniforms and graduation dresses for her at present-grown daughters, the retired network administrator recently launched Cactus in a Jar.

photograph by: Mike Yoder

Maxine James, a 79-yr-old retiree, will make her arts-and-crafts fair debut at Sabbatum'due south Spring Arts and Crafts Off-white. James, seen here in her Lawrence home, creates decorated vases and bowls with jute rope and fabric which she fills with cacti and succulents. She calls her business Cactus in a Jar.

James' i-adult female enterprise, which sells cacti and succulents in hand-embellished drinking glass containers, will be i of eighty exhibitors at the Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department'due south annual Jump Craft Festival.

Slated for 9 a.m. to four p.m. Sat at the Douglas County Fairgrounds, the festival is expected to draw upwardly of 5,000 people to Lawrence this weekend, says Duane Peterson, Parks and Recreation special event supervisor.

"Usually ours kicks off the season of arts-and-crafts shows in the Midwest," he says of the fair, which volition host vendors from such states as Colorado, Texas and even Oregon. "That's why we go and so many this fourth dimension of year."

With warmer atmospheric condition on the horizon, festival attendees will have their fair share of grand art, birdhouses and gardening items to pick from Sat, Peterson says. Also among the lineup: homemade domestic dog treats and accessories, textile crafts, goat's milk skincare products, ceramics, stained-glass jewelry, baked goods and enough of dwelling decor.

Sabbatum marks James' first appearance on the arts-and-crafts circuit, at to the lowest degree as a vendor of handmade goods. The Avon representative also has a knack for assembling souvenir baskets, which she's sold nether the Avon name at Topeka-expanse arts and crafts shows.

Now, with her sewing automobile having "bit the dust" and her children grown, she's found a new creative outlet with Cactus in a Jar.

"I saw the jute wrapping on TV ane 24-hour interval and thought 'that'due south pretty cool,'" James says of her fledgling venture. "So, I had a vase hither and I tried it."

photograph by: Mike Yoder

Maxine James, a 79-twelvemonth-former Lawrence retiree, will make her arts-and-crafts fair debut at Sat's Spring Craft Fair. James creates decorated vases and bowls with jute rope and cloth which she fills with cacti and succulents. She calls her business Cactus in a Jar.

Ofttimes, she'll start out with a specific item — at the moment, James has found inspiration in a set of miniature garden tools scored at Michael'south — and then builds a theme around it. Recent creations take included nautical motifs, for example, or a Southwestern-fashion piece embellished with jalapeno-patterned fabric and tiny Mexican dolls.

James says she prefers cacti and succulents because they're low-maintenance, slow-growing, survive well indoors and don't seem to concenter the diseases that plague other plants — or, as she puts it, "I would hate to sell somebody something and they didn't take care of it and in two weeks the darn thing's dead."

For those especially bereft of gardening skills, she's keeping a few artificial cacti in the mix Saturday. Prices should range from $ten all the way upwardly to $40, for some of the more elaborate live-institute ensembles.

In the meantime, she's thinking about turning that spare bedroom of hers into a crafting room.

"I'm either going to sell out the showtime two hours or I'chiliad going to come up home with all these plants," James says. "You merely don't know."

If you go

What: Lawrence Parks and Recreation Department's Spring Arts and crafts Festival

When: 9 a.m. to 4 p.grand. Sabbatum

Where: Douglas County Fairgrounds, 2110 Harper St., Building 21

Cost: The event is complimentary and open to the public.

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Source: https://www2.ljworld.com/weblogs/out-about/2016/mar/10/lawrence-parks-and-recreation-to-host-sp/

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