32nd Annual Daffodil Festival
Posted by wendyswhimsies at 4/25/2010 8:42 PM 
Categories: Craft Show Review, Random Thoughts
Tags: Daffodil Festival Meridan CT craft show review
Categories: Craft Show Review, Random Thoughts
Tags: Daffodil Festival Meridan CT craft show review
Yesterday my DH and I attended the 32nd Annual Daffodil Festival in Meridan, CT. The Daffodil Festival began in 1978 as a community event, but it has grown into one of Connecticuts largest celebrations. The festival boasts a parade, food, crafts, music, and rides for the kids. Fireworks were also planned for Saturday evening, but we didn't stay for those. The festival is held at Hubbard Park and they claim there were 61 varieties of daffodils throughout the 1800 acres. The weather was spectacular, the crowds were large, and we had a really nice day.
My primary reason for attending the Daffodil Festival was to check out the craft show. Since the Navy relocated us to the east coast, I have focused on selling my artwork online through my website, Wendy's Whimsies Hand Painted Gifts. I have been fortunate enough to have steady sales over the last few years, so I haven't taken the time to research local shows or build up the inventory needed to participate in a large festival. After blogging about my past experiences at art festivals and farmers markets recently, I got the urge to get out there to see what art shows are like here in CT.
The Meridan Daffodil Festival touts itself as, "New England's Most Beautiful Craft Fair!"Hubbard Park, where the festival is held, is indeed beautiful, but the area designated for the Arts and Crafts vendors could have been chosen better. The Festival website refers to the craft show as Crafts By The Lake, however, only a handful of artist booths were actually along the lake where there was a flat walking path. The majority of the booths were crammed into an area at the edge of the park where the ground was uneven, rocky, and very difficult to walk on.
I could not imagine trying to manuever this area with a walker or in a wheelchair. The craft show at The Daffodil Festival is a juried event. They look for quality and unique exhibitors, and this year they advertised there were over 80 crafts people. I did not take a head count, but I did see a few empty booth spaces. I also noticed that there were quite a few jewelry vendors in close proximity to each other. Don't get me wrong, I love jewelry, in fact I picked up a pair of really cute beach glass earrings, but it does not seem fair to the artists to have booth after booth of basically the same product. I suppose it is entirely possible that mostly jewelry vendors applied to attend the show, but the organizers could have arranged the booths better to space out the similar products.
I could not imagine trying to manuever this area with a walker or in a wheelchair. The craft show at The Daffodil Festival is a juried event. They look for quality and unique exhibitors, and this year they advertised there were over 80 crafts people. I did not take a head count, but I did see a few empty booth spaces. I also noticed that there were quite a few jewelry vendors in close proximity to each other. Don't get me wrong, I love jewelry, in fact I picked up a pair of really cute beach glass earrings, but it does not seem fair to the artists to have booth after booth of basically the same product. I suppose it is entirely possible that mostly jewelry vendors applied to attend the show, but the organizers could have arranged the booths better to space out the similar products. 
There were a few vendors who offered items that I had never seen before and I really enjoyed their artwork. One artist who worked with old flatware had some unusual products. In addition to the flatware wind chimes you frequently see, this artist created door hangers, wall hooks, napkin rings, napkin holders and knife rests. He may have had more, but that booth was so crowded we couldn't get inside. Another craftsman offered photo mats made of thin oak paneling. I have never seen anything like these before. This artist used a scroll saw to carve out names and embellishments to accent your photos. The mat sizes started for 5 x 7 frames and went up to larger collage frames. They also took custom orders to personalize your oak photo mat for a specific event. They even had mats for the different Military branches, but nothing specifically for Submarines. That was too bad since the Submarine Capital of the World is so close by. There was an amazing photographer who created Name Photography. I hope I can do justice to this description because I absolutely loved this concept. This photographer had photos of architectural and botanical elements that were cropped so these elements formed letters or numbers. For example: a photo of a window was cropped to look like the letter "H". An image of stair rail spindles was cropped to look like the letter "I". A shot of wrought iron scrolls was cropped to create the letter "S".
These letter photos were then placed side by side to create names or words. Each individual photo was interesting, but when placed side by side, they created a secret message. I spent the rest of the day looking at buildings, trees and flowers in a completely different light. Finally, there was only one artist who sold hand painted glassware. She had a nice assortment of wine glasses, champagne flutes and martini glasses. She also had some lovely cracked glass vases painted in aviary themes.So that was my day. I had a great time with my other half and I thoroughly enjoyed getting out there to mingle amongst my fellow artists at the 32nd Annual Daffodil Festival. It was very encouraging to see such a large crowd and I hope the artists made a lot of sales.
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