It's Father's Day Weekend and time for the Pasadena Chalk Festival!
On Thursday, we all made our way up to Pasadena. At 4pm, you're allowed to claim your spot. I contacted the organizer and asked to be near our friends Charlotte, Curt, and Ruston, and when we arrived, we all had spots together! And check it out! We're in the exact same spots as last year!
After you select your spot at 4pm, stick around for the 6pm artist dinner! It's free for artists and their guests! Tonight we've got garlic knots, salad, meat lasagna and eggplant lasagna, and dessert.
Many of the artists are here. I recognize lots of friends from previous years. It's a really welcoming community.
Tom Coston, Board Chair of the Lightbringer Project, welcomed us.
Patricia Hurley, Managing Director, said a few words.
And Program Manager Jessica Lopez welcomed us.
Natalie Lydick, Project Development, said that there were over 450+ artists producing 200+ murals this year. There were so many entrants, a waitlist was created.
There's so many people who go into putting this together, and so many organizations donate to support this weekend. Too many for me to remember, but Blick Art Supplies has been crucial every year, providing thousands of boxes of chalk for artists to use. We also thank the city of Pasadena and the Paseo (we're back to chalking at the mall this year).
Great to see old friends! Like Jamie, Curt, and Ruston!
And we can't leave out Ray and Stanley. Ray is a big fan of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and is always wearing their gear. His murals each year are always turtle themed.
It was great being able to chat with friends. Curt is always working on something interesting at work, right now doing things with robotics. We started talking about AI and its role in technology. He showed me a cool feature that it could do not. Convert a photograph to stick figures. He took a picture then fed it into ChatGPT.
And this came out a short time later. I LOVE how it kept Ray's TMNT jacket. It's not perfect, combining people, like someone with crossed arms and Kevin with his LA Dodgers hat, but it's very impressive.
The next day was Friday, and we're just hanging out in Pasadena until the weekend. Since we've got the Chuck E Cheese Summer Fun Pass, why not go use it at a new place?
We actually ended up bouncing around to 3 different locations, seeing what good and bad things they had to offer.
The bad, like Pink Panther where the game seems "rigged" to create more obstacles, to ensure you don't win.
Or changing the rates for other games. The Avengers coin pusher used to be one of Theresa's favorite games. Last year, each swipe would get you 3 coins to "shoot". Now, at this location, you only get 1 coin per swipe. Yikes!
Let's move on to a different CEC.
T and Alli like playing Nerf Arcade together.
I do pretty good at Milk Jug Toss, when the game is working correctly. I've found that at many stores, balls that land in the milk jug don't get counted. This one was not seeing maybe 20% of good throws, so not great, but you can get on a streak and get lucky.
Ian was trying to figure out how you can win the super bonus of 100 tickets. You need to score 89,000 points. The only problem is, you only get 7 balls now, not 9 like before, and the maximum you can earn on each throw is 10,000. Someone hasn't updated the super bonus score.
But at this one, you get 2 coins per swipe instead of just one. Still not great, but enough to make it okay to play I guess. Ian won a 125 ticket bonus.
On Friday night after everyone got off work, we all gathered at our mural spots to get the sites prepped. Prepping them tonight means we'll be able to start bright and early on Saturday morning instead of having to wait for the base coat to dry.
And we're not the only ones. Dozens of people were here, or had already been here, and prepped their sites.
Gotta get everything taped off.
Measured out.
Nice to have an extra hand.
Ruston is doing his own mural again this year, right beside us and Curt.
In order to get the chalk to stick better, and to provide a consistent surface, since our very first year, we've put down a base of tempera.
Covering the entire 8'x8' square.
Way back when, I bought some cheap tempera on Amazon. It'll cover things, but it takes 3-4 coats to look anything like consistent and even. I started running out of the cheap stuff, then used some of the more expensive stuff Ruston bought this year. And it worked so much better! Next time, buy the good stuff and save the time!
My hands (and my shoes) look like this.
Ever since we started, Ruston has been keeping a paper journal of "things we've learned". We asked him to read from our "chalk bible" to make sure we're not forgetting anything. Among others, we've written things like: Take the Monday after the Chalk Festival off, take Advil in the morning before you start, put down a base coat, bring a long stick for the roller instead of bending down.
Over the years, we've accumulated lots of chalk. Jacob organized it all by color for us a long time ago, but it has since fallen into chaos. Ruston wanted to fix that this year. It can be frustrating trying to find a certain color and having to dig through all the boxes just to find it.
He bought these clear plastic containers that fit into a larger clear plastic container where we can store things now. Charlotte, Theresa, and the kids helped match up different color tones.
That is going to be so much easier going forward. Plus now we can get rid of all those boxes we've been carrying around!
It's always fun to do a pizza party and hang out the night before!
Our sites are prepped and we're ready for tomorrow!
Each artist is asked to donate a canvas for the silent auction with proceeds going to the Lightbringer Project. This year, the kids wanted to make paintings too! Ian opted for a Mandalorian helmet. I basically copied what our mural is going to be. Alli painted a very cute Yoda.
We signed the back with our names and the year. Hopefully these go to someone who will enjoy them!
Time to get to bed! The morning is going to come early!
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