Strawberry Festival Time

March in Florida is just about perfect.  Spring has sprung, the weather is usually in the 70's to 80's and strawberries are ripe!  This is the month of strawberry festivals which can be found all over the state.  The most famous is The Florida Strawberry Festival in Plant City, a quaint little town along the corridor between Tampa and Orlando.  A ten day bash that draws crowds from all over the world, they devour record amounts of strawberry shortcake each year, all grown locally on over 5,000 acres of land devoted to strawberry plants.  Florida is much more than condos and beaches - in fact, it is one of the top agricultural states in the U.S. 

A much smaller but just as yummy fest is on March 6 & 7, 2010.  It's the Floral City Strawberry Fest (Citrus County).  I'll be there with my Seaphemera Jewelry along with many other art & craft vendors.  This festival is new for me, and I'm trying to meet the promoter's request to have a few strawberry products.  Hmmmmm, strawberries, although the fragrance would be lovely, probably do not make very sturdy earrings or necklaces.  So, a search quickly brought up these alternatives:  Strawberry Quartz and Strawberry Glass.  The quartz is a natural stone with pink striations, the glass manmade with a pretty pale strawberry pink color.  I opted for the glass in both rough cut, which has a frosted look similar to beach glass, and some faceted briolettes which were impossible to resist.  I'm a total sucker for a briolette!  So, I have started playing with them, but I need to get busy since the festival is only two weeks away!  Here are some of the rough stones:

I'm creating some little sterling wire "leaves" to add to the top of the "berries".  The briolettes I matched up with some feldspar beads, and next will be some seashells and strawberry glass combinations. 

I came across some red branch coral in my stash, and decided to call them "Sea Strawberries" - I can do that, right?   I've made several pieces with them as well. 

It's going to be interesting to see how people react to my "strawberry" items.  I'll report back post-festival.