April and May in Louisiana is the best time of the year. Hands down. The weather is anywhere from freezing cold to blistering hot. Take this weekend: Friday was beautiful, Saturday was a hurricane, and Sunday morning was in the 40’s. April and May also bring us alllllll the fairs and festivals imaginable. I counted 33 different events on the Louisiana Association of Fairs and Festivals website. Louisianans LOVE to party, y’all.
In Thibodaux, one of the main events this time of year is the Thibodaux Firemen’s Fair. The four-day celebration that started in 1883 raises money for our volunteer fire departments. There’s a steady stream of bands playing on the stage, food and drinks all around, and a variety of rides and games in the back field. I’m certain I’ve been to the fair every year that I’ve lived in Louisiana. Enjoy these gems from 1986. Tiny Sarah, my mom (in white) and my aunt Cheryl (in stripes).
I’ve had this design drawn for a while now. It’s what I see in my mind when I envision the fair. Again, the first step of transferring onto the soft-kut block was… a process. lol I tried to press really hard on the paper with Sharpie pens. That gave me a faint outline that I was able to draw over to make it visible. I knew I wanted to try to carve a contrasting design. The top part in blue will end up having a transparent background and the purple part will have a black (ink) background. It’s hard to explain, but I could see it in my mind!
This design is much more detailed than the last few, but really didn’t take very long to carve. (Thanks, Soft-Kut blocks!) The grass details on the bottom were really fun to carve and resulted in the tiniest little rubber pieces.
You really never know exactly how the details will show up until the first inking and the test print. The white and black inkings on this design are so pretty! If only they showed up that clearly on the shirts, eh?
This shirt is definitely all in the details! This is a “look closely or you’ll miss it” design. This is a “Sarah made a mistake carving this- can you find it?” design. Seriously. I didn’t even catch it until half way through printing the shirts! The first person to catch it gets a free Rou Rags logo tee. Send me a message or text or email if you think you found it.
The gorgeous Daralyn was my model for this batch! We had lots of fun making cotton candy and indulging the pups.
These fair shirts will be available on Saturday, 4/21/18, at 8:00 am only in the Rou Rags VIP Rou Crew Facebook group! There are only 16 shirts available. I’ll post the sizes and you can claim your size in the comments. The general public will be able to claim shirts on Sunday. GO JOIN THE GROUP! I promise you won’t get spammed in there mostly because I forget to post things in the group. Oops. That’s what Instagram and the Facebook Page are for. 😉
Rou Rags 