July 30 - Bling Bling Pigs

"Everyone wins at Bling Bling Jam!"

 ~ Steve Klein

Purple and I have returned from Las Vegas with our fingers aching but our latex energy renewed.  Bling Bling Jam was awesome, and I got to meet some of my balloon heroes as well as discover a few more, but probably best of all - I got to reconnect with my amazing balloon friends.

Steve Klein and his crew of helpers, vendors and teachers put together an amazing event; but the heartbeat of any convention is the people.  (The complete opposite of every tech conference I have been to.)

I will resist the temptation of going into details on the various instructors in order to save that for the upcoming days blog entries.  Suffice it to say, they were each and all - fantastic.  JJ, David, Aaron, Jan, Eve, Silvia, Addi, Pip, Tony, Nathalie, Patrick, Nick, Diane, Scott, Brian, Paul - and everyone in the jam room who was so willing to share, THANK YOU!

While not in class, or working on something else, I figured I would try building a few purple pigs. I'm giving my fingers some well deserved rest today and showing those. I really was just playing, and I don't have the best staged pictures as well as excuse excuse and excuse for them not being better.  Also missing from this collection is are a few that didn't make it back to the room because people in the casino were so excited to have them, and that just makes me glow.

I told the artist that drew my caricature he had free reign to do what he wanted, so he decided to make it glorious.

My plane left at 12:30am last night, I might have slept - but it felt like I just sat up and closed my eyes for 5 hours.  I can barely think, I'm just going to post pictures and let my brain curl itself into a ball and rest in the corner.

Eric was making some amazing looking sweet cheeks, I had to throw this in (lopsided cheek .. le sigh...)
When it came time to tear down everything, one of the UC Santa Cruz students wanted this. :) <3	FuDD's was a member of the Night's Watch, it was awesome to be "off schedule" and wake early enough to hang out.
I think I'm going to make a pig of myself ...