We spent one week at Kailua-Kona on the Big Island, not enough time to see everything we wanted to see. But we did see alot and ate pretty local. As you know, Dave grows most of what we eat and we wanted to make sure we spent our money on local food. So while we were in Kona we visited two different farmer’s markets. There were many more, but we just didn’t have time or enough days to eat all of that great food.

We visited the Kailua-Kona Farmers Market several times. They are open Tuesdays through Sundays and have lots of local grown fruit and veggies. They also have some local crafts and some stuff that is definitely not local.

Veggies and fruits waiting to be purchased

The mass amount of tropical fruits was so neat to see (and to eat!).

Dave looking over the produce.

Dave was pretty excited seeing all of this local produce in one spot and getting to talk to the growers. And we found one of our new favorite fruits – lilikoi.

Lolikoi

Then we went to the Keauhou Farmer’s Market which is only open on Saturdays from 8 am until noon. It’s smaller but it’s all local.

Keauhou Farmers Market

In addition to coffee and other goodies, we bought some great oils for soap and lotion making from D. Medicine Woman. We had an interesting discussion with Earl who makes the “lotions.” (I really call them creams.)

So from that trip we brought home quite a nice haul of stuff.

Some of our farmers market goodies

The jar of lilikoi mango jelly was gone before we left Kona!

But we didn’t just visit farmers markets, we also enjoyed these beautiful sunsets every evening from our lanai.

Sunset on Kona

And since I’ve turned into my mother, we had to stop by a fabric store, Kimura’s Fabrics in Kainaliu. I found this great writeup online by a quilter about this shop and since we were in the area, well, you know I had to drop in. What an interesting place with bolts and bolts of fabric!

A happy fabric shopper

Here is what I bought at Kimura’s. I fell in love with this Japanese fabric with the lovely irises.

Japanese fabric

And these other pieces. The red one Dave picked out for his home apron.

Fabric from Hawaii shop

You will notice that a couple of pieces include petroglyphs. Love that look. However, we didn’t just look at petroglyphs on fabric, on the Big Island we visited three petroglyph sites.

These included Pu’u Loa Petroglyphs at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, Puako Petroglyph Preserve and Waikoloa Petroglyph Preserve. We were so amazed at the beautiful artwork at these sites and they gave me more inspiration for petroglyph rubbing plate fabric.

One of the many petroglyphs we saw on the Big Island

One of the snacks I enjoyed four years ago, I got to enjoy again. I brought this bag home.

Yummy Taro Chips

Between Dave and I we took over 2,000 pictures so I’m sure I’ll be sharing more in future posts. The second week was spent on Maui. I’ll tell you more about that later.

It was so good to get away. The weather was absolutely perfect. But it’s always good to come back home.

As we were walking around looking at all of these drawings, I was thinking about fabric. Wouldn’t these designs look cool on a piece of material? I’ve wanted to make rubbing plates for a long time, so now that I had a subject I could get started.

I started with a piece of cardboard and added my drawing with dimensional paint. If you’ve not tried this before, you have to use dimensional paint or it won’t work. Also, this technique doesn’t work very well on paper. Be sure and let the new rubbing plate dry before using it.

Adding paint to cardboard

Next I added paint to my brayer.

Adding paint to brayer

After putting the rubbing plate under my fabric, I ran the brayer over the fabric. Wow!

Design on fabric

Don’t use a lot of paint unless you wanted a smeared image. Here is the carving.

Bird drawing

Here is my rubbing plate image.

Bird rubbing

And here is another carving.

And my rubbing print.

These rubbing plates can be reused. If you are at all interested in this simple technique, give it a try. It’s so easy and I love the results.

Now I have some fabric that reminds me of that wonderful place.

Claudia Congleton

Claudia’s collages started with vintage materials creating her collages in brown and sepia tones. Now she has moved on to brighter colors and is really attracted to circus images.

Claudia's Fat Lady collage

Here is another one which doesn’t use circus images.

Another collage

Although you can see her lovely collages at twistedvintagestudio.com, she doesn’t really make art to sell or exhibit. Email her at ccongle236@gmail.com.