I’m not the only person I know who entered the fair this year: Michelle also entered. She’s not a photographer; she’s a crafter, and this year she decided to enter a project into the Recycled Products Paper Crafts division.
Now, I may be biased, but her project is just awesome. She saved up security envelopes we’d received in the mail, precisely cut out 4″ squares of paper from un-damaged portions of the envelopes, and then folded these recycled-security-envelope-origami-paper pieces into a kusudama, or ball origami.

Each individual flower consists of five segments that each started as a 4″ square of paper cut out of the same pattern security envelope. These five segments were folded individually, and then glued together into a flower. The entire project is made from 12 of these flowers glued together, and then hung from leftover embroidery floss from an old cross-stitch project. This picture shows how it’s displayed at the fair:

Unlike with my photography entry, Michelle hadn’t received any e-mails inviting her to an award ceremony before my visit to the fair on Wednesday. So, it was with much excitement that I searched out her project in the craft exhibits, and saw this:

Congratulations, Michelle!
I, of course, took a ton of pictures. During this process a few groups of people stopped by to look at the project. All of them looked at it initially, thought the overall pattern was pretty, and started talking to each other about it (while I grinned happily inside). Then they started looking closer, read the description, realized it was made from security envelopes, and started to inquire about how Michelle must have done it. It was at that point that I had great pleasure to introduce myself and explain how it was made. It was a great afternoon, and a pleasure to meet so many friendly folks who think Michelle is as awesome as I do.
More pictures
To see more pictures from the fair, head to my Orange County Fair 2011 gallery.
Getting There
Orange County Fair: The Orange County Fair runs from July 15 to August 14 at the county fairgrounds in Costa Mesa, CA; they conveniently have a directions page here. Since I can just park on OCC’s campus and walk to the fair, I don’t know what the parking situation is like, sorry.