Steve Guiggey, representing Merry Moose of Maine, was among the many vendors at the crafts festival. Guiggey sold a vast array of candles made out of local soy.
“We bought the business three years ago,” said Guiggey, “but it was operating for 12 years before that, so it’s been around for 15 years. The lady who started the business was named Mary, which is how the name came about.”
Guiggey runs the business with his wife Lorraine.
“We heat the soy in a smelter and drop color along with individual scents. It spreads out when the scent solidifies.”
Guiggey enjoys being a part of the festival, stating that he has been there for three years, and that the previous business owner attended for about a decade.
At the other end of the gymnasium, Travis Levesque showed off paintings from his business Flatline Custom Painting. Levesque, a Woodland resident, has been creating airbrush paintings for nearly a decade.
“I mostly paint motorcycles,” said Levesque, “mailboxes, murals, slates, and just about anything you could think of.”
Unlike some artists, Levesque is a self-taught painter. “I had bought a bike and decided to put some details on it. Word got around and I started to do it for other people, and business picked up from there.”
Levesque says he enjoys creating paintings that feature darker imagery.
“I’m more into the darker side of things,” said Levesque, “like Freddy Kreuger, flames, and things like that. Everybody wants me to do snowmen, so I made a painting of a snowman with a dog who peed on it. Somebody wanted Christmas paintings, so I painted the bad guys of Christmas, like the Grinch.”
