Ice Festival Downtown DG 2021 with Nadeau's Ice Sculptures

What an experience. Truly. I feel nothing but gratitude for every single sore muscle, wet sock, cracked block, load of mildew scented laundry and ice-cubed glove that was part of the journey of prepping for this ice festival over the last few weeks. I know I've said this before, and I'll say it many more times, but I never thought I would be an ice carver, or have the chance to work with an absolutely amazing company like Nadeau's Ice Sculptures to create art for festivals like these. But, I suppose if the glittered rubber boot with steel toe cap fits, Elsa the ice carver I shall be!

After making over fifteen thousand pounds of ice, scraping and shoveling floors and snow piles, and moving and organizing all of the ice in the freezer, it was time to get to work. Nothing is more exciting than receiving a list of carvings that we need and a deadline that we need them by, if you ask me. Some more challenging than others, but the real challenge comes towards the end of the process when the freezer becomes a literal china shop with finished carvings lined up everywhere and carvings that still need to be finished!

The more carvings that are created, the more likely it is for a mishap like this one. R.I.P. snowboarder number one with a broken arm! The best thing about breaking a carving that's complete is carving it in half the time and getting a better result creating it the second time around. Honestly, I'm surprised there weren't more issues like this along the way!

I have to say, prepping for this ice festival flew by. I thoroughly enjoyed creating every piece that I got to put my hands on, from the hand carvings to the colored CNC pieces. The more carvings were completed, I almost started to feel sad that we were almost done. It's a bittersweet ending when it's time to take all of these little nuggets of your soul and disperse them into the world.

And now, for those of you that weren't able to use the ice carving map of Downtown Downers Grove and locate all 41 carvings in the cold this weekend, I did it for you! And yes, I may have cried some happy tears over the almost hour and a half that it took me to do so as I admired all of our hard work. What a seriously fulfilling experience!

With 41 carving pictures here, I felt I just had to give some "awards" to a few of them!

This unicorn carving I awarded the most difficult carving I made for this festival. Lots of features, proportions, and details. I enjoy whimsical and geometrical carvings, but when it comes to animals, its a challenge.

This kissing booth carving I am awarding the lightbulb moment carving, where I feel I truly made a breakthrough learning about fusing pieces together. Of course, that usually happens when you completely fail the first time around... ;)

This snowboarder carving, as mentioned earlier, most resilient award! It was carved, broken, recreated, and turned out dang beautiful.

This eagle carving, I'm definitely awarding best texture. The finishing details is what made this piece something special, for sure.

This carving, elephant on a ball, was one of my favorite carvings of the day. Nice one, Max!

This popcorn machine carving, definitely winning the most interesting colored CNC piece to learn how to make! Green glitter, popcorn kernels, popped popcorn, and snow!

And these minions, although not perfect, is one of my favorite carvings that I have gotten to design and make. Not bad for a first time carving it!

Humpty Dumpty, I couldn't forget about you! Most detailed piece award, for sure. Check out that face! Great job, Max.

What a whirlwind of ice. On top of 41 carvings for the sponsors in Downers, they also had live carving at the train station of 8 full blocks of ice over the weekend. Tony, Patrick, and I braved the arctic weather, revved our chainsaws, and got to work! I carved an owl and a Valentine's bear. Click here to watch a video of the live carving of the owl that my loving husband stood out in the freezing cold to film, thank you, thank you, thank you!!

I was actually lucky enough to get to carve at this same event last year, where I also carved a Valentine's bear. Just for fun, I thought it would be cool to carve one again and see how much I've learned.

Obviously, just learning a thing or two about photography, angles of photos, and importance of close-up finished shots of carvings to learn from can make a world of difference. When looking with a closer eye, the progress I've made in design and utilization of block, tool usage, cleanliness of the piece as a whole, and adding in smaller details to drive home the point of the carving is more apparent. I also only carved one piece last year, so there's without a doubt some improvement in endurance and strength. It's definitely exciting to see progress, and motivating to continue the journey to progress even further!

It's super important to mention the hard working team that made this project flow seamlessly (well, almost ;) ). Max, you carved some amazing pieces for this festival and did some excellent teaching, planning, multitasking and organizing along the way. Brenda, you are awesome at what you do and we are so grateful! And to the group of delivery and setup guys from Nadeau's, moving that much ice in the middle of the night sounds like a cake walk, so work a little harder next time, will you?! :) And of course, a big THANK YOU to Downtown Downers Grove for continuing this tradition with Nadeau's, even through these unique times. The entire event was managed wonderfully.

After all of the snow dust has settled, and I look back on all of the work for this festival, I feel proud. I'm a woman, a petite person, a perfectionist, in a male-dominated field, taking on projects that literally outweigh me by more than double on the daily. What it has taught me is that at the end of the day, with the right mindset, tools, and team, I can always summon my inner ice queen!