Art, Food and Drink!

                                            (see the complete painting towards end of post)


 Hello all! Thanks so much for popping in this past week again. Always good to hear from you! I hope that those who celebrated Mother's Day this past Sunday had a really lovely day. I was lucky to have a two day celebration. Saturday hubby and I walked into town to have dinner and ended up hopping around to several of our favorite places, then seeing a phenomenal band before getting home late:)

 We started out at Tapas on Main which I have mentioned many times (think sangria!) for a drink and a small plate of cheese, bread and a dark cherry compote. It was a gorgeous day and so many of the outdoor tables along the way were full. Sadly we were too late to catch the sidewalk art show (you can see some of the closed tents in the back). From there we went to dinner at the Hotel Bethlehem for a fabulous meal. I was so into it I forgot to get pics - our crab cakes were divine!

 It was still fairly early so we went back to Tapas to check out the evening's entertainment -and stayed til the end. The Craig Thatcher Band was there -guitar, drums and violin-and wow!! They played a mix of rock and blues standards and some Celtic and all three guys could not have been any nicer. I even got to hold the special 1932 violin the young player used when he told us the story behind it. Awesome evening.

 Sunday I made dinner for my Mom and our son joined us too. His girlfriend Kyra stopped by for dessert . It's only been a few times since we met her but she is the sweetest girl-and she even brought me a bouquet of flowers...awe

 The art part. Last week my friend LuAnn and I got together for an afternoon of some serious gelli plate printing!

                       Lots of paints, stencils, mark making tools, and paper products to print on!

 We used up every space we could to lay our prints out to dry:

                                                     from the stovetop and counters...

                                                                       to the floor

 This is a print LuAnn did that we both thought was just the coolest:

          I love the bold colors and it appears to be multi-dimensional even though it isn't!

 We also tried printing on stickers for the first time and they turned out great! Have you ever done that? If not, go to your office supply store and get a variety of sticker sheets to play with next time-FUN!

  This is a page in my 9" x 12" journal. I used scraps of gelli plate printed deli paper to cover the page.

  And this is the start of a portrait:

 I'll share the completed page in a future post. Not quite sure where I'll go with this yet. The face template is courtesy of Effy Wild.

 Another journal page:

This is only the background which was done by collaging various napkins to the page. I decided to try a technique shared by artist Melissa Johnson on pgs. 28-31 in Somerset Studio Jan/Feb 2015.

 And here is the completed page:

 In the detail photo at the top of the post you can kind of see the bits of mica flakes sprinkled on the page. I'll definitely be doing this again!

 Linking this week to T Stands For Tuesday, Art Journal Journey ("the sea" theme); Mix It Monthly (theme is -"a happy couple"); Art Journal Every Day; Art It Friday-Show Your Face; and Paint Party Friday. See you there!

          "The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever."    Jacques Cousteau