Travels and Dreams

 It's that time of year again and beginning July 2nd thru the 24th I will be doing lots of armchair traveling (and telly watching) with the Tour de France!

 I have everything ready...

 to "ride" along very closely so as not to miss any of the beautiful towns along the route! Any of my followers here would know this is an obsession  something I have been following for many years now:)

 I even made a simple cut and paste collage page about it:

This is my last entry at Art Journal Journey for the "maps" challenge hosted this month by Mary Nasser.

 For my wonderful peeps at T Stands For Tuesday at AlteredBookLover I have -yes-more food to share-along with a beverage of course:)

 I took a friend for lunch at the cute café I had gone to with my Mom a few weeks ago. My friend had the Cobb Salad special with Boarshead jerk chicken and I had the roasted beet salad with goat's cheese walnuts and balsamic vinaigrette ( a fave of mine). We split a savory scone (I was dying to try cuz I never heard of savory scones before-have you?). It's at the top left in the second photo. Rosemary, garlic and parmesan-OMG! I could be in lots of trouble with these-SOOOO good!!

 My latest installment for the Radiant Faces online class is "The Dreamer". Taught by Jamie Dougherty. Here is Jamie's inspiration piece-colored pencils on a wood substrate:

  Isn't she just stunning?? The colors are off because my ink was running low when I printed it for my workbook.

 I'm doing all my faces in a large mixed media journal but I thought I'd give the colored pencils a go (even tho it's not my thing). It began like this:

  I wasn't liking the look or feel of the pencils one bit so I covered it up and went with acrylics. And this is my finished version:

 I wanted her to have her eyes open and have red hair. I LOVE Golden Transparent Iron Oxide for hair and am quite pleased with how she turned out-because-it was  a big HUGE challenge to get the profile proportions right!! The background was done with Pan Pastels. And of course I had to have a bunch of brightly colored feathers in the mix! Linking to Art It Friday- Show Your Face and Paint Party Friday at the end of the week.

 Thanks so much for popping in. Take care and have a fabulous week and weekend! It will be a long weekend for many in the US as we celebrate our Independence Day on Monday July 4th - so bring on the fireworks, and the picnic food!

" You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination."              Roman Payne

A Little Of This and That

 Summer Solstice has arrived here in the northern hemisphere in true form. Record high heat, brilliant sun and high humidity-worth celebrating to me!

 Speaking of celebrations it's the time of year for graduations of all sorts. Here is a card made for our good friend Andrew who got his MBA while working full time and we couldn't be more proud of him!

 I thought glitter was hard to capture but metallic card stock is even worse!

 Last week we went to a Mexican restaurant with our friend and his wife. It was a bet they made with hubby because hubby says he hates Mexican food and they said they could change his mind. It's called La Morena and it's about an hour's drive away in Hatboro, PA.

                  ceiling decor in this very small restaurant - love it!

    We started out with a huge plate of nachos along with free margaritas-yum!

     I had the vegetarian chimichanga which provided me with another meal the next day:) $8.50

Lynn is showing her chicken chimichanga and that hot plate of chicken and veggies is just for hubby's order of fajitas! More second meals:) $8 and $14

 Andrew had  Churrasco, a Guatamala dish of grilled steak, scallions served with rice sour cream, refried beans, vegetable salad and fried plantains. $14.75

 And if that wasn't enough they insisted we split a dessert to try:

 Sopapillas - fried triangle pastry drizzled with honey and chocolate and topped with whipped cream, powdered sugar and cherries-OMG- and only $4! I ate one triangle and they all finished the rest.

 SO, did finicky Bill like it???

                                            A big "SI SENOR"!

 SO worth the drive -all homemade authentic Mexican food made by the Mexican family that owns this place!! Can't wait to go again!

 Sharing with all of you (sorry if I made you drool) and T Stands For Tuesday!

 Here is another installment in my large art  journal for the Radiant Faces class:

My marker drawing of my "Doodle Face"- another great lesson-this one by Joanne Sharpe!

The completed page:

 Done with alcohol markers and a black and white gel pen. This is what came about after having all the recent tragedies in my mind. The Beatles song wouldn't go away so I made my page full of love.

 The next lesson I plan on tackling will be of a more refined nature-The Dreamer. Hope to have it done for next posting.

 Until then, be well and enjoy!  Linking to Art It Friday - Show Your Face and Paint Party Friday.

" Art is like singing. Some do it better than others, but everyone can and should be doing it for their soul."        Barbara Mason

Connections and Discoveries

  Last week I said I was going to focus on my online art classes and I am continuing to do so with another class from Radiant Faces (see badge on sidebar for link). This week I chose to do the Goddess class offered by Julie Gibbons.This is a page of sketches drawn from inspiration from my Goddess card deck by Doreen Virtue:

 Do you know which one I ended up going with?  I'll show you in a bit. But lest I forget I have a photo to share specially for the T gang over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog:

 My mom and I went to a cute little café in town for lunch and we both had the carmelized onion, mushroom and gruyere quiche along with a side salad. Everything is always made with fresh local ingredients -SO good! Bring along something beverage related in any way and come join us for T Stands For Tuesday-warning we do tend to get each other hungry quite often:)

 Back to the Goddess course. Although I cannot go into specifics as this is a paid for class I will say it was another amazing class-and I adored listening to Julie's Scottish accent!

 What I discovered was that I was mostly picking out (not on purpose) Celtic goddess cards from the deck so I knew somehow that would figure onto my personal goddess. I did look up French goddesses and I was just blown away by the fact that all of the French named goddesses are derived from Celtic roots!! I always wondered why I ( the only one in my family) have always had this connection to Celtic heritage even though I'm mostly French!

 We were to do our goddess in mandala and stylized form. I knew that for me I wanted her to be soft, to convey love and kindness and I think I did that. To color her in- we were to use -ha! alcohol markers- the very thing I had just discussed playing with in my last post! This was a very scary thing for me as I was so afraid of ruining her. But I did it. And I survived. And so did she:)

 Here's a funny thing too. After I finished her I thought she resembled Julia Roberts a bit. My son came home from work, saw my page and said-ha-"she looks like Julia Roberts" !  I chose to stamp both an Irish and a French image on the page. I learned to listen to my intuition for my goddess to emerge and so she really is mine. And this portrait looks nothing at all like the instructor's examples -or for that matter even many of the other student pieces. What a wonderful class!
Linking to Art It Friday- Show Your Face.

 One last journal page:

 Quote is by Mark Twain. The background is map tissue paper painted over with a wash of several blue paints then spattered with orange and light blue paints. The koi fish were cut from one of my Gelli Plate deli paper prints. Images and words glued to page and outlined with charcoal pencil.  This is for Art Journal Journey (theme is maps); Mix It Monthly (theme is fishes-and use orange); and Paint Party Friday.

 Speaking of Paint Party Friday, I won a piece of art in a giveaway from SusuPetal in Finland-and here it is hanging in my art room:

 Love it! Thank you  SusuPetal!

 And thank you all for visiting and leaving your comments. Always so appreciated!

" It is only during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light".  Aristotle Onassis 








What can I say about the recent tragedy and loss of so many innocent lives in Orlando , Florida? We need to continue to share more love.

Mark(er) Making and More

 Wow- so many crazy weather happenings around the world lately! Hope everyone is faring well throughout it all. We totally lucked out this weekend and only had a very brief storm Sunday although I know many other areas along the Northeast got battered and even lost power.

 For my T Stands For Tuesday troupe over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog:

 From the other week- a birthday lunch for LuAnn at our favorite Irish place of course! I bet you even know I chose my usual and what it is:):)


The reason for the title of this post:

  I went through my markers again, tossing old dried out ones and then made a color chart of my Spectrum Noir alcohol markers (the large chart) which are similar to the Copics but cost much less, and a set of water based markers. They both have dual tips- a huge plus. I have been using the alcohol markers for this:

yes, more coloring in my book. The daisies have been glittered but it was difficult to capture with my little camera.

 the above is the front of the page and the back side. Alcohol markers do bleed through but I thought the back looked pretty too.


  I really enjoyed hearing everyone's thoughts on this coloring book craze and as hesitant as I was myself it has now prepared me for an online lesson from Radiant Faces which is a lesson on creating a stylized face using, yup, alcohol markers! I'll be sharing that next week when I finish but for now here is another Radiant Faces Lesson page (link is on the upper right sidebar):

 This lesson was taught by Christy Tomlinson- the Girly Girl face. A wonderful lesson! Done in my 9" x 12" Mixed Media journal. The opening photo is a close up of her hair-layers of colors and scratching out too. I am determined to finish all my lessons now so I can feel good about signing up for another class or two later. I am being good because the selections of online classes thru various artists sites are SO very tempting-especially when there is a sale involved:):)  Oh, and please do let me know if you are taking a course you love-I'll check it out!

 Joining Paint Party Friday and Art It Friday - Show Your Face later this week.  See you soon!

 "Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life." 
                                                                             Adele Brookman

Glorious Weather Means...

 I'm spending more time enjoying the outdoors and less time in my art room. However, I still try to do a little something each day. And this is a journal page I completed:

 Joining Paint Party Friday of course, along with Try It On Tuesday (theme is " I can hear music"), and Moo Mania (theme is "masculine" - do you see that masculine face on the upper left? :)

 Speaking of being outdoors-looky what appeared the other day:

 the first Oriental poppy this season!!! I just can't resist taking at least one photo every year and walking to my neighbor's yard to admire these blooms each day they are here. And if that wasn't enough... I have been lamenting not having any hummingbirds despite the two feeders that have been up for weeks. The past four years we had a pair or two 3 weeks ago already (yes, I keep track:) As I was walking back to my yard I thought I was seeing things-but no it was there in front of me. A hummingbird!!! Oh joy!!! And since then the female and male ruby throat have been coming (one at a time so there must be a nest nearby) 4 times a day at least but as they are pretty quick and skittish too so no photos-yet:)

 So, these two simple gifts from nature filled my heart with so much joy I could burst!

Do you ever feel this way? Or can you recall something that takes you right back to that place in your heart? Don't you wish you could bottle it up and pass some along to someone who needs it? I'd love to hear about it.  Wishing you a special moment of joy today.

" Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."     Lao Tzu