I've been busy over here...

soaking up every last drop of summer...

Bliss is...

A weekend at the beach

A sunny, dreamy, living-in-the-moment, soaking-it-all-up weekend at the beach.

I met this dog. As you can see, we are in love. His human is pretty amazing too. I'm obviously going to have to return soon.

loving my letters

My first workshop at Artfest was with the amazing and lovely Lisa Englebrecht. That's one of her samples above. I love Lisa's work and I was thrilled to see her name on the schedule for Artfest this year. I've always loved words (before I learned to read, I used to write lists of the dozen or so words I knew on my Holly Hobby chalkboard) and I've always been interested in fancy lettering. I've also always had completely atrocious handwriting. I have Lisa's excellent book but I was really in need of some hands-on instruction.

Here I am with the amazing and lovely Lisa. She's an excellent and very generous teacher. The class was Tats, Graff and Freestyle, so in addition to learning Old English and Script styles, we played with some funky styles, thought about what word we loved enough to tatoo on our bodies (major commitment!) and came up with our street names.

My street name is nb3 (for nicolabeverage). I "tagged" on the beach with a piece of driftwood. AFA is my crew: ArtFest Anarchy (All Fabulous Artists, etc). Super fun!

The Pilot Parallel Pen is my new favorite toy. Seriously, these pens are a revelation. They make it SO easy to make letters that look SO cool. Here's some of my experimenting in class.

And here's some freestyle experimenting. Dance was written with glue pen and then foiled.

I've been playing with lettering a lot since I got home, working on developing a personal lettering style. Here's some parallel pen play from the other day.

No lettering here, just a recent journal page inspired by my art sister Cheryl.

Took a hike

Saturday I went on a hike along the Spokane River. I live on a bend in the river, so I just headed out my front door, down to the Centennial Trail and then branched off onto this hiking trail. It was awesome! It felt so good to get out and tramp around in the woods, just listening to the river and the birds.

There's my destination: Bowl and Pitcher, a popular campground at Riverside State Park. The views of the rushing river and massive basalt formations from the rebuilt walking bridge (originally built by the CCC) were well worth the trip.

As were the wildflowers blooming all along the path.

Speaking of birds, here's one of the local osprey trying to lead me away from it's nest.

This tree is only a block away from home, but it smells like heaven right now. Seriously, I could just stand there and smell this tree all day.

Random stuff

It's come to my attention that it's been quite a while since I posted a photo of the small furry one. Here's his cuteness trying to act like he doesn't care if we go outside or not. He's totally faking for the camera.


I went for a walk yesterday to check on my favorite magnolia tree. Like most of the rest of the plant life around here, it's just starting to bud out. In a week or two we should have that annual explosion of green that I love so much.

I love Idaho.

Yeah, it's seriously a drive thru beverage barn. And they sell beer. Brilliant.

Here's my painting from the first day of Susan Shie's class. The theme for the day was self portrait. I wanted the theme to be spring or garden, but I think I adapted nicely. Yeah, I know Pistol is the wrong color, but I was afraid that if I painted him black he would just look like a strange little blob.

Dear Artfest,

Thank you for another year of your wonderful, magical self. Your boundless creative energy and open, freeing, encouraging environment are such a blessing.


Of course, your setting at Fort Warden is just lovely. From the first time I went to a workshop at the fort at the age of 10, it's always a special treat to go there.



The dorms are spartan, but we bring everything we need: snacks, libations, art supplies and treasures, and most important, ourselves, our kindred spirits, our stories, our laughter and our tears. Such a privilege to listen and share with such beautiful women.


Wow, looking very serious here!


Sooooo much fun.


Such great friends!

Thanks Artfest. You're the best!

Hair of the dog that bit me?

So last week I was suffering from a horrible Artfest hangover - exhausted, creatively brain dead, missing my art sisters. But I had signed up months ago for a 2-day workshop with Ohio artist Susan Shie. I've been a big fan of Susan's wonderful diary quilts for a long time and the opportunity to take a close-to-home class with her was NOT to be missed. So I threw some markers and sketchbooks in an Artfest bag and drove off to Post Falls. Ohmigosh! It turns out another 2 days of art class with an awesome, inspiring teacher and a fun group of artist friends was the perfect cure for my Artfest hangover.

Here's Susan demonstrating her technique for layering and binding a quilt. You can see some of her quilts in the background. You gotta love a teacher who starts the class by telling us the goal is to get back to the artists we were when we were 6.


Two days of total freedom and encouragement and support to draw and paint and journal all over our paintings. I LOVED this and will definitely do more with these techniques. Here's my painting from Friday, our theme was cooking so I just drew all my favorite things from my kitchen. I'm leaning toward not journaling on this one just because I'm so in love with the simple graphic quality it has right now.


I did journal on Thursday's self portrait piece, but I don't have a good pic of that one yet. If you have a chance to take a class with Susan DO IT!

This is what it's all about...

Celebrating life with my beautiful art sisters.