I'm not doing this on purpose...

bag full o' pretty

Here's what I came home from Joann Fabric with yesterday. Well, not the cat, he just has to help with everything these days. I'm really feeling drawn to soft pretty colors lately: creams and whites and champagne, pinks and blues, and my current favorite, the Pantone color of the year, turquoise. I'm loving the work of Natalya Aikens and Ruth Rae and the yummy hand stitchiness of Jude Hill. Also definitely feeling the influence of my Artfest sister Jill. That girl makes everything pretty.



So yeah, we're enjoying a long, lazy New Year's weekend, thinking about how we want to live this next year. Pistol wants to make sure there are lots of naps.


We've been making soft pretty little collages. Pulling together little bits that speak to me and resolving them into something finished. Here's to more of that in 2010!

artfest circle journal

I joined a circle journal project with a bunch of amazing art sisters from Artfest.
This is my little garden journal that I sent out into the world. I chose a garden theme because, well, I love gardens. This is the first book I've ever made. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I love how it turned out. I made the covers from chipboard, tore up some watercolor paper for the pages and bound it all together with ribbon. Yes, of course I blanket-stitched around the edges of the covers.

This is my sign-in page. The tags are shaped like garden stakes.

And these are the pages I did in lovely Michelle's beautiful birds/nature's findings book.

Sheesh...

Life has been a whirlwind. My mom and my hair stylist had to collaborate yesterday to remind me that I had an appointment. In the midst of all the busyness I've fallen in love with art journaling. I carry my journal with me everywhere. And now I've signed up for the Sketchbook Project so I carry two journals with me everywhere. Plus a ziplock bag full of my favorite pens.

Today I'm enjoying a rare fall day where I don't have to leave my house. Today I am reveling in a rare fall day when I don't have to leave my house.

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.