JULY 4TH...

CAN'T GET HERE SOON ENOUGH!!!!

This year our family rented a beautiful beach house in Rosemary Beach, FL for a family reunion with my dad's side over July 4th week/weekend. I'll be heading down there tomorrow! I'm so excited to catch up with everyone since I usually only see them once a year! Work is CRAZY today so I'm just sitting here wishing I was on vacation already. Living in New Orleans until I was 13, I grew up heading to Seaside/Rosemary beach every summer with the fam so it always brings back memories whenever I head down there.

I can't wait to be pulling up to this:

Can't wait to be cooking in this:

Can't wait to be drinking wine and relaxing on this...

Can't wait to be swimming in this...

And can't wait to be walking down to THIS (with a marg in my hand!)...

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Paint Class #1 and #2

As many of you know I started my 8 week painting class 2 weeks ago at Callanwolde Fine Arts Center (which is gorgeous by the way) and is the perfect place to retreat to after work :) The class is taught in the carriage house on the property and opens up to a massive beautiful garden. There are about 7 other girls in the class and the cool thing is everyone is basically there for the same reason… for a creative outlet/retreat away from work while acquiring some general acrylic painting skills!

My first class consisted of introductions, color mixing tips/tricks and experimenting with textures such as gels and polymers. It’s so neat because you can actually add different things to your paint to make it super thick, super thin, really shiny, etc… We were asked to buy only 7 basic colors of paint but low and behold, these colors make hundreds of additional, beautiful shades! We each created our own “color wheel” with all of our paints that we will use throughout the course so we know which colors make what and we can refer back to it when we get into actual picture painting.

In class #2, our teacher had different objects set up in the middle of the room with light hitting them at different angles. She started painting them and had us watch and then asked us to paint them on our own. She wanted us to do 2 paintings, one where the objects were true to color and second where the objects were painted in colors that we chose.

Mixing colors and taking notes... (making my "color wheel")

Playing with the brushes and mixing more colors...



Working on shapes, lighting and perspective...

Beautiful pictures of the property...