Thanks for all the great reading suggestions.  I’ve decided everybody gets one!

Something I do before I go to Squam Art Workshops is make bookmarks to give away to friends, old and new.  It gets me in the mood and is just plain fun.  It was really nice to hear from “old” friends that they still used the one from last year and that it was their favorite bookmark.

Here’s how I made this year’s.  I apologize for the color variations in my quick photography.  Stick with me till the end for a giveaway….

First, let’s lay down some color…

….then add a store-bought stamp….

…now let’s add one of my favorite hand-carved stamps…

…then a little paint & gel medium swirls for a little boldness…

…..need another hand-carved stamp!

…and another!  This time in metallic for a little zing…

….add some little black dots around the swirls and some poppin’ red dots and we’re almost there…

……some ribbon & a wavy cut across the bottom finishes the look.

Now for that giveaway ~ I am giving these three away to three winners.  Just tell me what is the best book you’ve read lately. For me, it was “The Help” by Kathyrn Stockett.  Fantastic.  I’ll randomly draw winners first thing Tuesday morning (October 12).

Gosh, here it is.  The last day.  How did this happen so fast?  I’m not ready to go.

Breakfast is in full swing before the last half day of classes….

…hugs and photos are exchanged of friends, new and old….

The über inspiring Flora Bowley (L)….

…the playfully talented Ms. Mary Beth Shaw (L)…

Last year’s cabin mate and sistah-forever, Ms. Judy Wise, who I was so very, very happy to see…

The last class for me is Mary Beth’s Primary Colors.  While it is not exactly a no-brainer kind of class, it is a creatively calm class.  Good thing for me too, I think I blew all my creative energy the two days prior.

Mary Beth shows us her favorite paints, colors, palettes….

…and then we get to play with them all ourselves….until it is time to clean up….and go to lunch.  For me, this is my last hour or so at Squam as I am leaving after lunch to meet up with a good friend who lives in the area.

But I can’t leave without being part of the group photo.  It is amazing how many of us there are…and there are some missing here!  Click on it for a larger view if you want a closer look.  See if you can find me :-)  Absolute thanks to the exquisite Thea Coughlin for corralling us into this shot and making it available to us all.

With a heavy sigh, I stop the car at the end of the road on my way out and snap this….

As I stated in my first post of this year’s experience, it truly is something else.  To really get it, you just gotta GO.  I was actually thinking perhaps I would skip 2011, seek out something different, but I am already thinking about next year… I am not sure how I could not go….

I am up early the second full day, Friday.  The common area of my cabin, Longhouse, is quiet, last night’s roaring fire cold, the chairs empty.  Sitting in front of the lake-facing windows, I enjoy my coffee and a gentle conversation with Barb, a fellow cabin mate before heading upstairs to get dressed.

Today is the day for the super-challenging class.  The one that scares me.  Working on two 30×30 canvases at once.  I’ve never worked that large, I’m scared of paint, and it is an intuitive abstract painting class, so even more daunting for little old graphic, detailed me.

So let’s get started, introducing ourselves, where we’re from, why we’re there…

Our first step, as Flora (Bowley) demonstrates, is to just get some paint on the canvas, cover the white ~ and give up any preconceived notions we might hold about what our finished pieces will look like, because they certainly won’t look anything like that when we’re done…and boy, was she right…

My first layers….

While our canvases dry, we head for the dock where Flora leads us through calming breathing, stretching & gratitude exercises.  It is so quiet, gray and misty this morning.

After calming our minds and hearts, we spend 10 minutes wandering in the woods, looking for inspiration.  I find that everything inspires me to photograph it.  Everything is beautifully wet from the previous night’s rain, creating art on its own, by its just by being there…  I feel a surprising sense of well-being.  It is so hard in our daily lives to just “be”…. I savor this.

Back in the Playhouse (how appropriate), we loosen up, making all kinds of marks with paint & various implements on paper….

…then we get busy doing the same to our canvases.  This is GREAT fun!

Since it is clearing up outside, we take our canvases out and lean them against trees to dry while we’re at lunch. We spend a little time walking from one to another discussing what we like.  Here are mine….

….and here comes the hard part…  Flora does some demonstrations, emphasizing that now we need to make some decisions, but to still try to remain loose and “out of our heads”.  Not as easy as one might think.

As anyone who is a regular visitor to my blog knows, I photograph my work in progress.  That does not happen this afternoon.  I forget about my camera.  Completely.  I struggle, I suffer, I bounce back and forth between both canvases at an alarming rate, I am so frustrated with them both.  I am having a really  hard time trying to not micro-manage my paintings at this point.

But I am trying, trying, trying… I want to paint like this, I want to embrace this process, I want to break through whatever the hell it is that is holding me back.   And suddenly, 15 minutes before class ends, I do.  It all comes together, makes sense.  Light shines and a choir of angels sing….

I wish the photos did justice to the vibrance of the colors, the layers, the depth….  I stand back and examine them, seeing things I didn’t even know I did.  I am completely spent.

I am thankful that dinner is early tonight so that I can tromp back to Longhouse where a beautiful fire is going and the party is already started.  Our last night.

I find the fun Chris Frost, a fellow cabin mate, cutting characters out of birch bark.  Later we have an unceremonious ceremony and toss them in the fire.

Some of the ladies are knitting, the wine’s not far away…

This is certainly a “had to be there” moment….

Another cabin mate is the charming Marisa Haedike from Creative Thursday….It is nice to finally meet in person.

…and here on the left is darling Helene and on the right is the words-can’t-describe-how-fabulous-she-is Elizabeth MacCrellish (Squam founder), without whom none of this could be possible… It is such a blessing to have her stop by and actually get to spend a little bit of time chatting up a storm…ah, those creative conversations….positively priceless.

The wine is still flowing, but the night is winding down… I’m headed to bed.  Tomorrow is our last day.  Join me tomorrow for the last glimpses of Squam Art Workshop September 2010.

Woke up (last) Thursday morning to 44° ~ brrrr ~ that’s cold for a Florida girl!  Time for my first class ~ The Nature of Klimt with Mary Beth Shaw.  I spoke in the previous post about taking classes that scare you.  This one didn’t scare me (that’s tomorrow’s class!), but I had taken a class with Mary Beth last year and since this one was all new, I knew it would be fun because she is an awesome teacher.

I had to stop on my way back from breakfast to capture this….

Pausing for a peek at where today’s class will be held…

Also caught this little guy, busy at work…

Getting ready for class to start….

Got a nice fire going to take some of that morning chill off…

Got a nice view going as well ~ what’s not to like about all this???

Here’s one of thing I really love about MB’s classes ~ she brings all sorts of goodies for us to try…

….and gives us great instruction & ideas for using them….

OK, I’m diving in, putting some black gesso on Claybord….

If you’ve never used Claybord, you gotta try this stuff.  Here I started carving into it…

Then I slapped some Wood Icing on it through one of Mary Beth’s original stencils.  If you’re into stencils at all, she sells ones that she has custom designed here.  This one is called “River Rocks” and it, well, it rocks….

Hard to see here, but I then carved into the Wood Icing when it had hardened slightly.

Let’s get some color going here…  I also ironed some foil in here and there, but wasn’t pleased with it too much and sanded most of it off.  That’s OK; it’s all good….

…which is what I told myself when an orange/rust alcohol ink bottle positively gasped onto my piece ~ I only wanted a thin little line.  This caused me to yelp a couple explicatives which gave MB a good giggle.  Hey, again, it’s all good…. I’ll make this work….

….that is after much discussion.  I finally added a couple mountains in front of it an voila! it looked like I meant to do that…

Not the best photo of it, but really, it didn’t turn out too badly.  It was more about trying the different materials & techniques anyway.  It was ALL GOOD!

Lots of happy artists!

These lovelies were just outside the door as I left…

When I went back to my cabin, I grabbed an adult beverage and headed for a quite rock on the lake to relax.  I noticed this on the rock and had to photograph it ~ isn’t Mother Nature the best artist there is?  If you click this you will get a larger shot to appreciate even more.

Join me tomorrow for Flora Bowley’s unbelievable “Bloom True” class.  Wow, was it something.

I am just back from Squam Art Workshops in New Hampshire.  This is my second time (see last year’s journey here) and I was a little hesitant to go again, afraid that the wonderful experience I had last year could not be repeated.  I was wrong, wrong, wrong.  This year was every bit as fantastic in its own way.

A lot has been written about this retreat and its transformative powers, the magic in the very air.  All I can say is, it’s true.  All of it. I’ve heard the skepticism from some who have not attended.  The idea that it is some kind of craft camp or, or what all I don’t know.  That we all sit around holding hands, weeping or something.  All I can say is, no, that’s not what it is but it does stir your heart, your soul, your creative being.  It brings you closer to yourself and your creative spirit.  All that being said, you have to bring an open mind and heart, choose the classes that scare you the most, and push yourself.  You have to put yourself out there, meet new people, have creative conversations you never realized were possible.  Let down your guard, make yourself vulnerable.  Participate in your own transformation.  Because I promise, if you do, you will not leave the same person.  I know I didn’t.

Walk with me this first afternoon…. I’ve just registered and unpacked and taken a 2 hour wander around the beautiful Rockywold-Deephaven property….

Come back tomorrow and join me for my first class ~ The Nature of Klimt with the marvelous Mary Beth Shaw.

I don’t know of any artist that doesn’t love to try new techniques.  My friend, artist extraordinaire, Joyce Shelton, and I were talking about this very thing the other day ~ how we’ve tried so many different things, then moved on.  I used to feel guilty about buying tools & supplies, only work in a particular medium for a little while, then abandoning it, possibly forever.  But not anymore, I believe that we need to keep trying different things, otherwise you might never find the one medium/technique that makes your heart sing.

So began my foray into collage painting.  Joyce had taken a workshop with the very talented Elizabeth Hilaire Nelson, and when I checked out her wesbite, I recalled that I had read an article by her in Cloth Paper Scissors (Nov/Dec 2008) regarding this type of collaging.  I of course pulled it out and read it again.  I also recalled having read the article twice before (I keep issues of CPS in my car) because I was so intrigued by the process.

Now I was immediately inspired to give it a whirl and Joyce was starting a large-scale “painting”, so we decided to make a day of it at her place.  But first, I had to do some homework, starting with an under painting on Luon (thin board you can get a Lowe’s).  You don’t want to get too carried away with the under painting because it is just a color road map.

Then I spent a blissful Sunday afternoon creating what I would “paint” with.  I used printouts of my own patterns, rice paper, scrapbook papers, old maps, pages from old books, bags I’d saved, etc. and covered them with paint, stamping with both store-bought stamps, hand-carved rubber stamps and anything else I had laying around that looked like it might make an interesting impression.  I concentrated mostly on shades of green, yellow & ivory.

Now, let’s get started!  All you have to do now is rip little pieces of paper and glue them down with medium (we used soft gloss gel).  Well, OK, there is a little thought that goes into which pieces & colors :-)

Here’s Joyce, so impatient to get started on her Van Gogh sky, she didn’t even finish the under painting.

What a glorious, fun mess we made!

And here is my finished piece….  (You’ll have to check Joyce’s blog down the road for hers ~ it’s BIG and is going to take some time!

Let’s  get a closer look, shall we?  My favorite part are the dots in the neck of the bottle.  Ironically, that is the only scrap of paper that is not from my stash ~ I plucked it from Joyce’s pile!

p.s. Elizabeth teaches workshops in this technique all over, so check her site and maybe there is one near you ~ don’t miss the fun!

My very talented friend Robin Zingone has started a wonderful charitable project and made it so easy to participate. Lots of creative goods have been donated and can be purchased for a minimum of $25. Four sets of my Thirsty Stone coasters have just been added.

Check out The Robin Zingone Project to purchase and shop all the other items for sale. Hurry, it’s first come first serve! This month’s charity is Audobon.  With a century-long legacy of conservation in the Gulf region, Audubon was quick to respond to the crisis. Audubon’s mission is to conserve and restore natural ecosystems, focusing on birds, other wildlife, and their habitats for the benefit of humanity and the earth’s biological diversity.

A friend of mine’s birthday was several weeks ago and for once, I was on time to getting a pressie out to her.

Then, just as I was closing in on finishing this market bag made from my FreshAire fabric for StudioE, my machine took an unexpected trip to the sewing machine hospital.  They told me it would be home, humming away, in one week.

Well, FOUR weeks later I was able to finish this pressie…..

….and send it out a month late, thus keeping my record for rarerly acknowledging birthdays on time, safely intact.

Sometimes you just gotta play hooky.  That’s what I did last Friday with my mom and niece.  We went to the bead store and had a couple hours of great fun making some new bling.