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Thursday, February 18, 2016

Cure for winter blues

Art and Florida in February!!



I am so inspired after attending Back to Back retreat in Delray Beach with Dina Wakley and Dyan Reaveley.  The organizer for the retreat is Michelle Mccosh, who is on year two of this retreat. She is one busy person. 

Michelle has the most amazing store in Lake Worth. I am so glad we went to see it. It is truly an inspiring trip. A real destination store. There is so much art to see. I want to pull up a chair and spend the day creating. 


Day one was prep and we got our name badges, itinerary and had a chance to meet the other artists. Thrilled to report that like other mixed media events, people attending the retreat are really friendly and eager to share. We had a conversation centering around our favorite mm artists. These are a few that I made note of:

Finnabair

The Kathryn Wheel







So this is Jo-Ellen and me, day one with our brand new clean journals. We got a new Dyan Reaveley 9x12 journal book. The paper is great for multi media projects because it can handle water and weight. Plus the paper is really smooth. 

We prepped pages for Dina, tearing up the journal right away. We also immediately got the journal dirty. It sure does free you not to worry about messing up the journal. The best way to treat it is to use it, that means getting it dirty and full of color. 

We also received a canvas bag with a stamp set, a set of Dina's brushes and goodies from Michelle. It seems like each time we returned from a break there was something fun on our chair waiting for us. She made us decorated canvas bags and we got charcoal, water brush, paints and a few other goodies to build our own travel supply kit. 


Michelle set up a cute photo spot with goodies for pictures. 



Here is Dyan showing us some great techniques. I really enjoyed learning them. This block technique is one of my favorites!! Check it out on YouTube!