AND WE'RE OFF, LIKE A HERD OF TURTLES

Oh my, my! Is there anything more glorious than an early autumn Hill Country morn? The temps have dropped into the fifties the last several nights, and I was able to throw all the windows open for a few hours when I got up. Plus, the grasses that cover our property have sent up plumes, and are beginning to waft and ripple with the breeze. I even saw smoke coming up from a neighbors property one morning, so I'm guessing they finally lifted our perpetual burn ban, at least for a while. If only these temps would last through the week.

This book of W.B. Thompson's paintings is all I could afford last time we went!

Believe it or not, John and I are finally going to take that trip to San Antonio that I won from the Visit San Antonio Facebook page almost a year ago! We kinda got side-tracked by all our trips to the E.R. this year! Anyhoo, we've both been to San Antonio numerous times, having grown up here in Texas, but I don't think we've ever once been there when it wasn't blazin' hot and humid! We were really sorta hoping that this trip, being in late September, might be the exception. However, last time I checked, it looked liked the temps were going to pop back up into the 90s just in time for our arrival. Ah well, c'est la vie!

Never fear. I'm sure we will manage to have a marvelous time nonetheless. How could we not? Not only did our prize package include four free nights at the lovely Valencia Hotel, right on the Riverwalk, free passes to Fiesta Texas, the Witte museum, the McNay, and the San Antonio Botanical Gardens, a trolley tour, and lovely meals at two restaurants, but it also included a very generous gift card to cover travel expenses. And, since we have virtually no travel expenses, living only about 90 minutes away, we can use it however we wish. I'm thinking a trip to the little gallery in La Villita that carries the art of one of my very favorite artists (pictured above), stops at a couple of local art stores I've managed to scope out, and maybe shopping for a few colorful garments a la Frida Kahlo, might all be good places to start. What do you think?

 

MY SUPER SPLURGE

Ever since my sister and I took that Dyan Revealey class together at a shop called Stamp Asylum in Plano, I've been receiving the shop's newsletters via email. I'm pretty well stocked for supplies now, so I don't pay much attention to them, but a recent image of a new paper crafting tablet from Graphic 45 kinda reached out to grab me, despite the fact that I rarely do any paper crafting. I'm more into paint!


Two things on that tiny image jumped out at me:

La Belle Epoque art...

and chalkboard art. Well, make that three things. There were also some words in French!

Now, if there are three things I love, it's La Belle Epoque, chalkboard art, and anything French!  I hopped in my car and ran over to Austin. I searched high and low at both Hobby Lobby and JoAnn's, but couldn't find anything at all from Graphic 45 at either one. It seems they both carry their own lines of rather generic crafting papers. Fortunately, my sweet sister offered to go pick one up for me at the store there in Plano and pop it in the mail. I nearly had a stroke when she told me how much it cost (like I said, I never buy craft paper tablets), especially since I had no idea what I was getting inside that tablet! Would it be worth the money? I'll let you be the judge...

There are all kinds of beautiful papers such as the two above, but what I love most are the pages filled with stuff like this -- just perfect for cutting out and and gluing onto one of my painted backgrounds as a focal point, or in place of hand-written words.

 

 Is there a happy dance going on in the Wee Little Studio today? You bet your sweet bippy!

  

SAND AND WATER

 It was right around this time last year that we heard about a great little beach bar/lodge in Port Aransas. We waited until all the kiddos were back in school, so the beach would be semi-deserted, then headed down there to check it out for ourselves.

Definitely Our Kind Of Place!

We're hoping to go back there again with our BFFs Paula and Tim, to celebrate my big SIX-OH in late October, but it just depends on how well Miss Paula is doing by then, after her recent car accident. Fingers crossed!

Anyhoo, thinking about all that sand and water got me to thinkin' I'd better do one more "transparent foreground" project before moving on to something else -- perhaps the Dion Dior "Sparkle Arkle" project that I never got around to in my 21 Secrets class? Can't let all those Twinks and Silks go to waste! So, yesterday, I began pulling together all my little scraps and gee-gaws for the textured background.

There are the sandy bits...

and the watery bits...

and a great little Take-Along Guide picked up on that last trip to Port A., which should provide plenty of inspiration for the tissue sketches that will make up my transparent foreground. I just knew that little book would come in handy some day! In fact, I'm really wishing I had some of the others from that collection, like Snakes, Salamanders and Lizards, or Tracks, Scats and Signs. Perhaps I'll put those on my Christmas wish list.

Now all I have to do is decide whether to start gluing these bits into one of my own journals, or into a certain someone's Circle Journal, which has been sitting on my art table for about a week now!