Ahhh it feels good to paint again! ~ The two paintings above are aceo/atc size and painted in acrylics. The top one is titled 'River Wilderness' and the second one is 'Chasing the Light'. I may enter these up for bid in the upcoming nfac art contests in ebay. The one below is 'Fishy Mutants' and it's 6 x 6 inches on a stretched canvas. This is one I just reworked some more but I'm still not sure I'm happy with the way it turned out.

From our trip last weekend ~ If you are wondering what it looks like to drive over the New River Gorge bridge, this is a photo I snapped as we were going across!

We went down countless steps (my legs were sore for days) to get these views of the bridge. Can you see the vehicles going across the top?

I've never been afraid of heights before, but I've changed my mind after seeing my husband and daughter standing on this rock last weekend! I refused to get on that last rock but did manage to lean over a little to get a picture of the huge dropoff right in front of where they were standing. My hands still sweat just looking at these pictures and seeing how close they were standing next to that edge!

A new page for Soulbrush's book ~ There are pages and creativity flying through the mail, thanks to the Girlfriend's Traveling Sketchbook project started by Kate of Kate's Corner. I got mail from Cathie yesterday and I recieved books from Joss (Soulbrush), Lynn, and Babs. I was chewing my nails, wondering which one to start on first and how to make the pages, then I though...OK, calm down (ha no stress here) and just work on them in the order that they are on the mailing list...so I studied Joss's book and it's full of wonderful bright color and designs and I knew I had to use some vibrant colors and do something fun. Soo, I ended up painting a crescent moon and stars and painted a red border all around. I hope she is going to like it, her book is looking great, and so are the others! I'm inspired to start on Lynn and Babs books now, what a fun project this has been!!

This is something I've been fiddling with and it's 8 x 10 inches, acrylics on a stretched canvas. I sort of laid it aside for a few days to see if I want to call it finished, or work on it some more. I picked a bouquet of photos out in the yard (photos below) to share with y'all! My camera has been busy the last few days. Babs, lookee at my oreo seed plants, they're growing great so far!!

The Saga of the Incredible Girlfriends Traveling Sketchbooks ~

Yea, I got my sketchbook page done for Cathie from the Clevelandgirlie blog. I worked on it last night and finished it today. Her sketchbook has a theme of 'words of wisdom', so I remembered a favorite old poem and tried to intregrate a few words from that poem along with a 5 x 7 inch acrylic painting I had done. Some things I used for her page are the acrylic painting (with a sparkly gemstone inset in the sky), a goldleaf pen, gold and pearl metallic acrylics, crystal glitter, matte medium, and permanent black ink. I used that old poem as a calligraphy project way back in college days, but I have never been able to find the original author, even after lots of google searches last night. It's possibly one of those that have been around forever and the original author lost. I always thought of that poem as a reminder of hope, that no matter how bad things are today, they will get better. I'm hoping to have this ready to mail to Karen of the blog Beelieve by tomorrow, 'heads up' Karen! :) Also, I forgot to add that since Cathie's page was made of fabric, I used a piece of gessoed canvas for my page for her book.

My calligraphy skills weren't that great but I still passed the class! I did this over 25 years ago.

Undersee Symphony ~ I finally finished this one and it's acrylics on a 8 x 10 inch stretched canvas. I scrubbed off/redone/backtracked in so many places, it's a wonder there's any paint left on this one. I was happy with the way it turned out though. I've been on a fish and undersea theme lately and I plan on trying some more under the 'see' ones. I may be influenced by all the rain we're having here in Virginia...4 straight days of it. On the bright side, everything is greening up really nicely! I hope everyone is having a great weekend! I got the background for my two spring tree paintings done, now I just need to paint in the trees.