A trip to the beach and no photos to prove it!

Honest I really did go to the beach - it was beautiful the entire week we were there.  Nice refreshing breezes blowing in from the ocean keeping us cool as we hung out on the beach with our toes in the sand, we saw dolphins every single day splashing east in the mornings and west in the afternoons.  They even put on an amazing jumping show for us for a few minutes one afternoon.  We saw a sea turtle ... in  the water about 20 feet from us - kind of freaked us out at first because we didn't know what it was and it was a large dark shape coming toward us and then veered west and its green and yellow head popped up above the water, that was when we could tell what it was.  Whew!  Still glad it veered west.  And glad it was a turtle.   Do sea turtles bite?   We were on floats, and I just don't think they would have offered much protection.  We saw two sharks - we could have done without those little viewings.  They were both within 5 feet of the shore and swimming along quite fast.  Pam said she thought they were nurse shark, whatever that is, all I know is that they were shark and large enough to take a huge chunk of meat from my body, if it so chose, and intruding on my vacation peace of mind.  Amazingly, I still got in the water, more than once after spotting them.  I felt quite brave, or stupid, I guess.

My friend Pam, from Houston, met Gary and I down there and we had a really good time together.  But no photos, I am really letting myself down with my camera.

I did, however, bring it out to snap a photo of her new art purchase.   They were having Artquest in Seaside and she bought this ...  I had to take the photo in 3 pieces so the whole thing could be enjoyed ...  the artist incorporated decoupaged papers with her art, some of her other pieces had beautiful pieces of glass that she made herself ...  here it is:

I loved it!

This is trees.  She used wall paper scraps to make the tree tops and it looked like squeeze paint to outline them.  They were so whimsical and fun.Look close and you will see she decoupaged a piece of map from the emerald coast and then painted faintly on top of it ...

See how she decoupaged paper cut outs in this part of it?

It was painted on wood, she spread paintable caulk on it for the texture, let it dry, then painted her base color, the orangy coral color that peeks through, and then the rest of her colors on top of that.  She was very informative on her technique - Pam and I became her art groupies and went back to her booth at least 4 times to examine and drool over her art and talk to her.  She was pretty interesting to talk to.

Then, when we left, we went to Lowes, bought ourselves a piece of wood, some paintable caulk and we went back to the beach house, and proceeded to create our own master pieces  *-*  of mixed media art ...   This is mine:

I couldn't get a good photo of it.  But I liked it enough to hang it in my office, for now anyway.  I loved the texture the caulk added to the art - I have a hard time loading enough paint onto my canvas to get texture, so this was definitely a tip I will use again.

I started my donkey painting too, but its still in the early stages.

So, anyway, that's all the photos I took from my beach vacation.  You'll just have to take my word on how pretty the beach was ....  wish I was there again right now ...  with no worries that is.

Til later, V

Post note:  Mojitos - good!