art night

it was art night on thursday, such a fabulous evening! we met at amandas house. this is a picture of her studio right inside the front door. gorgeous high ceilings with shelves that go all the way up. the amazing blue desk was rescued from outside where it was a carpentry bench. amanda painted and distressed it. the giant idea board takes up most of the wall and has so many cool things to look at.
amanda put together the little buckets full of goodies for each of us.

of course dinner was so delicious! the husbands are wondering if we are really getting together for the food and not the art.
these cupcakes from dear lizzie were scrumptious. nothing like a dark chocolate cupcake with creamy chocolate frosting.
love the sweet wrappings and little egg nests on top.

the pictures i took of us at midnight were really terrible. why don't i just get one of all of us in the beginning when we still look cute? so here is rena, the only picture of any of us that looks great.

two new art gals came this week, cathy and jacqueline. that makes nine of us. i wrote in my blog only last year how much i wished for an art group like this. well if you are out there and want an art group in your area start one! we started out small and needed a little boost but here we are. we are actually hosting our own art retreat in june, more details later but wowie, the teachers are going to knock your socks off.
cathy brought her line of milk paint to demo for us and i think we bought everything she had. the powdered paint is so cool, i am planning to paint over my italy box for the spring secrets RR i am working on. you can mix it to any consistency and even use it with pva glue. can't wait to play. check out her site at Vintage Paint Works. she has some very cool online tutorials for working with milk paint on many surfaces, plus some great free downloads of vintage ephemera.


i am totally busy working on the art retreat website and blog, can't wait to post everything. J.