Dreams do come true...

My dream of meeting Donna Downey finally came true this weekend when my friend, Jen, and I drove to Valencia, CA to spend the weekend creating in workshops taught by Donna. It was all that I had hoped it would be and more. I didn't walk away with any "finished" projects, but I have all the supplies, tools and knowledge on how to complete them. The projects are all started and are at various stages on their way to completion. The weekend was all about learning techniques to create incredible mixed media pieces. While we carted in a lot of our own paint, brushes, stamps and inks along with some patterned paper and random embellishments, Donna supplied all of the products I've been drooling over in her shop. We worked on 2 canvas albums and learned layering techniques and the secrets behind Donna's unique style.

My workspace looked like this for most of the weekend...

This is a picture of Donna demonstrating a watercoloring technique in my friend, Jen's, canvas album. How COOL!

Here are some random snippets from my weekend:

- Although we allowed 5 hrs of travel time that should have taken 2 1/2 hrs, we were a 1 1/2 late for the first workshop. Gotta love LA traffic!

- The Remember When Scrapbooking store was ammmaaaaazing! They have awesome products (including Donna Downey products and Unity Stamps and a large selection of Tim Holtz products), and an incredibly friendly staff. They even had a tab going for me on Saturday and Sunday! How awesome is that...an art supply tab! I have to give a huge shout out to J.P. who is probably the nicest person in customer service I have EVER met!

- Donna autographed and wrote a quote on my canvas tote bag that I'll be painting once I decide how I want to decorate it...

- On Saturday we had lunch catered by Panera and ate and chatted with Donna about her journey as an artist how she was "discovered" and some of her goals and dreams. She was just as down-to-earth and as approachable as I expected her to be.

- When we weren't in our workshops we went to Joann's and Michael's (where I got the cutest little inspiration binder I'll be sharing soon!) and we ate really yummy food that we can't get at home!

Meeting and learning from Donna was a dream come true and I had such an awesome, relaxing weekend with one of my best girlfriends!

Thanks, again, Mom for helping to make this happen!