If your follow me over on Instagram, you will probably want to skip this post as it is a wrap-up of the competition I entered over at @raileurope. Rail Europe is sponsoring a contest for two creative people to take a trip via rail over Germany and Switzerland. Their #talesonrail2017 closes today and the winners are to be announced in the next two weeks.

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

To read the Instagram post, click here

"If you don't [keep that travel journal], you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life."

After coming home from a trip, I always have grand plans for all the pages I'm going to do based on the great photos and wonderful memories I have. Sound familiar?

And then life, work and daily living gets in the way. Sound even more familiar?

Those pages still exist, but they're only in my imagination and they fade with each passing day.

Each trip, I do a little better by getting more done in my sketchbook while on location. However, there will always be more pages to be done when I return. Both our Acadia trip from last fall and the Winter Interrupted workshop from this winter await the finishing touches.

Luckily for me, I had a little help from one of the gals that helped me Interrupt Winter, Claire McFeely. Actually, it was more than a little help—she's been a powerhouse of inspiration because she recently finished all 48 pages of her trip and she's been sharing them on a private trip blog we have.

The other "help" I have is that my brand new Apple computer, the Big Mac Daddy, is back at the big house for yet more diagnostics and repairs. I am so over this situation and I knew I need some serious distracting from the situation, so I pulled out all my saved materials and photos and went to work. BTW, distraction is a marvelous tool to get going on a stalled project!

Final Day and a Page of Thanks Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook Watercolor and Ink

On the NOLA trip, we lost a stool on the very last night. On the last evening of Winter Interrupted, one of the ladies' hats decided to separate from its brim in a rather dramatic fashion. After a wonderful walk on the beach, we had dinner at a little grill where we sat outside to enjoy the wonderful breeze and listened to the waves crashing into shore.

That single-serving bottle of bubbly Moscato wine was ridiculously expensive, but just too cute to pass up and the wine was good. The ink on this page reads as black but is actually a grayed blue. It worked well with the restaurant's logo colors.

Happy reminders of a wonderful trip Stillman & Birn Watercolor and Ink

During our adventure to John's Pass, the bag above was spotted. Since it had eight flip-flops on it and there were eight "Beach Sisters," the Sisters decided to gift the bag to me as a happy reminder of the trip and to show their appreciation. After they gave it to me, I had each of them sign their names to a flip-flop…I still need one more signature that I'm determined to get one of these days, soon!

I truly wish studios came equipped with little guardians (maybe a daemon?) that were capable of body slamming and hog-tying us when we started to do something really stupid, but alas, they don't and I did.

It all started out harmlessly enough. I've continued to work in my Winter Interrupted sketchbook from the workshop a few weeks ago and I managed to paint the first sunset painting I've ever liked:

Our Last Sunset Watercolor Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook

And life was good.

Until I went into the kitchen and noticed a really cool texture on some new paper towels we had just bought that looked a lot like a beach towel-ish texture. Well, the brain synapse fired off—beach+sunset+beach towel=brilliant idea!

Yeah, except not so much.

I am FOREVER telling folks to experiment on another piece of paper first rather than commit to your artwork and risk being an unhappy camper. So I did and it kinda worked. I used a blue stamp pad on the paper towel and stamped it on tracing paper. It worked well enough that I decided to go for it.

It didn't work. My page was a much larger area and the towel was drying before I could get an imprint.

I should have just stopped. But oh, no. Nothing quite so brilliant crossed my mind.

(And I had no little guardian to say, "You are on the verge of a colossal mistake. Step away from the sketchbook and no one gets hurt.") 

Instead, I thought, "Hey, I have a stamp with a similar texture!"

Similar but not the same and apparently, the differences escaped my notice.

Our Last Sunset Watercolor with stamping around image Stillman & Birn Zeta Sketchbook

And so I stamped it. Not bad, really, but NOTHING like I had in mind. The lines were too…straight and rigid. I wanted relaxed and flow-y. Meandering, maybe.

Annoyed with my results, I sulked for a while, trying to find a way to make the page work. Not too much later, a new thought struck!

In another moment of sheer brilliance, I decided to add gesso to the offending texture to "knock-back" the blue and hopefully obscure some of the lines.

Only, it didn't really work. (Grumble, grumble.)

So, this time, not in brilliance, but out of desperation, I decided to add some more color…blues, lavenders and grays.

(Do I at least get a point or two for persistence?)

And it sucked! I'm sure you are just as shocked as I was.

Thank goodness for gesso and baby wipes. I removed as much of the color as I could and in doing so managed to smear a bit of paint into the white border around the sketch. Oh, the horror!! I had to fix it!

(What do you mean, "Where's the photo?! I didn't want anyone to see that!)

In trying to fix the smeared paint, I touched the very dark paint and it BLED!

And then I had an even bigger mess.

("Arrrrgh, just shoot me now! Can you not see what you're doing, lass? Stop already before you've completely ruint the thing," pleads the imaginary guardian.)

But did I stop? No. I. Did. Not.

So in my final moment of staggering brilliance—you, in the back, stop with the eye-rolling and chuckles—I grabbed a couple of pieces of tape to use over the sketch so that the paint wouldn't run while I cleaned up the smear AND the bleeding.

And it didn't. The paint didn't run a bit.

But the paper tore and the paint lifted when I lifted the tape.

("For the love of Pete, woman, just...just stop!!" my little guardian would have been screaming at me.)

After repairing the smear, the bleed and the area where the paper tore and where the painted lifted, I was almost, but not quite, back to where I started.

In a quiet moment of admitted defeat, I decided to heed the advice of my make believe guardian and just journal on the page and call it finished before I did something I couldn't salvage.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the only true moment of brilliance I had through the whole, entire process.

The Final Sunset Page

(And if I had said guardian, at this point, his hair ripped out of his head, his voice hoarse from screaming, shoulders slumped, he would have tendered his resignation while muttering something about "bloody brilliant, my arse" as he trudged out the door.)

I think I'm in the market for a new imaginary guardian...

Shoe Spoof from #WinterInterrupted Stillman & Birn Zeta Watercolor, Stamps, Ink

Is that color overload?! Yes? Good!! Mission accomplished.

While we were poking around in the shops of Pass-A-Grille Beach during Winter Interrupted, we happened upon a sign that said "Wild women wear outrageous shoes" that featured a pair of sky-high stilettos.

I seriously doubt my feet will ever see the inside of a pair of stilettos again, but the words still resonated with me because at the time, I was wearing those very shoes you see in the image. In fact, you can see them in the very first image in this post.

No one has to tell me they're ugly. I know it. No one has to tell me they're as comfortable as any shoes I've ever worn either. I usually wear them around the house or out in the yard. Just not in public. But here in Florida, well, let's just say you can wear just about anything at the beach and no one's going to so much as bat an eyelash.

But there's a reason—a very good reason I might add—why I opted to wear these outrageous shoes…back in the fall when we were in Maine, I slipped while climbing on a granite ledge below our cabin. It was slick with silt from the outgoing tide. I did quite the number on my knee and foot.

While they're mostly healed, my foot occasionally takes exception to overuse such as walking around all.day.long at the beach. When that happens, my foot swells and any other type of shoe becomes a torture device.

So, these were the shoes I wore all week long. Attractive? No! But they allowed me to continue to function through the week. Being raised on a strawberry farm as a teenager, I got over "looking cool" many long years ago. It was far more important to be practical and dress to be warm or cool, be able to move without binding or chafing, and to be able to stand on your feet for long periods of time.

There was simply no room for dressing cool for school. Besides, unlike at the beach, there was no one to see me on the farm and those that did weren't part of the school scene.

But I have to say, these shoes have one other feature that makes them perfect beach wear…they float and they dry in a hurry. Perfect for splashing in the water!

As for the color fest above, Florida beaches are nothing if not gaudy with all the bright colors and that was what I had in mind when I indulged in the neon colors! I gotta say, I kinda like it…it certainly chases away the gray days of winter.

Do you wear outrageous shoes?!