My NOLA Live! Journal has been moved, shuffled, and piled, ignored, dropped, lost misplaced and then found rediscovered, but it still laid unfinished until this weekend.
I don't even want to tell you how many times I moved the darn thing rather than just going ahead and finishing!

It probably took that long because of the need to find the mat cutter, cut the board down, come up with an idea, paint it, unearth my binding machine in the very back, bottom corner under a stack of heavy boxes and finally do the binding and finish up the final touches on the cover.
Am I thrilled to have this done!?! YES! But talk about going from to Orlando from Tampa via Omaha?! Good grief! Since this is a Stillman & Birn sketchbook, I could have just as easily used with the original covers and glued a piece of watercolor paper onto the front and been done—months ago.
Still, I'm thrilled to have it done. The photos don't begin to do it justice as there are a lot of subtle color changes and details that are not visible. I deliberately left the title dateless as I've decided to put the second NOLA trip (November 2013) in the second half of this journal.

I still need to create a title page and a list of all the wonderful artists who joined me. Then, I think I'm done. Until November!

The cover was created using watercolor, acrylic ink a stamp, and a stencil. The title block is a separate piece of watercolor with hand lettering that's been glued down to the cover for added dimension.

There are still a few pages that I haven't gotten around to posting from my NOLA sketchbook.

The image below is from Oak Alley Plantation and it is of the bell that they used for mass communication:

The bell was used to call the workers at the start of the day, lunch time and to signal the end of the work day. It was also used to notify others in the community if there was a marriage, birth or emergency such as a fire.

Can you stand one more post on NOLA Live?!

Postcard Pocket

One of the things we did at NOLA Live was to draw names for a Postcard Swap. Each person pulled a name of someone they weren't traveling with so that we could learn more about each other. We all agreed to mail our postcards around the first of December, 2011. Once the card was received, we each posted to a private blog for the big "reveal!"

I received this wonderful postcard from Adine Rotman:

© Adine Rotman Posted with permission

This was from Mardi Gras World and Adine added glitter to really captured the glow and glory of the original dragon.

I wanted to add Adine's postcard in my sketchbook, but I didn't want to glue it down. Instead, I created another pocket so that it would be protected and I could see either side easily.

I decided to really have fun and play with the idea of a postcard on my journal page. I used a postcard rubber stamp and a brown pen to give my pocket the look of a postcard:


 I also included two special stamps:


For the first one, I took the Imaginary Trips logo, printed it out small, cut it out and then "antiqued" the paper with a sepia ink pad used for stamps. After I glued it down, I used a rubber stamp of mail cancellations over the top of it in another brown.


The second stamp is one of the hand carved stamps I made last year with the NOLA Live logo written on top of it.

Last, but certainly not least, I added a copy of my postcard to the page:


I painted one of the other "traveler's" on the trip, Cheryl Gebhart! This is truly an "imaginary" painting in that I combined her outfit from one photo, her posture and gear from another and the garden from yet another photo.

Again, I printed out the image to more of a postage stamp size and then attached it over another piece of paper so that it is raised off from the journal page.

We had quite the variety of postcards—cows, queens, windows, cathedrals, courtyards, and beignets all showed up! It was a lot of fun to see everyone's creativity and individual take on NOLA was lots of fun!

It was also a nice surprise to find in the mail and a wonderful reminder of fun times in the middle of December's maddness!

I like surprise...........compartments, unexpected finds and delightful treasures! So when I recently read an article by Jacqueline Newbold in the new Cloth Paper Scissors Pages Magazine, I decided to give some of her ideas a whirl in my own style.....

Cafe Beignet Sketch

On the day we arrived in NOLA, it was blues skies. Within the hour it was clouding up and quickly started to rain. KJ and I knew we were going to do a test taste of beignets when we went back to NOLA. (Inquiring minds wanted to know and so did our taste buds!) We happened up on Café Beignet and decided this was a perfect location to wait out the rain and begin our testing.
While we were waiting on our beignets, we noticed a small presence in the shop who had also come in out of the rain....
A sweet, little tuxedo cat was hanging out under one of the tables. It took a bit of coaxing, but he was finally convinced that an ear scratch might be just the thing on such a soggy day.

If you look closely at the photo, you'll see where I used a paw print punch to create a kitty paw print—more info below!

It was such a delightful and unexpected visit, that I knew I wanted to call out the special moment in a different way on the page. I wanted something that provided delight for the viewer of the sketchbook page the way the cat's visit did for KJ and I.

Jacqueline mentions using library pockets, cards and index card dividers in her article. Since it was late in the evening and I didn't want to wait until morning, I did a quick online search and discovered a library card pocket template.
The template I found is from Mirkwood Designs. Once I had the basic design, I created a pocket the size I needed to fit in the corner of my page since I'd already sketched the main image on the page. After I built the pocket, I then created a simple tag-type card from watercolor paper and painted the tuxedo cat.

I used green ribbon on the pocket and tag to coordinate with the green awning. Before gluing the pocket down to the page, I used the paw print punch to create a foot print at the top of the pocket and then used ink to distress the edges of the pocket a bit.

In my search for a template, I found lots of other ideas too, so I think you'll be seeing more of this on my pages. It's such fun to create a visual treat that's not immediately available to the viewer and it provides a nice surprise to see the special visitor we enjoyed all over each time the little card is pulled out!

Our last full day in NOLA dawned cold and clear with a strong wind from the northwest that robbed the warmth from the sunshine. However, that morning we spent touring the Beauregard-Keyes house (Keyes rhymes with eyes) and then sketching in the walled gardens. The walls made it possible for us to sketch without being totally miserable!

St. Francis in the Beauregard-Keyes Walled Gardens Sketched on location

The house is named after its two most celebrated owners, Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard and author, Ms. Frances Parkinson. We had an absolutely delightful guide and learned a good deal about what it might have been like to live back in the mid-1900's in New Orleans.

[I recently had someone ask "Don't you ever make mistakes!?!" Take a close look at the page above and you'll note one colossal mistake—the bricks....I drew what I THOUGHT I saw there rather than what I OBSERVED to be there. To downplay the wrong perspective, I washed some darker color over the bricks so that they are less noticeable. So the answer is "YES. I make mistakes. I also do what I can do downplay or correct them and move on. Lastly, I seldom point out mistakes because most of the time, if we don't say anything, no one notices anyway!"]

Other shots of the house and gardens:

Interior Courtyard behind the house

Cold, but determined sketchers in the walled gardens

Resurrection Fear growing on the wall of the garden

We took off for lunch and then spent the first part of the afternoon doing some shopping (purchasing pralines) and we then gathered to go to the Germaine Cazenave Wells Mardi Gras Museum at Arnaud's Restaurant:

Sketched on Location

The museum houses dresses worn by Ms. Wells, who is Count Arnaud's daughter. She is the one woman who has presided over more Krewes than any other. There were also outfits worn by her mother, daughter and the Count as the King of Mardi Gras. It was a very interesting and close-up look at the opulence and details of the Mardi Gras dress of yesteryear as contrasted against our visit to Mardi Gras World on our first day.

The dress is encrusted with beading and other embellishments. The train is made of velvet and trimmed with real fur—it had to weigh a ton!!

Intrepid sketchers sitting on the floor after a mishap with a broken stool

Our evening finished off with a fabulous meal at Arnaud's. The restaurant harkens back to another era where you wore your best to go to dinner, the door was held for women and the chair pulled back. Men wore jackets and the ladies were dressed to the nines. (It's more relaxed now, but only by a little bit!)

It was a wonderful way to wrap up our week in NOLA with a fabulously wonderful group of sketchers!

[I have a few more pages to share (that are out of order) where I've done a few different and fun things to change them up a bit!]

Place d'Armes Hotel Watercolor and Ink

Seldom have I stayed at a hotel where I wanted to linger, but this was the case with the Place d'Armes hotel! It is a property of 8 town homes built back in the 18th and 19th centuries, cobbled together around the most gorgeous courtyards you could ever want to sit in.

The old bricks were the perfect backdrop for the fountains and lush greenery. There was a quietness, a peaceful ambiance that slipped up and soothed you whenever you stepped foot into the courtyard. The doors were the old style with the wood mullions, shutters on either side.

I knew if we'd ran into some ugly weather, that the courtyard would provide many days' worth of sketching materials all by itself! In fact, this was one of the places I sat to sketch on my free afternoon. You just wanted to be out there soaking it up!

Others on the trip felt the same tug—you can see Cheryl's beautiful courtyard here and Claire's lovely room here. If you're headed to NOLA anytime soon, I highly recommend this hotel.

UPDATED to include text from cemetery page at the bottom of post.

Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 Watercolor and Ink Drawn on location

Those raindrops I mentioned in the last NOLA post? Well, they were a little more serious come Wednesday morning. We walked to the street trolley and had to open our umbrellas about two books from our stop. By the time we actually reached our stop, it had stopped sprinkling again.

We loaded up onto the trolley and hadn't gone more than 3 blocks when the bottom opened up and it really rained! That, however, was the last of it. We arrived at the cemetery with gray, overcast skies which seemed rather appropriate for the morning's adventure!

There is a lot of information about the "cities of the dead," the above ground crypts and the traditions of New Orleans when it comes to honoring the dead on the page above. Please click to enlarge so that you can read more if you're interested.

MORE Decadent Desserts—Commander Palace Style Memory Sketch Watercolor Click to Enlarge

Next came our three hour lunch at the Commander's Palace with 25¢ Cosmo martinis! Synchronized serving (all the entrees and desserts were sat down on the table in front of each person at the same time), a tour of the kitchens and wine cellars, as well as outstanding food were all order of the day.

Luckily, we had the afternoon free to walk off our meals and more decadent (and delicious) desserts. Some of us moseyed up to the bookstore on the corner while others went back to explore the city via the trolley.

Collection of Memories Memory Sketch Watercolor and Ink Click to Enlarge

If you ever find yourself in NOLA, pause and look, I mean really look around you. Look up, look down, look at the ground, look at the balconies, just look. There is something to see EVERYWHERE you look! The fire hydrant in the image above most have had 500 strings of beads on it. I'm not sure how many times I passed it before I actually saw it!

The other ephemera on the page is from places I wanted to remember and memories I wanted to collect. There was several cigar shops and bars in NOLA that I don't remember from last year. Whereas cigars are not my thing, I do think they have very cool wrappers on some of the cigars.

The green book shop piece is actually a bookmark that I've folded down to fit on the page and attached with a clear tape hinge. That way I can read the info without it sticking outside of the book. The sticker at the bottom right came off from a great cup of coffee.

Simple items, but each evokes a strong memory of where I was, what I was doing and who I was with—pretty cool for just a little piece of paper!
From the Cemetery Page:
Cemetery founded in 1833 by the city of Lafayette. City was later incorporated by New Orleans.
Many early immigrants buried here, especially German.
Many died from the Yellow Fever Epidemic.
Cemetery is non-segregated and non-denomenatinal.
Unlimited internment.
Many society tombs - firemen, orphanages, etc.
Crypts built of many different materials, sometimes painted the same color as [the] family home.
"Property" returns to the city after 150(?) years of inactivity
Crypts could hold two coffins—one on top, one on the bottom.
Mourning time - customary was one year and one day.
(And this final is a note to myself) Look into "4 Gentlemen Crypts" secret society

Sketched on Location Click to enlarge

Oak Alley is a (still-working) sugar cane plantation upriver from New Orleans. There are 28 Live Oaks that line the path to the house from the river that were planted by a settler back in the 1700's. They're estimated to be 300 years old.

Front of the Home Image courtesy of the Oak Alley Plantation

The Roman family later purchased the land and built their home in 1830's, using the 28 oaks to inspire 28 columns that are 8 feet in circumference and walls that are 16 inches thick. They also planted an additional 28 Live Oaks in the back of the plantation. Those are estimated to be around 150 years old and are what show in the journal page at the top of the page.

Back of the Home Click to enlarge

The large kettle featured in the journal page and the image above is one of the kettles they used to boil the sugar cane juice down into syrup. Today, they are often used as koi ponds and planters as manufacturing has long since surpassed the use of these pots.

As the fates would have it, the weather was being rather fickle this day and it didn't know if it wanted to rain or not. After a few warming sprinkles, the rain finally started to get heavy enough that most of us retreated to the café.

Introducing my latest "coffee passion:"

Memory sketch, created after returning Click to enlarge

Praline coffee. YUM! There's not much more that needs to be said about it. It was sooooooo good! I went by two of our local liqueur stores only to find they don't carry it. It's a special order. Needless to say, there is a bottle winging its way here as we speak.

Last but certainly not least, we had dinner at the Napoleon House. It looks like a dive on the outside and it's as dark as a cave on the inside with an old world, European feel. The walls are brick and stucco with an open air courtyard.

Memory Sketch, crated after returning Click to enlarge

Several of us had difficulty reading the menu due to the low-lighting (no lighting?) conditions. Our helpful waiter brought us a big yellow and black flashlight so we could read the menu. No kidding! Apparently, they'd had this kind of trouble before.

Napoleon House is also known for their "Pimm's Cup" cocktail and I just had to try one! It is made with Pimm's Liqueur. It is garnished with a cucumber slice and is quite refreshing. (One of those drinks that sneaks up on you if you have too many because they're not hard to drink! And, no, that's not experience talking—I only had one!)

Despite the few showers of the day, it was a fun day with many laughs and some great sketches!

Click to Enlarge Page started on location, finished after the trip

We actually started off at Tujague's for dinner on Sunday night. Because I haven't finished that page yet, I've skipped ahead to Monday morning. We started the day off at Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World! We started with a video tour about the Kern family and the history of Mardi Gras. We also has a taste of a tradition King cake and then went out to the work area and warehouse.

Click to enlarge

Note the golf cart in the image above. I took this for scale in this huge warehouse. Everything seemed larger than life! Mardi Gras World makes a variety of props and floats for 40 of the 54 krewes that have a parade during Mardi Gras. They will often repurpose a prop from year to year. The example shared was taking a hobbit's house and restructuring it into Shrek's head the following year.

Click to enlarge

Here we see one of the artisan's creating a pelican's head out of styrofoam. Most of the props and floats are made of styrofoam and paper mâché as the materials are inexpensive and the labor less intense than the fiberglass props they complete.

Click to enlarge

This little jester is made of fiberglass. He only stood about 3 feet tall, but weighs considerable more than the styrofoam pieces as well.

Click to enlarge

This giraffe loomed high above over our heads. He seem to have a benevolent look to his face though so it wasn't so bad to have him looking over our shoulders.
This isn't a great photo, but it does give you a sense of scale, and if you click to enlarge the image, you'll see several folks walking around in this kingdom of props and it gives you a better understanding of just how huge this place was! It was so much fun to be in the warehouse and walk around in, let alone sit down and sketch!

We had a great time sketching and painting these larger than life "caricatures!" It was really cool being able to take the tour, spend some time looking around at the "sights" and THEN deciding on what we wanted to sketch and knowing we had time to do so.

I had made plans to go into NOLA early to make sure that everything was in place and to check a couple of logistical matters that I couldn't check out any other way. Boy, am I glad I did!

I arrived tired—emotional, physically and mentally. You see, both of my parents had experienced major health crises the week before I left. Since life is what happens while we're making other plans, I had little choice but to roll with it. Luckily, I have a great family and both parents were beginning to show improvement before I left.

Click to enlarge

On Saturday, while the other two roamed the French Quarter, I caught up on a few emails and some other necessary business. Finding a good internet connection turned out to be a sizable challenge this entire trip! I had to sit in the front lobby or breakfast room to get a fairly reliable connection.

After I completed my work, I sat out in the sunny courtyard to sketch one of the doors leading into the Armstrong House as well as the breakfast nook. The others returned and joined me for a wonderful afternoon of sketching.

Click to enlarge

This second page I'm sharing was started at The Decadence Shoppe....which turned out to be a bakery/breakfast joint, but with a name like that in NOLA.....you never know!! The umbrellas hung from the ceiling and were just to cute to pass up as a drawing opportunity.

The decadence came in the form of Praline Pancakes and Maple Spice Chai Latte. Oh. My. Goodness! Yummy! Though I have to say, everything we had was excellent. We went there for breakfast twice. The second morning the doors were open and we sat gazing out of Louis Armstrong Park which was just across the street.

After more exploring of the French Quarter, we decided to go back to Bistreaux (having been there on Thursday evening). It was close to our hotel and the food was very good. LSU was in an epic battle to retain their No. 1 ranking against Alabama, ranked No. 2 and the joint was full.

To add to the frivolity of the evening there was a wedding being held in the hotel next door. Once the vows were exchanged, the happy couple, wedding party and everyone who attended as well as a band went around the block, waving handkerchiefs to celebrate. The image below is not of the same wedding party, but you'll get the idea. That's just how you do it in NOLA!

Click to enlarge

 It was a very lively evening and yes, LSU won—in overtime!

To be continued.....

....I wasn't sure if you would want chocolate, traditional, creamy, rum, coconut or spicy!

I've just returned from New Orleans and the BEST ever 1st Imaginary Trip Made Real, NOLA Live!!

I'm not sure where to begin to describe the fun we all had, the things we saw, the food we ate, the places we visited and all the cool things we learned about this vibrant and wonderful city!

Without a doubt I'll be talking about this trip for weeks (maybe months) to come and I want to say a few words of thanks to the most wonderfully, intrepid "travelers" a gal like me could hope for—you MADE this trip fabulous and I thank you for your sense of adventure and friendship!

To KJ (of Catching Happiness), for being there, for talking me down off the ledge more than a few times as well as for being a great friend and travelmate!

To Chris for believing in this crazy dream of mine even when I didn't. I could never have done this without your unwavering faith in me.

I am amending this post to add a very special thank you to my family for keeping the home fires burning and allowing me to go to NOLA knowing my parents were being well taken care of!

What I did bring you was a few short videos of some very fun street performances in NOLA! To set the stage for the beginning of our trip, I took a few minutes out of the day to video some of the lively performances you're bound to experience in the French Quarter.

This is one of the things that makes this city soooo great—you never know what you'll find around the next corner!