Can We Play At Your House, Virginia?!?!?

Here is my good friend Virginia. 

Well, she is a bit of a blur in this photo.  Because I am not always the best photographer.  But actually, it's fitting.  Because Virginia is a dancer (indeed, I met her several years ago as one of her pole-dancing students).  And a blossoming singer.  And an artist in many media.  In other words, she's a whirling dervish of creativity.  Which you can tell from the juiciness of her studio space itself.

She makes oriel pendants that she sells on etsy and on her website, KentuckyGirlDesigns.com.  Her favorite mode of creation is in custom orders, where she gets intuitive hits on folks' images and desires.

I've been lucky enough to visit her fabulous studio for playdates for the past couple of years.  You definitely want to go there to play.  I mean, the woman even has cool SCISSORS.

I was there yesterday for a lesson in altered books -- another one of Virginia's art talents, and which she teaches about at places like Once Around in Mill Valley, and Stage Door Studio in Sausalito.

I got to pick out a book to alter.  Which means wreck and do-dad up in really fun ways.

Then, started off with a big old tray of stamps of luscious colors from which to chose.  There's not a surer way to make my heart sing.

Pulled lots of images out of magazines.  Got lots of good instruction about thinking of colors, words associated with them, how to work.  (I forgot what an excellent teacher Virginia is, after not having been in her classes for a while.)

And then she brought out these lovelies.

OMG.  Do you know what you can do with them?  That's right -- paint over them with water, and they blend together.  LOVE.  IT.

Here are the two spreads I made in the two hours we played.  The stripes on the right hand side, next to Mr. Einstein, are actually pockets in which I can place cool things.

Thanks to you, Ms. Virginia!  It's always fun to hang with ya, sister.  For lots of reasons . . . not the least of which is that in the two-hour altered book lesson, we also covered whole other worlds of topics.  Music recommendations, book recommendations, questions about marketing and social networking, creativity websites, how to become more comfortable with being photographed, and where to look for vacation lodging.  Wow.  And it didn't even seem like we were talking that fast.  I now realize that the blur of you at the top of this post is actually a very fine artistic interpretation of your energetic soul!