Ok ,I know i have not blogged in a bit... but I really have been on the road for a long time! Even though I went to France first, I will blog about my amazing experience at the Inspired Artist Workshop this past weekend in North Carolina. It is hard to find the words to express how fabulous this weekend was. Let's just say Donna and Bill Downey really know how to put on an event! You would never know these two were not professional event planners... every little detail was attended to be sure all the students attending had an amazing time. I arrived late Wednesday night, April 9th the night before registration began and the excitement was already in the air. Even though I was tired after being home just 2 days from France, I caught the fever fast! I shared my shuttle from the airport with two other inspired attendees Chistiana and CD Muckosky. We gabbed all the way to the hotel, two new friends for me and the event hadn't even started yet. I got up early Thursday and shared breakfast at the super cool Concord, Embassy Suites, our event hotel with my new pal CD and my good friend Jeanette along with her sidekick Carol before heading off to start preparing my classroom . I was immediately wowed by all the mega cool set up that was underway, a huge retail store in one of the ballrooms with 4 different retailers representing themselves, a booth for Heather DeZerga, (the seamstress behind all of Donna's custom sewn goodies!) with all her creations ready for us to peruse, and the registration desk manned by my good friend Donna! The photo above is of the goodies waiting for me in my lime green inspired event totebag. I immediately fell in love with the way Donna had hand bound all the inspired workshop notebooks... with corrugated cardboard, and handstamped of course! The handbook was designed to have all the event info and class instructions inside so students had a all in one event notebook. It was super cool to see some students turning these into event autograph books and keepsakes over the weekend. I have not stopped wearing my Inspired necklace designed by Lisa Leonard, just for the inspired weekend I love it! I also totally dig my inspired apron embroidered with my name that I wore all weekend when I taught!
Next I had the pleasure of meeting some of my fellow instructors, Kal Barteski and Jennifer Stewart I have admired these two gals for awhile and it was a kick to hang out with them and soak up their super creative energy! Thursday night we had a kick off dinner with all the students and teachers, there was such a cool mix of folks there... I was cracking up I was sitting at a table with 5 Canadians, and one great gal from the UK, how fun is that?I was totally tickled to be given a fantastic charm bracelet from the all the gals in the Yahoo group that had participated in their charm swap, they made extras for all the teachers! After dinner the first round of mini workshops began. Every night of the event there were bonus mini workshops that attendees could sign up for in addition to the workshops included in the Inspired Event, students were creating in workshops til 11pm! During dinner two more of my esteemed teacher peers arrived, Claudine Helmuth and Christina Lazar-Schuler, as well as special event guest Heather Bailey. It was great to have a chance to chat with all of them before the event started in the morning. Friday morning the Inspired Workhop began! I started teaching my first class at 8am... and I was excited to get the show on the road. I was teaching a workhop using a great clear album from Page Frames, my students got to experiment with paint glazes, alcohol inks and glaze pens to create their finished project. Each workshop I taught was 3 hours long... the perfect amount of time in my opinion. Students had the opportunity to create, experiment and play without being rushed, the result was an environment in which creativity flourished! All my students blew me away with their creations! I haven't mentioned yet that somehow I managed to almost completely lose my voice by the time the workshops started, so my students got to listen to me with a much huskier, whispering voice than usual.. thanks guys for putting up with my wacky voice! Friday night was also fun in that I had time to visit with some friends in the industry attending the event, Ali Edwards, Wendy Smedley, and Cathy Zielske as well as meet Ali's sister Jessica, and their friend Paolo. Saturday Morning came and I did it all again! I taught 3 more amazing, fun 3 hour workshops to more great students! Saturday afternoon Donna surprised all the students and teachers with heartfelt thank yous and hugs in each classroom and roses for every student and teacher! After the end of classes we had some fun wrap- up comments from Bill and Donna and an auction for Autism Speaks. Each teacher at Inspired had made a canvas to post outside their classroom that shared their style and gave an indication of what the class was about, these canvases were the auction items for the night. I also had the chance to reconnect with a good friend from Nova Scotia, Paulette Sarsfield...... this gal rocks. I have taught for three years at an event in Canada each fall and Paulette has been a student there every year. I loved having some time to chat with her at Inspired. Paulette is such a generous soul, she is an incredible cook and I have drooled over some of the home cooked goodness she has posted on her blog, in particular some amazing shortbread cookies she is famous for. Paulette made a big box of cookies for me to take home as well as enough cookies for the whole class she was a part of she enjoy! Did I mention she also treated me to some Canadian coffee and cool coffee spoon carved from the apple tree wood on her apple farm in Canada... so good to have friends like her!
The event was finished off with big group photo out in front of the hotel taken by Paolo, then it was time for more visiting and mini workshops before we all headed homeward in the morning. In the morning we had a send off from Bill then I was off to the airport. I had the pleasure of sharing a cab with Claudine... she is so fun, and Laura another fun inspired student. We giggled and chatted all the way to the airport. good times. I am still smiling from the fun I had this weekend, thanks so much to Donna for inviting me to teach, and thanks to all the students who made the classes so inspirational to be a part of. I feel so lucky to have been a part of this Inspired Event.
Last night was lots of fun for Michael and I we attended a sold out book signing for Stephanie Meyer's new book The Host. Micheal is a big Fan, having read Twilight, New Moon, and Eclipse already, we were excited that Stephanie would be able to sign those books as well. The book signing was held at Marcos de Niza High School in Tempe, and there were 1000 people who had tickets..... only about 15 of them were male! which was fine with Michael! it was a total chick fest! You can kinda tell in the background of the photo of Michael trying to read all of his books at once that is is women for as far as the eye can see! For whatever reason more women than men read Stephanie's books, Michael says they don't know what they are missing and I would have to agree! Prior to signing books Stephanie talked to the crowd for about a half hour answering questions that the audience had submitted regarding her books as well as questions regarding what it is like to be a professional writer. Michael being a budding author himself was mesmerized by her talk. Much of what she said totally resonated with him and his quest to write and publish fiction of his own. One of the things she said was that if you find yourself wanting to read your storied over and over and curious about what your characters are going to do next you are probably writing something good so keep going ! Michael was totally motivated to get home and work on the book he has been writing after listening to what she had to say. I was glad he was pumped up because after the lecture ended we began our wait for our books to get signed. 
On the tickets we bought to the event a letter of the alphabet had been written, ours was the letter "U" so as you can imagine we had to wait until they called the letter 'U" to line up to get our books signed.(which was 2.5 hours later). Michael made use of the time by working the room, making friends and snapping a little picture of Stephanie while she was signing books.
I cracked up when I found this little picture on the camera of Michael with two college girls he met at the event... leave it to Michael! I thought he would get tired of waiting but he didn't. When we finally got up to the table for Stephanie to sign our books he thanked her and told her one day he hoped she would be attending one of his book signings.... love that boy. He thanked me over and over all the way out to the car, saying how totally worth the wait it was,and talking about how cool it would be to be an author someday. I would have to agree it was totally worth it , and I was glad to share the fun with him. 
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