Rainy Day Coffee

Another rainy day, sitting at the coffee house in Berkeley, waiting for my Santa Barbara daughter to meet me so we can go scrapbook store shopping. Took BART to Berkeley and am really glad that I did. The rain is so bad that traffic looked ghastly from the train.

The scrap booking store is on 4th Street in Berkeley. The area has really undergone a change since I was last there (admittedly several years ago). There are lovely restaurants, great shops and revamped landscaping. The scrap booking store graciously stayed open a few minutes longer than usual (possibly seeing a large purchase looming!) and allowed SBD (Santa Barbara Daughter) to shop for lots of stuff for her paper addiction. After that we walked down the street and wandered into a toy store the likes of which are hardly ever seen any more. All kinds of goodies - marbles, kaleidoscopes, stick horses, block castles, mood rings and on and on and on. It was really fun to browse through both floors.

We toodled back up University in Smartypants (SBDs Smart Car convertible). As we passed Utrecht Art Supplies I mentioned the large rolls of watercolor paper available there. Smartypants pulled a U-turn, we found parking and went on another paper binge! SBD also purchased some gouache for me - which I haven't started using yet.

I plan to use the gouache on some ATCs. It handles similarly to oil paints when used full strength I have read and I am looking forward to that. Can't decide if I am going to use watercolor paper or get canvas paper. Any ideas out there in blogdom?