Paint Party Friday and our lovely weekend away!!!

Hi Everyone,

 (I took this photo outside)

This week I have been working on this painting. I really pushed through with this one.

 (This photo was taken inside with the flash, quite a difference with the colours I thought)

 At the beginning I felt like it was going through a real ugly stage and painted over things a few times and came up with all sorts of different ideas of what to put with the tree. 

 In the end I decided on this pretty girl and I'm really glad I did as I feel like she works really well with the blossom tree.

  I used texture paste, tissue paper and some crackle medium in this to create the texture. (Although you can't really see the crackle, I learned through this painting that I need to do a thicker coat for it to work better, so I shall try this effect again.)

I've been a bit absent from Blogland this last couple of weeks. Last weekend Hubby and I went away for the weekend on our first weekend without kids in 8 years!!! It was a work conference which was held at a beautiful resort so after attending a couple of sessions we were left to our own devices and enjoyed a lovely party with great food the last night we were there!!! It was a great weekend so I thought I'd share some photos :0)

 The view from our private balcony :0)

 We enjoyed some quiet beers on the balcony

 One afternoon we went on a lovely walk and found these beautiful beetles on this rose!

All dressed up for the party :0)

Hope you guys are having a great week!! :0)