Since this is my first paid tier tutorial post, let’s be gentle.

Colouring pages + tips + a whopping almost 4 minute video. YA!

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The garden is a bit late in flowering. A late spring followed by cloudy smoky skies from wildfires. However, COSMOS!

Oh you cheerful frilly flower, you! My visual journal took a few errors. So if you are ever feeling like you can’t draw, you make mistakes, and you’ve wasted your time… that’s basically me all week.

First mistake: White blah background. I was going to put words but I freaked out, thinking I would mess it up so I left it white. Snore.

I know. It’s FINE. It’s okay. Painted it a muddy beige. That was mistake 2.

The flowers didn’t pop so I painted others and literally taped them on top. But I liked the light pinky peach cosmos, so ripped them off, cut out the painting and pasted it onto a blue painted background. It felt like the world before Adobe and layers.

I wasn’t going to tell you all my mistakes because I want to seem perfect to you, dear Substacker. But spoiler alert: Not perfect. However, the time lapse video makes me look wildly amazing. This is under a minute but it took an evening of painting and drying and redoing. Also omitted that beige fiasco.

I’m starting to add tutorials to the Paid tiers. Imagine the tutorials as a lifelong course called Everything Janice Knows About Art, Writing, and Business. But that doesn’t REALLY roll off the tongue. So I’ll add wisdom as I go.

Consider being a paid subscriber. You’ll get tutorials, colouring pages, be able to participate in chats, and… well it’s early days, but more stuff, including street cred and my devotion. Thanks to Bekki who was my first paid subscriber. AND to fellow Paris author Lisa Anselmo who was my first subscriber ever.

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Okay, back to you and me. Went to a Taco and Cheesecake festival last week.

Drank a vodka sample from this, the cutest cup ever:

And came home to put flowers in it. This time geraniums.

How cute are these tiny little arrangements? My friend Sharon Y (to whom I dedicated A Paris Year) said she wanted to miniaturize herself to sit at a small table that had these as the display. Agreed!

Nature walk nearby yielded this fun Pokeweed, which I discovered is toxic to the touch. I discovered this too late.

But I love the look. Dainty flowers. Bulbous pumpkin-like bits. Pink stems that pair well with the green leaves. Almost as if it knows colour wheel theory.

Now I’m off to figure out paid tier stuff. Wish me luck and hope to see you there.

-Janice

PS If this felt like a letter from an old friend, you’d probably like a real one. Join the Cottage Letters Mail Club and I’ll send one to your mailbox every month.

This was the letter for July:

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Oh and also, I’m giving this Substack thing a solid go, and I’d love to have you along. Subscribe. It’s free… but if you want to help support my work and get tutorials, you can do that, too.

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I suppose I should have started this whole weekly visual diary project at the beginning of January. After all, most of my projects start in January (read ALL THREE Paris books for this), but it took seven months of hunting and gathering art supplies I don’t need, fretting, and a LOT of Fudgesicles eaten nervously before I just got to it already.

Look at all this time lapsed gorgeousness:

One feels very good at a thing when they slap on the time lapse. (That’s Harry Potter playing in the background.) In reality, I started, painted all the wet stuff, then went to a Taco & Cheesecake Festival while it was drying. Returned to finish.

Yield:

• 14 hours but only about 1 hour of actual painting

• 1 taco

• 1 black cherry cheesecake

• 1 margarita

• 1 tiny vodka sampler

• 1 virgin Bellini

• 1 nap

Taco & Cheesecake Festival Highlights:

The cheesecake was a Meh… 4 out of 10. Pretty but can’t dance.

Sour Key Island Margarita. I just made that up. You can use it.

The tiniest vodka sampler of all time. It was so cute I kept the cup for a tiny bouquet of tiny flower from my garden. Speaking of, THIS suddenly got 9000 views:

I found a small glass cup in the FREE box at the thrift store so I brought it home and made a bouquet of flowers from the garden… including that “weed” Queen Anne’s Lace. So impressive as a member of a bouquet. It’s never going to win over the zinneas but it plays it’s secondary “filler” role well. I mean, look at what I found…

Stunning against that pinky backdrop… a hue I found later on this dress:

This photo seems to say so much about summer. These are my friends and neighbours.

An excellent day of too much junk food. It was delightful.

See you later…

Janice

If this felt like a letter from an old friend, you’d probably like a real one. Join the Cottage Letters Mail Club and I’ll send one to your mailbox every month.

This was the letter for July:

Join the Mail Club

Oh and also, I’m giving this Substack thing a solid go, and I’d love to have you along. Subscribe. It’s free… but if you want to help support my work, you can do that, too.

Subscribe now