Visiting with my sister-in-law for a long weekend. Neither of us can get to Paris in person any time soon, so we decided to plan a Paris Staycation. I found a great playlist on Spotify called Paris Cafe Lounge which has instantly transported us to a cozy Paris cafe.
She bought us each the coolest book called “CitySketch Paris” with nearly 100 creative prompts for sketching the city.
I’ve found several French bakeries in the vicinity so that we can pick up some pretty desserts like macarons, tarts, croissants, and eclairs to paint/photograph before we eat them. She has some really pretty vintage China for our dessert finds.
i found this great blog with loads of fun ideas for a Paris staycation. So we will be virtually visiting art museums and Claude Monet’s home. The blogger shared a recipe for crepes. But we’ve decided to buy some pre-made crepes and add our own fruit, ice cream and chocolate drizzle. We are cutting right to the good stuff. 😜 On our grocery list is some premium French hot chocolate. And of course there’s always good strong French Roast coffee to fuel us in this adventure!
I brought my watercolors and gouache paints and have been busy tonight creating a special palette for our Paris Staycation. I’ve named it My Paris Staycation, but in French: Mon Sejour Parisienne. Ooh La La!
The palette has two of my favorite colors, pink and turquoise, but in a more updated grayed down tone. I found a photo on Pinterest, loaded it into my Procreate iPad app and used the color picker to select my colors. See the photo below (the colors that don’t work got a slash thru them):
My plan is to paint various Paris related objects separately in gouache to digitize and create patterns to upload to Society6 for my art on all sorts of things like wall art, furniture, tech and office goods, wallpaper, etc and Spoonflower for fabric and all sorts of soft goods.
Next up is making a list of what to paint. It needs to be a theme, such French pastry, French fashion, Paris sites like the Louvre, Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc. Fortunately, our new book is divided into themed sections to make narrowing our choices much easier.
She is creating a Mon Sejour Parisienne private Pinterest board that we can both access with some great ideas like the 10 prettiest streets in Paris, where to go on your first visit to Paris, etc.
And when we just want to vegge out, we have lots of books and magazines with a French theme. Our favorite is Victoria Magazine and Georgianna Lane’s gorgeous photographic trip through Paris, titled “Paris in Bloom.”
Now its 1:30 am (we got a good nap earlier 😉), so it’s going to be the Friends episode where Phoebe tries to teach Joey French it’s hilarious and a great way to end the first half day of our staycation.
So follow along with us on our “Mon Sejour Parisienne.” I’ll be posting some of my art here and on Instagram and Facebook. Links to both are at the bottom of my website home page.