Two weeks ago I traveled to Italy with my Internet friends turned real life friends, Elsie, Emma and Sherry. We started dreaming about this trip when we were together last January and when it finally arrived it felt a little surreal! We stayed in Florence for four nights and took the train to Venice for one day. (This was our hotel and I would absolutely recommend.) Our main goal was to see some art. We spent time in both the Uffizi Gallery and the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. It was so wild and inspiring to go from Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to Magritte’s Empire of Light. We had tour guides for both galleries and it was worth it; I learned so much.

Of course, we all brought watercolor journals along for the ride. Once again, I loved painting things I saw and little details I noticed.

Since I recently shared a long newsletter about my other travel journal, I wanted to try something different for this one. I recorded a video walk-through where I show you all the pages and then share my process of watercolor painting a page from start to finish (it’s a bit sped up and narrated).

This is my first venture into the land of youtube and I decided to jump in with both feet. I started a channel called @fromthearthouse, filmed an intro and outro and paid $30 to license some calm but upbeat piano music. Will I be the Next Big YouTube Star? Nope! But it was really fun to play with a new medium. If you’d like to watch, my first video is just over 14 minutes and available right here.

And if you’re like “no thanks!” to video, I get it! I have included my inspiration photos and their painted pages below so you can take a look.