✨🔋The one tool you need to recharge, found everywhere! 🌿

Hello there, you gorgeousness!

The year debrief has been having some powerful effects on me lately and I’ve been savoring back details, pictures, imagery and feelings of a trip to Italy that happened last summer.

So I decided to illustrate the juiciness. 🇮🇹✨

But before I get to it –  the illustration – some pictures of what has inspired me to illustrate:

The Iris Garden in Florence, Italy

To say I was dazzled with the whole place  is an understatement.

ALSO….. to say this whole scenario can’t be found everywhere – not just in Italy – is also an understatement.

I’ll explain….

Back in May 2018 when I went on this juicy trip to Rome and Florence, I was truly dazzled with everything I encountered. But now looking back at my pictures, specifically of that touristy trip to the Iris Garden, I noticed…..

All I wanted was nature.🌿

All I wanted was to stay connected with the earth, the smells of the flowers, the freshness of the ground, and the singing of the birds.

Oh, too cliche for the cool people?! Too sticky?

Welp, it’s true.
And that is the beauty of it all. ✨

When we are feeling tired, drained, exhausted there is NOTHING like reconnecting with nature in wherever part of the world we are.

Sure thing, there in Florence, I was surrounded by culture, art, music  – the way I wanted! –  yet, that day all I needed was to dig my fingers into the ground, smell the roses {literally}, feel the fresh air in my face and hear birds chirping.

THANKFULLY we can have that kind of nature-connection anywhere in the world.

Even in the desert, or in wide open fields.

So my love, brace yourself for the groundbreaking-energy-filling touches of Italian nature of the pictures that follow:

{which has the exact same healing properties as any other nature, in any other country! << did I say that enough? 😀 }

First of all, the entrance:

Then this gorgeous mosaic sign {in case I don’t know where I am, ya know? 😎}

And continuing with the show- stoping pieces-connecting-together-mosaic:

There is a word coming up 😉

Almost…..

Get it? Get it? 😀

{Again, in case you don’t know where you are, this big gorgeous mosaic sign will give you a clue 🗺🇮🇹}

And then of course, some specific-to-the-region views:

Those spiky, skinny trees {at the very end of the balcony in the pic below} just scream Italian-and-Its-Greek-influences to me 😍

And now… for the energy-restoring properties I was talking about:

Then, after  walking around the IRIS Garden, taking pictures of POPPIES, what’s a girl to do?

Through herself in a ROSE BUSH and take selfies, of course! 😀

And that my dear, is the picture I chose for my Paint Party Friday today.

Here’s the beginning stages of my very first self-portrait  – the sketch:

Then transferring to watercolor paper:

Adding color:

Isn’t wet pain so yummy? 😍

All complete:

One more, just because…. a close up, ya know? 😀

So, yeah, I’d say my very first self-portrait attempt is SO true to its original picture – even the hair color is identical #not 😁

Regardless, my walk through Florence’s Iris Garden was so insightful to realize that…..

everything we need to recharge and reconnect is, after all, found anywhere we go, it’s available to us at any given time — nature 🌷🌹🌸🌿🌳✨

Now, off to make this weekend a really good recharging one!

Talk to you soon 👋🏼

Smooches,