Watercolor Painting: Worth Avenue in Palm Beach

Want an original way to remember your vacation? Make a Waterlogue "watercolor painting" of your best vacation picture, save it, print it and then hang it on the wall. 

Waterlogue is an iPhone and iPad app that quickly (and I mean in one minute or less) converts your photo into a watercolor painting that you can save and print.

And when I say an original way to remember your vacation, I really mean original.  No other painting will look quite like yours because the artwork is a computer rendering based on your original photograph. Plus there are stylized settings like "Mechanical" or "Vibrant" to make your watercolor images fit your aesthetic. I am in love with this app and could auto-magically turn my photographs into artwork all-day-long.  I know that this must have real watercolor artists reeling, but I can't help it. I love how my photos look as paintings and I will never have the skills to convert them myself with paint and a brush.

The location? Beautiful Worth Avenue with its palm trees and gorgeous shops in Palm Beach, Florida. We came here for lunch and an afternoon of window shopping and bougainvillea admiring. What a day.

Beautiful Palm Beach Courtyards can Spark Your Imagination

This is one of the charming walkways between the shops on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. It has a water element and leads to a courtyard rimmed with small shops.  Once you walk down this path and admire the plantings and trailing bougainvillea (raspberry pink blooms on strong craggy vines), you see that the courtyard has walkways that attach to other courtyards. 

Some courtyards connect one-after-another, while some walkways lead to a single hidden gem. It is really fun and relaxing to explore each and every path.

Can't you see a romantic movie set in the shops and courtyards of this beautiful and exclusive area? Use your imagination and consider what kind of characters you'd like to see here.

Art & Bougainvillea

Are you ready for a little history of Palm Beach?  I set out to take a photograph of my favorite flowering vine, Bougainvillea and I found a bit of history along the way.  First, take a look at this spectacular vine blooming in deep magenta against the bright blue sky.  Fabulous!

But I was intrigued with the mosaic tile artwork as well.  I did some research and discovered that this facade (on Peruvian street) tells the story of the shipwreck of the Spanish vessel, Providenica.  The ship was bound for Spain carrying 20,000 coconuts harvested in Trinadad.  You can read all about the ship, the mystery surrounding the shipwreck and the planting of the coconut palms here. 

So many beautiful palm trees (and the fact that the name Palm City was already taken!) made it easy for the pioneers to name the city...Palm Beach, of course!

Dreaming of Europe

I wonder who lives here...behind this lovely pale blue door. Can you imagine someone riding up on a bicycle with a sack of groceries, fumbling with the lock & key and then brushing through the doorway to fix themselves an icy drink. Do you think they sometimes get bougainvillea petals in their hair? 

 This looks like picture-perfect France to me, but I actually took this photograph on Via Mizner Lane in Palm Beach. Neat, huh?  

The world is not so big after all.