Wednesday Art

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you. 

Today I have a seaside journal page to share with you. I'll be linking up to Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

This journal page is once again from my Quebec travel journal. The beach is made with paints, inks and also some tiny torn pieces of an envelope. The river is painted as is the sky. Here's a photo of what I used for my inspiration.

    You can see some of the cloud cover hanging along the horizon line sky. We could never decide if it was just clouds, or clouds and land, so I made the horizon in my page a little bit questionable too. 

  The dog leash is gigantic, mainly because I wanted to remember the point that we had a beach walk with the dogs. The dogs were an afterthought, but I decided to add them in. They both remind me more of Maddie than Pete, but the colors work. I added a blip I cut out of a travel brochure, as well as adding  a stamped quote too.

   Miss Maddie had surgery yesterday to remove a very fast growing fatty lump in her back leg. It had to come off because it was starting to interfere with some bodily functions at that end of the body. Poor pup. She's having a tough year. The vet suggested instead of one of those lampshade headpieces I get her surgical suit so she won't keep licking her stitches. I went onto Amazon yesterday morning to order one, and it was here by the time I got up today.

     I was talking with my daughter when I was ordering it, and she convinced me to get the holiday design. 😏 I think it looks like PJs and hopefully Maddie will sleep all day. 

   That's all for me. Hope you are having or have a great middle of your week.

T Stands for a Day of Walking in Quebec

     Hi everyone. Happy  T Day once again over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog . This month is flying. When I went to schedule this post over this past weekend I was surprised to see we're already at the 18th of the month.

     Yes, I'm still sharing posts about my Quebec trip, but we are starting to get towards the end. I think I'll have 2 or 3 more Monday travel themed posts. Today's trip report is all about one day when we did a lot of walking.

     Here's the map again. We're still in the purple region (Upper Gaspe). See the small city of Sainte-Anne-des-Monts. Our cabin and the beach was just west (left) of there, near where the purple turns to the orange-brown color. The park I'll mention in today's post is just inland on the road that crosses the peninsula from Sainte-Anee-des-Monts.

    The plan for this day was to visit Gaspesie National Park, which is inland from the ocean just a short distance (around a 15 minute drive). That was one of the beautiful things about the Gaspe peninsula. You had the ocean and 4,000 foot (to around 1200 m) mountains close by. 

The foliage colors weren't too bad in the mountains either.

     However, we had one little snafu. Many park trails were not open to dogs. In the big scheme of things that was OK because neither of us were really up to climbing a mountain. 

However, there was a very nice dog friendly trail that went along a river and also ended up at a waterfall.

       Our two dogs have very different walking styles. Mr. Pete  walks with determination and passion. In his mind, that's what a walk is about, moving. On the other hand Miss Maddie thinks a walk is time for many good sniffs, and she meanders along.  When she isn't done with a sniff, she doesn't want to move. If you want to walk, and she doesn't it is hard to move her.

     But in many ways their walking style fits my husband and myself. I take Pete, because he and I like to move. My husband takes Maddie, because he likes to meander.

Here they come, pulling up the rear. Pete and I were waiting for them.

More cool tree roots and also a sign along the trail.

These mushrooms looked so shiny but they weren't  really as slimy like I expected them to be.

     Because we weren't hiking any mountains, we returned to our cabin by mid-afternoon. Across the street was the beach, and the tide was out so off we went for a beach walk.

     Ha ha. I love how you can see shadow me snapping a photo with me  phone .😏  Since we were inland a bit, I was curious about the river. Here's what I found on Wikipedia about the beach and town we were staying in:

"Cap Chat (Cape Cat) derives its name from a large rock formation on the cape shaped like a sitting cat and is the point where the Gulf of St. Lawrence narrows and becomes an estuary."

Once again I walked Pete and the hubby walked Maddie.

    Our last walk for the day was to this distillery that was down the street from our cabin. This is my ticket to T this week.

     We went in and had a tasting. The goal of this business was to produce alcohols that had tastes natural to the area like seaweed and mushroom vodka. Those didn't thrill me, but they did have some wonderful liquors. You can see the 3 bottles we bought before we left. I don't think the lemoncello was particularly native to Quebec, but you can't go wrong with a good kick of lemon sometimes. 

     The maple liquor on the right was not super sweet, and we decided it would make a nice kick when added to some fresh apple cider. The weekend my daughter and her husband visited at the end of October we had some yummy kicked up cider while we celebrated birthdays.

      After our day of walking we stayed in that evening, had a fire in the woodstove to take off the chill and made some pasta for dinner. ( And yes,  I did share this photo last week.)

     That's all for me this post. Have a super T day and week ahead.

Weekend Chatter

 Hi everyone. Happy second half of the weekend to you. 

     Let me start today's post with a journal page for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     I started my page with a stencil and some white paint. Once the paint dried I rubbed 2 shades of blue ink over the stenciled image. Then I did some layering. I save a lot of packaging, and I had a piece that had some seashells around the edge. I glued  that piece down on my stenciled page. However, there was some writing  in the middle of that recycled seashell page that I didn't want. To cover that up I used the same stencil, white paint and a cut to size piece of blue paper. Once that dried I added that to my page to cover up the unwanted area.

     I now had too much dark blue for the seashell recycled piece to stand out, so on my painted and inked parts I rubbed a light coat of gesso over them using a scrunched up paper towel. 

     Once that dried, I outlined the sheets of paper. I added a blank postcard and stamped a couple of quotes on that postcard using an old set of Technique Tuesday clear stamps. On some green paper I drew and fussy cut some seaweed. Then I added an assortment of pre-printed punch out images as well as adding an old postage stamp from my stash.

     I also have some photos starting with my pretty decent brussel sprout crop that I harvested last week. This first photo is the top of the plant which is just a giant blossomed sprout.

      You might have seen the photos I posted a couple of Fridays ago of a huge flock of turkeys in my yard. They've been back again several times last week. And this time my windows don't have doggy nose slime all over them because on the day I took these photos, the dogs were in afternoon nap mode. 😏

     My project last week (that I'm finally doing even though I bought the paint months ago) is painting some shelves in my bathroom that needed a little freshening up.

       I also took a road trip one day out to King Arthur flour's home in Norwich, Vermont. At their baker's store I picked up a few items for some holiday baking and was very excited when I got to the cash register and the cashier told me they were having 15% off your total order. ❤

     And finally I had a load of stone delivered for an on-going outdoor project which I'll share another time.  Bet you can guess what I've been doing this weekend (at least for a little bit).

I am also linking this post up to GIllena's Sunday Smiles. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Friday Art from my Quebec Journal

      Hi everyone. Happy Friday. It's almost the weekend, and I hope yours will be a good one. Today I have a few pages from my Quebec travel journal to share. My first view is for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'll also be linking  this post to  Nicole's  Friday Face Off   as well as to  Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

    The boat image is a postcard I picked up. I also used an embossed background, some die cut netting and a die cut anchor. The bend on the top right corner of my page is because it wasn't 100% flat.

   My next couple of pages are ones I drew and painted. Both of these are my take on some photos/views I shared  in my past  Monday post (which is here if you want to check it out: T Stands for More of Quebec Part 5.).

    This next page is made with a combination of a few items. I started by cutting this cabin view out of a sheet of paper. Then I used a set of tree dies to cut out some trees. I used those to fill in the front. I painted the river and then drew in and painted the mountains and the tiny bit of sky. 

      And for my final view, I need a face (or 3) to link up to Nicole's Friday Face Off. I know I've shared this photo recently, but I printed off  a copy to make a journal page out of. 

Have a super start to the weekend.

A Tag for Thursday

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. Today I want to share a tag I made for Valerie's Anything Goes challenge over at Tag Tuesday.

     The other day I was going through my stencil bin and came across a few of the old brass stencils. I don't know if you remember them, but they were meant to be used under a light box with a probe like tool or a needle, depending if you wanted an embossed design or a punched design.

      I decided to see if I could get any design from my brass stencils, and if not, I was going to pass them along to someone who may want them. First I tried using one in my die cutting machine to see if I could get an embossed image, but the minute embossing that happened basically meant that wasn't going to work. Then I decided to try some stencil paste, and guess what? That worked.  I was able to get even the smaller openings to show up. I then stenciled this quilt look design a few times on some colored background papers.

     And if you try this for the first time, I just recommend you was your brass stencils under the faucet because if the stencil paste dries in any of the little openings, your stencil won't work next time.

     The images have since dried, and Valerie asked for tags with the theme of anything goes, so I decided to use one of my stenciled pieces on a tag. 

     I stamped this small alphabet image several times in light pink ink; then I took my stenciled image and cut it out of the part of the sheet of paper where I had stenciled it. I wanted to amp up the color a bit (since the stencil paste was pale pink), so I rubbed some brighter pink pigment ink over it and dried it.

    I outlined the edge of my tag with black ink, outlined parts of the stenciled image with a Sharpie, and stamped my quote in black ink. Then I also added a small half pearl to my tag. I also added some white paper lace trim along the bottom.

   And yesterday I shared the ring around the moon, today I'll show you last night's moon and a view in my backyard just before it was pitch dark.

Have a great day or rest of your day.

    

     

Lighthouse by the Sea

    Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. It's already the 13th of the month. I like how November is usually a pretty quiet month before the holidays and real winter begins, but I really don't want it to go this fast.  What can you do since time keeps its own schedule? Maybe it could slow down just a bit though. 😏

     Today I have another journal page for Wendy's On, In or By the Sea challenge at Art Journal Journey. This is another page from my Quebec  travel journal. The rain I stamped on the page is because during our visit to a couple of light houses  we were getting some light rain.

     My page is inked with grey. Then I stamped the  map images on the 2 corners. I hope you didn't notice that I had to flip the image upside down to use in the top left corner-grin. (Of course, if you didn't notice, now you do, right?  😏)  The rain, seagulls and quote are all made with some assorted rubber stamps. I painted the area around the base of the lighthouse green.  The porthole and the netting are both punch outs, and the light house is fussy cut out of paper and then colored red to match many of the light houses I saw in Quebec. 

     The other night we had a very cool ring around the moon before some light rain moved in, and when I was out with dogs I snapped a couple of photos on my phone.

It's pretty amazing how well my phone takes night photos. These are untouched with any editing software.

That's all for me today. I hope yours is going or goes well.