More Autumn Art

      Hi everyone. Happy weekend. I have a busy one with a niece's baby shower tomorrow, and my daughter and son-in-law are coming today. The son-in-law is going to help the hubby with a project for me 😏 which I will share more of another day.  Then we're all off to the shower tomorrow. But in between all of this, we're celebrating birthdays tonight since my husband and daughter both have birthdays this upcoming week. 

      Today I have some autumn views for you, first off are 2  pages for Alison's challenge at Art Journal Journey. The theme is owls today.

     This first page started with some printed paper that I attached to a page that I had inked in yellow and orange. The owl and the little moon are stamped and fussy cut. On the bottom of the page I made a border starting with some washi tape that I covered with  some rustic trim. I then used  a white pen to define this border,  and I also added a couple of paper gears that don't look like paper. ❤Finally I used 2 rubber stamp quotes to finish off my page.

     This other owl page is a bit different but still had a scrap paper and trim background. After the glue dried I inked the background brown to pull all the pieces together. I then added a layered paper frame, a chipboard gear which is painted and inked, a small craft metal screw top, a few small die cut leaves, and a paper image of an old metal bar with bolts as well as the light bulbs. I also added some bronze colored metallic paper trim. 

     This owl is made of paper clay using a mold. When it dried I  painted, inked and used a pen to color it in. I'm calling him a new species called Autumnal papersonii. Grin. Finally I used a very old Hero Arts word to finish off my page.

     And here's a few more Autumn photos, starting with these red oak leaves. I want to be able to recreate their color and textures on  a page because it's interesting and beautiful too.

     

Too bad for tree shadows, but this skeleton leaf is really interesting.

Some bare trees already.

The raking waiting for me in the backyard

and on the back deck

Popping milkweed

And passed purple asters

Have a nice weekend and start to the new week.

Fairy Houses

     Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week is winding down. Hope you've had a good one. I've spent mine doing a lot of cleaning, both outside and inside. Not a very exciting way to spend my time, but it's good to have it done except that the leaves have just decided to fall en mass off the trees in the last day so now raking awakes me-grin. 😏

     A few weeks back I met some friends at my local botanical garden. It was the Friday right before their final weekend and right before they close until next May. For their final weekend, the garden always has a fairy house festival with lots of scheduled activities. I've never been to the actual weekend, but on that Friday we visited, the fairy house competitors were setting up their displays.

     Some of these are quite clever, and I thought I'd share a few. I also learned how hard it is to take photos because most of these displays were 1) on the ground and 2) not more than a foot (24 cm) tall.

     These first 3 are from the fairy tale of the 3 little pigs. 

Then we have red Robin Hood.

I'm not sure about this one but it's a fun little garden.

Someone made a Peter Pan scene.

Another did Rapunzel.

It's hard to see much of the details on this next one, but it had a cool multistory  construction.

And my final one was even back lit and set within a removed stone from a pretty granite wall.

And here's the tree man that's rather hard to see in the above photo.

That's all for me. I'll be linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break and if she's back with Friday Face Off, I'll also be linking up to Nicole's blog. 

Have a super weekend.

Autumn Themed

      Hi everyone. Happy mid-week. Another week is flying by, isn't it? It's supposed to cool off here tomorrow, but our weather has been warm and lovely the last several days. I needed this spell of nice weather to get my garden chores wrapped up, except for raking,  but that will have to wait since I still have a lot of leaves left to come down. 😏

     I'll start my post with another page for Alison's Autumn Colors and Inspiration challenge at Art Journal Journey.  Unfortunately acetate never photographs very well (for me) and the acetate sunflower looks a little weird on the right hand side. 

     To make my page I layered paper scraps, added the acetate sunflower which is a left over back from my scrapbooking days. The dried seed pods are a sticker. I die cut the black vine at the bottom, added a strip of velvet trim and  some plastic half pearls. The number 3 is a paper scrap, and I used a chipboard ring which I marked with a black Sharpie around it. 

     I also have a tag for Pinky's Spooky Vibes challenge at Tag Tuesday This one is definitely spookier than my last one.

     I inked my tag with grey ink, and then I used an older TH die to die cut the claw marks. Since they cut right through he paper, I backed them up with some red paper, which still wasn't "bloody" enough. To fix that I painted in some red paint after I used a black Sharpie along the edges. Then I used an older TH stamp set, stamped the scary skeleton face and also the quote.

     I'll end my post with some autumn views. The first 2 are from an orchard we stopped at to get a bottle of their apple cider, which is far less sweet and superior to the one we bought at the grocery store. 😏 The trees on the left caught my eye because  not only do they have pretty colors but they have the perfect "tree" shape.

     Before the trip to the orchard, we'd gone by the mother-in-law's house to take out the dock. I walked in with the dogs and the views of the sun coming through the trees were pretty.

     It doesn't take too long to take the dock out if you have some extra hands helping, which we did.

     The water is down this fall. Every few years they let it drop not only for dam repairs but also so people can do any shoreline fixes.  Pete thought being able to walk up to his ankles in water was very very fun because usually he has to start swimming immediately off the last step. But then the stairs came out. I think he was hoping I could fix that problem for him. Poor Pete. 

Maddie decided to take a nap in the process. It stinks when you can't see.

     That's enough for me. Have a great rest of your day!

T Stands for My Quebec Trip Part 3-Perce

     Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. I back today for T Day over at Bleubeard's and Eizabeth's blog , and I'm also back with more of last month's trip to Quebec. Today instead of taking you on a driving route, we are visiting one town called Perce. 

     For today's  map I "borrowed" this one from a blog  called The Travels of BBQ Boy and Spanky which I found on an internet search. I like this map because the added details of the Gaspe Peninsula give you a more specific locations. HOWEVER we did not have a Carleton car crash nor did we follow this exact route (but the route on the far right and top of the map is how we traveled). We visited some of the other places they marked on the map which I'll share in future posts. But for this post, most importantly you can get a good idea where Perce is from its label on this map.

     The first thing Perce is known for is this very large and very cool rock.

     There is also an island you can visit with a boat tour from Perce called Ile Bonaventure, but for several reasons we didn't manage to get there. The biggest reason is we couldn't find a way to get boat tickets since the park center was closed and gated off for construction.  The 2 ticket selling booths along the street were both empty. I'm guessing that's because it was Wednesday in late September, and there were only a few tourists around. Also it was overcast, cool and while we walked around town it started to drizzle.

    Bonaventure Island would have been great to visit, and I was a little disappointed not to see any gannets (a type of seabird) except for all the "fake" ones in the windows of gift shops in Perce. I'm not sure North America's largest Gannet colony would still be active at this time of year since nesting was over, but I would have enjoyed the boat trip and a walk on the island. (However, the next day I saw a lot of gannets which made up for this disappointment. 😀 More about that another time.)

     Instead the hubby and I had a nice little walk around town, visited a few shops that were open, and were tourists. The dogs took one of their many daily naps in the car because it was definitely cool enough to leave them there with some partially open windows.

I had to laugh at the giant lobster statue. I bet you could have made a whole lot of lobster rolls from this guy. 😏

The other thing we did while in Perce was find this great little place for lunch.

    I'll get to the food in a moment, but on the side of the building they had some fun pieces of "art". This first one reminded me a lot of my brother-in-law the chef.  I wonder if he dances along with the giant mixer when he's at work. Hee-hee.

     Lunch was delicious. I had this mini spinach quiche.

And the hubby had a Croque Monsieur (which is like a ham and grilled cheese sandwich). 

     Here's our drinks. I had water, and the hubby had an orange San Pellegrino.  The bakery section looked amazing also. I noticed they had coffee eclairs. The last time I saw (and had) a coffee eclair was years ago in Paris, so I couldn't resist having another one.  The hubby had a cookie, and I think it was a sugar cookie but I don't actually remember since I was so busy enjoying my eclair before my quiche arrived. (My quiche had to be heated up, and so why wait to have dessert until after  lunch, right?) 😏

That photo is my ticket to T and also the end of my post. 

Have a great T day and week ahead.

(And just an FYI: if you're really interested in my trip posts and you missed the one from this past Saturday about the fossil fish at Miguasha National Park, here's the link: Miguasha National Park . If you're not, that's OK too.)