The End of February

  Hi everyone. Happy Friday. It's just about the  last day of the month. For  such a wintery month it definitely flew by for me. That is a surprise because I have reached the point where I have had enough of winter, and usually when I get to that point, it feels like time has stopped. Although March doesn't look like it is going to start off very spring-like, I hope that the lion is exhausted and the lamb follows quickly.  I'm basing comment that on the cliche, that March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.

   Today I am joining Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break and also Nicole for her Friday Face Off.

  Since it's the end of February I thought I'd wrap up  my travel journal to Nova Scotia. There's a lot of faces in this post too.  In fact, I've focused on pages with  faces for this post.

   On the right (above) you can see glasses and eyes, a sort of face, stamped on some acetate. It's on the left in this next photo as the acetate gets flipped over.

    There's another partial face on the right on this spread above. Poor Pete. Twice on the trip  alarms went off, and they upset him.

    There's a face on the Louisbourg  postcard on the right. The left is my take on a bunch of rainbows we saw while driving that day.

And ha ha, here's some chicken faces. I had had chicken tenders for dinner at Costco that night. 

    It was September when we traveled. Apple season. Could we find a stand to buy some? Nope. Of course we probably just didn't know where they were, but we did find some at a Grocery store. I fussy cut these apples out of a sheet of paper and added a face to one of them.  And on the left you can see a grumpy old face, a moon, that I cut out of some tissue paper.

    I love the Mi'kmaq spirit crow above.  It's a cool sticker I found on the trip. And finally, below, a Tim Holtz stamped image of a dog, which was how Maddie looked at that moment. She ended up sick to her stomach, and it was my fault because I ignored her "I need to go out" look.  She ended up sitting  in the car for a little longer than needed and stressed out, and that caused her to get an upset tummy.

   That's all for me today. Have a great rest of your Friday, rest of the month, and  a great start to the weekend. 

Just Layering

    Hi everyone.  Happy Thursday to you. February is wrapping up quickly so today I want to share my last page for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's February challenge at Art Journal Journey. Her challenge, as you probably know (if you stop by AJJ) is Anything, Anywhere, Anytime with Anyone.

   Thank you Elizabeth for hosting this month. You did a fabulous job, and I think so far you've published  a page a day. I'm impressed. I hope you'll participate more in AJJ as the year goes on. 

   Thank you everyone who have joined in also. There's still a couple of days to go before the month ends so if you're thinking about joining in, now is the time. 😉

   My page today is full of lots of anythings. 

   I'm not sure what I think of this page, mainly because it's so muted color wise, but I like the arrangement of my bits and pieces. It all started with this tag that I found in my stash. I added the outline and stamped the hearts, and I wanted something other than red so I used dark blue ink. I also stamped  the big pink heart. I stamped it on some painted paper, and then I fussy cut it.  (It's from a very old Stampington cube rubber stamp.) From there I added some things off my work table that include a large piece of door screen, a scrap of paper, a small crochet style flower and some fake postage stamps.

   My page still needed something to hold it all together, so I die cut the daisy chains, colored them in and then added them. They did the trick and made the other pieces feel like they weren't going to float off the page.

   I guess you'd say this is a true junk journal style page. 

  And not bore or depress anyone with more snow photos, but this first photo is from my yard. I was trying to figure out where to dump the newest batch of snow when I shoveled. In this photo you can see my shoveled pile from previous storms is already at deck height.

   This last photo makes me realize my shoveling issues were nothing. I trimmed down the person in this photo, but a friend sent me this. This is what her sister saw when she opened the garage door. This scene is in Providence, Rhode Island where they got an official 41 inches/ 104 cm of snow on Monday.  Yes,this is just one snowfall. 

   Yup, it's time for some warm weather and spring. 😉

T Stands for Winter's Return-AUGH!

   Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. And hello to everyone who stops by for T Day from my link over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog .

   So what's new with me? Not much. Last week I did some spring cleaning which is not exciting but which always feels good to get done.  I cleaned some kitchen  cabinets, dusted the cobwebs away from the exposed beams, washed blankets, etc. Of course there are still about 50 other cleaning projects which may or may not get done, depending on how much longer there's still snow on the ground and how many blue sky days we get. The long term forecast for this week (right now) doesn't look very spring-like so I may be inside and may be doing more little projects. 😉 Or maybe I'll be outside shoveling. 😣

    For much of last week we had 40 degrees F/ 4-5 degrees C temperatures  and blue skies. It was great.

   One day I met up with a couple of friends, and we went for a 4.3 mile / 6.9 km walk.  At one point we saw 6 red tailed hawks circling together and calling out to each other.    This is the best photo I could get because I only had my phone on me. But look at that blue sky! ❤

   It was a fantastic walk,  and I enjoyed being in the sun.

  As you can see walking at home is difficult lately because my road went from snow/ice covered to this mud. (And this isn't even mud season mud yet.) Now with all the new snow, the road is covered with  a layer of snow again. 

   I can't even look at this any more.  

  I took this photo Saturday morning before we did any snow removal because we had a few new inches last Friday night.  And now as I write this post on Monday we're at the end of another  storm. 😩😭  We've been having an old fashion nor'-easter;  i.e. snow and strong winds to start the week. I know the city 2 towns south of my house was in the blizzard zone, so it could have been that at my house, but maybe not. I'm not certain. I hope if you're in the blizzard belt you stay safe and warm. I saw on the news some of the snow totals from southern New England. They certainly got hit big time. 

  I have 2 photos today for T. The first one was taken after my walk when I went out to lunch with my friends.

   We ate at the golf course restaurant on Pease (a former US air Force base in the area), and they make the best pastrami sandwiches, so I had one with their homemade chips and water for my drink.

   One other thing I did last week was make some sourdough muffins. You don't let these rise like you would bread, but you do add a cup of sourdough discard. Then you can add whatever you'd like to them. I added chopped dates, orange rind and the juice of that orange. They were not only tasty but light and fluffy too.   This photo shows my lunch when I was home one day.I just had to try one of the muffins-grin. In the glass is a coffee protein shake.

   If anyone wants the recipe let me know in the comments and I'll add it to next week's T Day post.

  That's all for me. I hope everyone has a great T day and week ahead. 

   

Sunday in the Art Room-From the Archives

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope your weekend is going well.

   Today I am joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles and also Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room, also known as SITAR.

  Last Sunday I showed you a few travel journal covers. Besides travel journals, I make other books that tell stories.  I  love making books and telling stories.❤ I'll try not to bore you with too many journals I've made, but I've gotten inspired to pull out some old ones.

  Lately I've been working with the more usual paper journals. However, I do occasionally get the urge to sew and make cloth books. I like the challenge of making cloth books because they aren't quite so straight forward as a standard paper book. 

   For one thing most cloth isn't very rigid so you either have to fix the cloth to be more rigid or you need to attach 2 pieces of cloth to make a front side  a back side. If you are going to attached 2 pieces of fabric together to make a front and back, you have to remember that if you sew on  one side, those stitches will show up on the back side unless you connect the front and back pieces after you have finished each side. Plus you need to decide how rigid you want your pages, and if you want some rigidity, you need to decide what to add between the front and back fabric pieces  (like interfacing, cardboard, wood) to create that rigidity. 

   And then you need to decide how you want to bind your pages together. That's a whole other thought process but I won't bore you with that today.

  Last week I dug out a couple of my cloth journals. I decided to focus this post on one of them. I wish I could actually remember when I made this journal, but I know it's been at least (if not longer) 15 years. It's one of my early books. I can tell by how some of the pages are decorated. My style has changed and (hopefully) improved; I was still in the load the page with things stage when I made this. 

  I still like most of this book. So here you go. Here's some pages from my magical moon circus book.

I'm not super crazy about the front cover, but I still really like the ruffles I sewed and added along the binding.

This (above) page is my favorite. I don't know if it was my favorite back when I made the book. The moon face was stamped and then painted.

     I made little triangular pockets and put some paper ephemera into them.

    It bugs me that the kitty's backside is hanging off the moon. But I love the moon. And I like the kitty too. The bottom of the moon is blue cloth and the top is a piece of acetate. In between I stuffed some fun angel hair fibers. I could have fixed it by making the moon wider. But I shouldn't second guess myself. Journals are ways to capture where you are at a particular time, and I'm impressed with myself that I used  so many  kinds of media.  And use them well together for the most part too. 

    There's probably too many little metal discs on this above page, but when I made the dancing lady I wanted the page to jingle like a belly dancer does when she dances. This page does jingle. So maybe the discs are OK.

 I really like this stencil/painted back cover.

     Here's a couple more pages. The last 2 photos show the veil and then the veil lifted. Which,if you read quote, is why I created a veil.

   I hope you enjoyed the views. Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Friday

   Hi everyone. Another week is flying by. I've spent a good chunk of mine doing some spring cleaning. Not exciting at all, but it always feels good once it's done. I hope yours has gone well.

  Today I am joining Nicole for her  Friday Face Off and also Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break . I'll also be joining Elizabeth over at Art Journal Journey. I thought I would share some more photos of some pages from my latest trip journal (from last fall's trip to Nova Scotia) because there are lots of faces here. 

   I had a park map I wanted to include, but it was way too large for the size of the journal, so I folded it over and added some bits to it. Those included some stamped and colored glasses, a die cut beaver and a die cut leaf as well as the backing of a collectible pin. (My husband collects pins from places we travel.)

    On the left side of this next spread I ran off an image of the sign from where we had lunch in Bar Harbor before catching the ferry (for Nova Scotia). I layered it with some other papers, and I stamped the chef and fussy cut her out. On the right side I used some watery looking tissue paper, some letter stickers, a stamped word and a few plastic droplets to make it look like some water splashed on the page.

  On the right side on this next spread I did a lot of brochure cutting up. I also had picked up a package of used Canadian postage stamps while on my travels and lucked out that there was one for the citadel.  I also bought the sticker because we heard the noontime cannon go off, and I thought this sticker was pretty fun.

   On the left side of this next spread I stenciled the background, did some brochure cutting up and also die cut the hat.  On the right is a postcard, and underneath it is a page with some stamped phones, a die cut phone and also a chipboard plane, even if you can't see it all that well.

  On this final spread I have another page from the beginning of my journal when we were in Bar Harbor. One of the first things we did was visit Acadia National Park. We had bought the dogs orange bandannas, so I drew one for the page and added a couple of stickers. On the right I also used a couple of stickers. I was very excited to find one (the signpost) that listed all the places we actually visited. The fox sticker was from my stash.

    That's it for me this post. Wishing everyone I great Friday and start to your weekend.

  

A Bit of Steampunk Art

   Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. I hope your week is going well. 

   Today I want to share a page for Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's Anywhere, Anytime, Any Place with Anyone challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'll also be linking  up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge # 123 since I have more than 3 types of media on my page. My page is a little bit steampunk and was one of those pages that took a while to figure out when it was actually complete.

    I started out by using up some left over red paint. I made all the circles on my page.  Then I decided to make some blue painted circles inside of the red ones. 

     At another session I sat down and took a black Stabilo pencil and outlined the black circles. I then took  a wet paint brush and went over those circles. I love how I get that dark and slightly fuzzy look with the wet brush.  After that I used watercolor paint and painted my background.

    I can't remember whether I added the gears next or whether I splattered the page with some black water color paint. Either way, those were the next 2 steps.  The gears are made of chipboard and I got a small set of them as a freebie when I ordered something sometime back. They've been sitting on my work table for a a while now, and it was time to use them.

   Here's my finished page. You can see  I added to it. And yes, I couldn't get the top right corner to lay flat so the top of my photo isn't very professional looking.

    There were more gears in this same set, so this time, instead of  painting them black I painted them copper or silver or in the case of the light bulbs, bright yellow. I didn't have a problem using scissors and snipping some of the gear sets apart so they would work on my page. 

    Then I used some various AALL & Create bits of pieces I had on my page. I also used the "cacophony" word stamped (Impression Obsession) a few times around the page, but I thought that if there are gears turning, it would get kind of loud and create a cacophony.  I particularly like the dog face since he looks like he might be a junk-yard dog so to speak. 

   To finish my page I took my roll of clear crow tape. I have no idea who made it or where it came from, but I love cutting the crows out and gluing them down on a page. I thought since they can make a lot of noise they would work with cacophony words.

   I had a lot of fun making this page, even if it took a while to make it. I hope you enjoyed seeing it.

  

Count Down 3-2-1

   Hi everyone. It's Tuesday, and that means it's time for a new challenge over at Try It on Tuesday.

  Thank you everyone who joined our All Loved Up challenge. I love the variety of love themed art that was shared.

   For our new challenge we have one that's a little bit more specific. This time we're asking for art that fills the category of Count Down 3-2-1.

   I didn't know how this challenge would work on a journal page (of course it could have worked), but I thought it would be easier on a smaller format. I grabbed 3 of these smaller blue tags I had. I also had a pile of some stickers out on my work table, so I decided I wanted to use those.

   I started by stamping a number image to each tag (I needed to do something with the background) and then using some embossing powder.  I think the embossed background works great on 2 of these, but not so great on the other tag. 

   On the left hand tag I used one flower sticker. I colored that in and then added 2 bird stickers. Finally I stamped a 3 tiny words.

   On the middle tag I added 3 hanging Japanese lantern stickers. I then added the sticker with the 2 cranes. I noticed at this point that they are standing on 3 Lily pad leaves so I guess I didn't need the hanging lanterns. I wasn't sure what to do for the 1 part, so I added one Chinese coin also hanging among the lanterns.

   This last tag is my favorite. I almost posted just this one, but then decided why not show all 3. To make this tag I added  1 butterfly sticker, 2 boxed flower stickers and then 3 little confetti dots to show the butterfly is in motion. I colored in the stickers with some markers. 

   All of the stickers I used are just outline stickers, and I colored them all in with markers.They are oldies from a company from Starform.

   I am also linking this last tag  to Pinky's number challenge at Tag Along (and ATCs).

  Our Try It On Tuesday challenge runs for the next 2 weeks, and as always, we accept any kind of art. I found this challenge a little tricky, so I'm excited to see other people's take on it. 

   And don't forget to check out the blogs of the other design team members too.

  Thanks for stopping by, and have some fun with this challenge.

T Stands for the Back Up Plan

    Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and for everyone who stops by for T Day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog, happy T day to you also.

   What's new with me?  The good news is that our temperatures were a bit warmer than they had been. This was especially true this past weekend, and they say Tuesday (this T Day)  we could hit 40 (or a bit more) degrees F/4 degrees C. It's been weeks since it has been that warm even though that really isn't all that warm. But since I'm used to really cold temperatures it feels pretty warm.  I'm very excited about that. 😀

   Last week I made 2 loaves of this banana sandwich bread. It's  not a quick bread, but a yeasted bread that you add bananas to. 

   Besides adding bananas, you add cinnamon and orange peel. Unlike  banana quick (or unyeasted) bread, I can't say it tastes very much like bananas, but it does have  a unique flavor and makes delicious toast or even French toast.

   I've made this bread a couple of times before, and the recipe comes from this bread book that I've had for years. 

   I know not all American robins migrate, but I was quite excited to see this guy out eating bird food on the ground by the feeder.

 I know we can't count on spring until April (and sometimes not even then) but I can hope, maybe, this is a sign it's coming early this year. 🤞

    The other good news was that when I went to check the beehive on Sunday there were some dead bees laying in the snow. You may wonder why that is good news, but since it needs to be above 50-55  degrees F/10-13 degrees C before I can open the hive, I need to look for signs that they are still alive. You can usually hear the bees if you put your ear on the hive, but seeing it's winter the hive is wrapped so you can't hear inside. Seeing a few dead bees on top of the snow (and we had our last snow a week ago) means that there are live bees inside and they have cleaned out some of the bees that haven't  made it.

  In last Friday's post I shared a bit about the dog saga where Maddie was taking over Pete's bed. I mentioned how Pete was quite upset about it. Not that there was ever any growling, because those 2 get along quite well (they can even eat food at the same time out of one dish although they always get fed with their dishes). Well I think those 2 have come to terms that they will take turns in the bed.

   The only thing Pete didn't like was when Maddie decided  maybe they could share it together. I didn't get a photo, but as soon as Maddie crawled in, Pete got up and left. I don't know if she was trying to take over the bed and get him out of it or she wanted to be close to him. By the look on his face he was quite disgusted. 😡

   Finally I need to share a drink for T this week.

   This past Saturday my daughter and son-in-law were coming home from a little winter vacation and were flying into Manchester (New Hampshire). They were due in at lunch time so we were planning on meeting them for lunch. However, Friday night my daughter said she was starting to feel awful and when we texted with them Saturday morning she said she thought she had a fever and felt really terrible. Sadly our lunch was cancelled. I haven't seen my daughter since Christmas, and I was looking forward to seeing her.

  But just because they couldn't make it to lunch, didn't mean my husband and I did have a backup plan. We decided to drive to Manchester anyhow and go to the Puritan. The Puritan is a large family friendly restaurant that is known for their chicken tenders. They serve lots of other food, but I have only had their chicken tenders. I keep thinking maybe if they were closer to home (they are an hour away) I would try other things, but since I only get there 2-3 times a year, I stick with their chicken tender meal. 😏

  They are also known for mudslides, and they have a big mudslide menu. The special for February was a strawberry cheesecake one, so that's what I had. Well I only had the half size because that is actually enough for me, especially when I was driving. 

  I finished the mudslide, but I can never finish the chicken tenders. I'll get 2 more meals from the ones I took home.

  That's all for me today. Have a great new week and T day too.

More About Travel Journals

   Hi everyone. I hope you're having a super weekend. Today I am linking up to Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room, Gillena's Sunday Smiles and also to Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's February challenge at Art Journal Journey.

  Last Sunday I shared some photos of a travel journal I created from my trip to Nova Scotia last fall. I've been making trip journals for years now. I love the idea of making a trip sketchbook while visiting someplace new, but that wouldn't work for me because it means I'd need time to sit and sketch during the trip. That's hard when you travel with others who don't want to make a plein air sketchbook. Plus, when I make a junk  or collage style journal after the trip, I get to relive the trip all over again. ❤

   I really love making books. Mine aren't the most formal looking, and that's OK with me.  I love to change them up too. Here's a few travel journal covers  I've made in the past several years.

    The above journal is from a Quebec trip in 2024. I made the covers using some recycled cardboard. I glued paper down on them, and used cloth book-tape to create the spine and to cover the edges (although I wished I'd beveled the corners a bit). The signatures are sewn in as you can see on the spine. 

    I knew my travel journal from my 2024 trip to Greece with my girlfriends needed to be big. This time I took 2 old rescued book covers and covered them in blue cloth. I was lucky because when I was teaching our school library used to put out some old books free for the taking. I would usually bring a few home, especially for journal making. And if there was anything interesting, I often took a few  reading books too.

    I then stenciled the Greek letters onto the cover. The spine is also made of cloth with the signatures sewn in.  I glued the edges of the spine down to the cover, and then wrapped that area with book cloth-book tape.

  Above is my 2021 trip to California cover. I actually made this in a smaller  old book with just the pages removed. I  painted and stenciled on some designs to fix up the cover. Since the back and front cover were already attached, I did not have to stitch through the spine but could attach my pages inside the book.

    For a national park trip book I used the covers off an old photo album and used waxed thread to tie in my pages with the cover.  You can see the thread on the left side. Below, an older trip book to New Mexico was made in a 3 ring binder, but you can't really tell from the cover as I "fixed" it up with paint, tape and some stencil paste. I started with a  chipboard cover, which I find works the best for fixing up.

   And here is the cover of my Nova Scotia trip cover from last fall. I also used a  chipboard ringed binder and fixed up the cover a bit. This is what I'm linking up to Art Journal Journey.

   The plaid is actually wrapping paper that I picked up in Halifax, and the design of that paper is the Nova Scotian tartan. I thought that would be appropriate for a journal about that trip.

    The spine is covered over with blue cloth book-tape, and the edges are covered with some white cloth tape that I roughly painted.  I thought about making them totally blue. That would have made the cover more  finished looking, but I liked the exposed white. 

   Putting the book  together goes faster when I use a ringed binder because I don't have to sew the spine and pages together. To finish it I added  some bits and pieces to the front. 

   For my final photos in today's post, let me share  the shelves where I keep many of my  journals. I also keep  my annual bought daily journals here too, so not all of these are handmade, but many of them are.  I've been making books for years, and just to clarify, these are not all travel journals, but some of them are. And yes, I need to clean off these shelves because right now they are not very organized. 😛

 

   My husband built this shelf into the back side of a closet. You can also see the purple door to this room. It doesn't quite close tight up to the wall (I've got a few things behind the door), so that's why the right side of the shelves aren't visible. 

    Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.