Wrapping Up Another Week

  Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Hope you're having a good week. We were supposed to have a very hot week, but then all the Canadian wildfire smoke blew in, keeping the temperatures down quite a bit.  The cooler temperatures were great, but obviously, not the smoke. It's too bad there are wildfires again too.  

   One day the sky was yellow (that was weird), and then the other couple of days it just looked cloudy. However, it wasn't cloudy; it was  just smoke.

   And no, my photos are not as  dramatic as some I have seen on TV. I'm sure some of you have had far more smokey scenes. But one thing I noticed yesterday that I have never seen before is  a sun reflection on my deck. It had rained the night before so there were puddles, and the sun was leaving a light bright dot.

   I hope if you're also in the smoke it's not too terrible, and let's hope the fires stop too.

  Today I'm not here to talk about smoke but to join Halle for her Fabric, Trim and Lace challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also joining Nicole for Friday Face Off and also Gillena for Friday Lunch Break.

   Today I have another unfinished cloth journal page. I made these pages before my machine went off to be fixed, and it's just been either too hot or too busy so I haven't yet gotten back into sewing since my machine came home. 😏

   I have a package of these 1930's prints pre-cut into hexagons. It was a pack with some odd cuts, meaning many of them might have an edge that is a little longer than the other 5 edges.  Anyhow, that's an easy fix because I can just cut those to the correct shape. I took 3 and stitched them  down on my page. Then I also printed off the face using some cotton fabric that could go through my printer. (If you're curious and didn't see how to do that, you can see it here: Sewing in Progress.)

   I die cut the flower out of some scrap fabric, and before I sewed that and the face down I used some yellow ric-rac trim across the page.

   That's as far as I have gotten. For now.

   I'm not sure if I'll be joining Sunday in the Art Room and Sunday Smiles as I have a lot going on this weekend. I could schedule a post, but I'm not sure I will be able to get around to everyone's blogs to comment, so if I don't post, have a super weekend and start to the new week. If I post, I'll see you Sunday.   And if I haven't been by your blog recently, I will hopefully be by soon. 👍

  

A Thursday Art Post

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. Today I have some art to share for a couple of challenges. First I have a tag for Tag Along (and ATC's too). This month Brenda is hosting, and her theme is Favorite Colors. But you can also always post a tag, ATC or bookmark for anything goes too.

   I'm also linking this tag up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media challenge #128, where the theme is always Anything Goes.

   I love the blue and greens of summer, so that's the main colors of my tag today.

   I started with an old Impression Obsession cover a card seashell stamp, which I stamped in dark blue.  You can just see the images peeking lightly through the background. 

    Then I used some vivid turquoise and lime green liquid ink to color over my background. It was a bit too bold, so I lightly sponged some white gesso over it. Now my  background was ready for some images.

   I took out a very old Kin Hughes/ Cornish Heritage Farm stamp set full of fish and other sea creatures. I stamp the wave directly onto the bottom of the tag. I used a dark blue paint pen to color it in, added a bit of white paint pen, and then finished that with some very dark blue Stickles glitter glue.

  I then took some fish and stamped them on white paper. I colored them in with markers and fussy cut them. Once I added them to my tag I darken the stamp outline with a black pen, and I also gave them a little glitter glue sparkle too. Finally  I added some clear water drop style embellishments. I also stamped the quote which  came from the same stamp set and outlined it with the same blue paint pen I used for the water.

   Since it's any arty kind of day I also have a page for Halle's Fabric, Lace and Trim challenge at Art Journal Journey. Today my page is made in my ledger journal and except for some cloth trim, is a paper page.

   I started with some lavender colored ink and an old Hero Arts background stamp which I stamped several times around my page. I like how left a light random design and even the bare spots (thanks to what was on some of the pages before this one).  I then took some scrap paper and tore what was left a bit. I knew I wanted to use this old B Line stamp, which I stamped on white and had decided, after  I fussy cut it, to leave it uncolored. I wanted the black and white background paper to fill in around most of the image, and because it was black and white is why I left the stamp uncolored. 

  I then fussy cute both the flower and the banner out of a sheet of paper. I colored the banner to match some trim (since I thought I had purple ric-rac but didn't). I finished by adding the banner and the ric-rac. I also had the left over of a large word stamp on my work table, so I cut out the words and added them. They seemed to work perfectly with my images. Finally I added a few white beads to the banner  to tie into the white flower.

   That's all for me. I hope you're having a super week and maybe even finding a little creative time for whatever you enjoy making.

 

A Mid-Week Walk

   Hi everyone.  Happy middle of the week. 

   A few weeks ago I had an appointment down in Portsmouth. It was a beautiful day at the shore; one of those days where the breeze came in off the ocean and made the temperatures right along the coast a good 15 degrees (F) cooler than inland. I had thought about going to the state beach for a while after my appointment, but I figured by the time I was done with my appointment (since it was the perfect day for sand and surf), the beach would be really crowded. Instead I decided to head over to Odiorne State Park and go for a walk. It was really a lovely one too.

   The state's done a lot of upkeep there, so the trails were cleared and set for walking. I first headed down towards the beach area of this park. You do get people who come to this "beach" to enjoy the sand and water, but since the only way to get there is to walk in through the trails or boat in,  this beach doesn't get crowded like  the bigger beaches just a couple of miles down the coast.

   I would have walked out to the point along the beach as the tide was low enough to do that, but when I came around a corner, the beach was rather busy. Grin. Rather than disturbing the geese, I turned around and headed back into the woods. 

   The shade felt great anyhow.

I thought this tree  had an unusual shape.

     Out at the point there was this big bunch of tiger lilies. The state had also mowed the grass here. I wonder if at some point in the past, long before this was a state park, there was a house here. A friend who is an archaeologist told me that one clue she often has about the location of  no longer existing buildings  is where you find clumps of flowers that are not wildflowers.

    It's always fun to come out to this point since 1) the views are so pretty and 2) we boat through the water here. I like seeing the view from another perspective.

From there I went back into the woods along the trail.

     Some of the Second World War coastal defenses are still here. When I was newly retired and came here I wondered if the graffiti was from any of my former students. Now I've been retired long enough  my former students are (hopefully) no longer irresponsible teenagers and are responsible adults. 

    There used to be some actual art graffiti on some of these walls, well done butterflies and birds, but now the graffiti is just messy scribble and a waste of paint and viewing. I continued on.

   Pretty soon I was back to the parking lot.

   I hope you enjoyed taking a walk with me on a beautiful summer day. And hope you are having a beautiful summer day also.

 

T Stands for a Party

  Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and a big hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for T day. Today we're celebrating a happy 13th anniversary for T day. 🫖🎂🍵❤  

  Last week was busy, and I kind of forgot about T Day's birthday. 😰 I had a  post written for this week about meeting up with a couple of bloggers (I'll save that for next week). Then I saw Elizabeth's post last night. I was too exhausted to switch things up since we had a memorial service for my  mother-in-law down in Massachusetts yesterday (Monday 7/13). We put some of her ashes into her  family's plot. Plus my mother-in-law's  94 year old sister  and her 90 year old sister-in-law who both live in that town could come and say goodbye. Many of my husband's cousins (almost all of the family still live in that town) also came. It was nice, but when I got home last night I wasn't up to doing much. 

   I searched my photos and found a few OLD birthday photos I thought would make my post more of a celebration. I haven't been joining  T Day for 13 years, but I have been joining in for quite a few. Now I need to look back and see how many years it's actually been.

   So, from the 603 (New Hampshire's telephone area code)

and from Miss Maddie who likes to party

   have a little Moxie

 and raise your drink glass to toast 13 years.

This goes without saying.

Happy 13 years Elizabeth. 

And maybe the even better part, is that when you're done

  if there's something dog appropriate in your glass, Mr. Pete will give it a good pre-wash. 😉 HA HA!

  Have a super T day and week ahead.

Happy Sunday

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you're having a nice weekend.

   Today I am joining Halle over at Art Journal Journey for her Fabric, Lace and Trims challenge.  I'm also joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR), and I'm also joining Gillena for her Sunday Smiles.

    Here's another unfinished sewing journal page. Like the page I shared this past Friday, I made my page on some fabric I cut from an old pillow cover that I cut up. I will somehow be attaching this to a background piece of fabric, but since I just got my sewing machine back from the repair shop this past week (it was there for 3 months), I haven't been able to do much machine stitching lately.

   And yes, 3 months for a repair is a long time, but the man  I brought my machine to has taken a job as a teacher. He used to work for a local sewing/vacuum cleaner business, and he sold me my machine (which was used at the time) many years ago. Since then that business closed due to the owner retiring, and this man had chance to pick up a full time teaching job. He still repairs machines, but his repair business is at his home and happens when he has time. But the good news is that he is a pro at fixing machines, has lots of spare parts for old machines like mine (since you can no longer get them otherwise), and he charges a lot less than other comparable repair places. It was worth the wait.  

   To make the rest of this page (so far) I used a square piece of blue felt. I die cut Scottie dog from some scrap fabric as well as the bones. Then I used some colorful threads and lots of stitching. I'm not sure how I'll finish it off, but once I do, I'll share that with you.

   And let me finish off this post with some various garden photos. I have tomatoes, cukes and green peppers starting to produce. 👍

This pickerel frog has found a nice place to live in the garden.

I pulled out all my spinach since it had bolted. It doesn't like the heat.

My climbing rose is looking fabulous.

Lots of lilies are blooming. I just love these orange tiger lilies; I think they are my favorites. And my day lilies are blooming too.

Also in bloom are my delphiniums

some Shasta daisies

the hydrangea bushes

and my goats-beard is finally  blooming. That's taken a few years to happen.

Of course the milkweeds are still blooming too. I went out the other evening, and the smell of the milkweeds was heady. You could just step out the door, feet away from the plants, and smell the flowers.  I'd never really thought about night time pollination, but there were some type of  sphinx/hawk months busy pollinating the flowers. Sadly, I never got a photo of them though.

   That's all for me today. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week.