It's Time for a New Challenge

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

    Thank you everyone who joined our autumn theme. I guess I'm not the only person who loves making autumn inspired art. There were so many wonderful link ups. ❤

    For our new challenge, we're going with the seasonal holiday coming up. Most of you probably know I'm talking about HALLOWEEN.

    I couldn't help myself, and I picked up this new ghost clear stamps set from Pink Ink.  I decided to make my page full of ghosts out enjoying themselves. And probably scaring  anyone they came across either. 😉

    I'm using a blank board book to make a small Halloween journal.  I started my page by putting down some grey paper and then an assortment of washi tapes. After the matte medium dried, I took some black acrylic paint and splattered it on my page. Then I stamped 3 of the ghosts from my new stamp set. I stamped them on white paper and sort of fussy cut them, and then I stamped some of a clear acetate scrap and sort of fussy cut those too.

   For the words I used some stickers from an older sheet from 49 and Market (left side) and on the other side I stamped a quote using an older Impression Obsession rubber stamp. 

    Here's a couple of close ups so you can see the details and read the words better if you'd like to.

 

  Don't forget to check out the other design teams Halloween pieces. And as always, you can link up and challenge related art in the next 2 weeks. 

   I'm also linking  up my journal spread to Mia's Beautiful World challenge at Art Journal Journey. Of course, it might be a beautiful world for ghosts, but I'm not certain I'd want to meet any of these ghouls. 😉 Please remember at AJJ we only accept art journaling.

   I hope you enjoy some Halloween fun and that we'll be seeing your Halloween inspired art at Try It On Tuesday. 
 

T Stands for Random Autumn Views

   Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. I hope everyone who had a holiday weekend enjoyed theirs. And if you are stopping by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for T day this week, happy T day to you.

  So what's new with me?  Last week was busy. I went for a couple of beautiful autumn day outings,  continued with a bit of easy garden clean up, had a lovely celebration of life for my Mother-in-law, had a killer massage at PT which really made a huge improvement in my arm/ shoulder pain, and this morning (Monday) had an MRI. I  think after that killer massage that maybe all my issues are knots in my muscles  that are just irritating a bad muscle sprain. But I will know more once the MRI results come in. 

  There are definitely lots of signs of autumn in my area now. We're  in peak autumn color too.   

 Today I am going to share some random autumn photos I've recently snapped. These are from a  recent visit to an apple orchard  and my recent walks. This first one was taken out in my garden the other day.

   We had hoped to get some of the orchard's fresh cider when we visited, but sadly the people directly in front of us in line took the last jug. 😕

   At the orchard they had some Mums out. The colors were just gorgeous.

    And here's the view from my yard this past Saturday morning. 

   And finally, for my drink this week. I'm sticking with my outside beautiful autumn day photos.

   My bird bath is really a big honeybee (and other wild bees too) water bowl. I added stones to the bottom so the bees can stand on them to drink, but lately we've had a lot of rain so the bowl is quite full.

    The yellow you see in this second photo is a floating bee that is made so bees can land on it and drink from it. The bees like that a lot too. Occasionally when the bees sit on the edge like this they slide into the water, and sometimes their wings get too wet to provide them any lift out.  If I see this I use a dried lily leaf and scoop them out. But amazingly I've also seen other bees pick up the struggling bees and fly them out. It goes to show you how smart this species is. It also reminds me that if bees can be smart enough to  save one of their own, how many other species of living things do the similar thing and we just don't know or take the time to recognize it. 

   That's it for me today. Wishing everyone a happy T Day and week ahead.

Nature's Art- The Rest of my Photos from the First Cabin on PEI (and Sunset Part 2)

    Hi everyone. Happy weekend to you. I hope yours is going well. Yesterday we  said goodbye to my mother-in-law and buried her ashes with her husband (my father-in-law). She passed back in February at age 93,  but getting the whole family together proved an issue as one granddaughter  had a baby in the early summer and then there were people's already planned vacations that  got in the way.  The funeral wasn't a big affair except for immediate family and some very close friends  that came up from DC where they now live. It was very good to see them, especially their daughter who had been living overseas for quite a few years.

    Since funerals always leave me emotionally exhausted, I thought I'd perk myself up by sharing some more photos from my husband's and my recent trip to Prince Edward  Island (PEI). I'll be linking  up to Nicole's SITAR/Sunday in the Art Room and also to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    Here's a few other views of the sky and the "sights" to wrap up my photos from our little cabin in Bedeque, Prince Edward Island. If you missed the first 2 posts, you can find them here  and here. I don't think today's photos are quite as dramatic as the last 2 posts, but they are still worth sharing.

   For some reason when I look at this first photo I think of the little houses on a Monopoly game board. 😏  And below, close to sunset I went outside and noticed this hawk hunting off a long a hedgerow a few houses down. I knew from its behavior that it was a Northern Harrier, having watched the one that lives at Salisbury State Reserve in Massachusetts several times when I've gone on one of my winter birding adventures.

   The Harrier was a bit far off even with my zoom lens. Sadly my go-to camera lens (a Tamron 18-400x) stopped working over the summer. When I went  to replace it,  everything now seems to be for the new mirror- less cameras instead of the DSL that I have. I  have another straight zoom that goes up to 300x, and that's what I was using, but I was really missing the Tamron's wider range. I also have a mega-lens (as my husband calls it), but I left it home not figuring I would need it for the general types of trip photos. I could have used it for these photos though. 🤷

   Anyhow, this top photo was just with  a bit of cropping, and the other were not cropped.

   I included this next photo because not only can you see the harrier, but you can see the Confederation Bridge plus even a couple trucks driving on it.

   Sunset night two was still beautiful, but not as dramatic as night one. 

    When we first arrived to the cabin, we had been driving for a good chunk of the day. Pete and I went down on the beach and went for a little beach comb. The stairs down looked a little tough for Maddie (not being able to see them) so she and my husband relaxed on up on the lawn .

   Here's the road out to the cabin looking back towards town, taken the first afternoon.

   These next 2 photos were taken of the clothesline at the cabin. I thought it would make interesting photos. BUT, I could never get a shot without getting the power lines in.

 I also couldn't ignore the purple asters that were growing in the hedgerows.   

   I hope you've enjoyed the photos from the little cabin we stayed in our first couple of nights in PEI. As I mentioned in both of my other posts, I never expected this place to have so many photogenic moments. Of course I saw lots of other beautiful views on the island as well as in Nova Scotia, which I will get around to sharing with you in future posts.

  But for now, have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

   

Beautiful World

  Hi everyone. It's another Friday. For some people it's a holiday weekend. In the US it's Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day. (I'm never quite sure what the exact name is especially since here in New Hampshire we have some very resistant state legislators who don't want to update the name.) It's also Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Wishing everyone in Canada a Happy Thanksgiving, even if I am a few days early.

     Today I am joining Mia over at Art Journal Journey for her Beautiful World challenge.  I'm also linking a up to Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

    My journal page started with one of the Gelli prints I made a while back. I thought the sun ( I added the bright and sparkly circle) and the moon are two beautiful and reliable parts of our world. I used the edge of a die cut tag to be a doorway, and I put the woman (a TH paper doll image)  in the doorway. I'm not sure if she is looking out, going out, or maybe she is even going in.  Whatever she is doing, she is in the doorway. You can decide what you think she is doing. The trees are die cuts  from printed paper. I used a marker to color in their trunks and I rubbed some orange and brown ink over the leaves to make them seasonal and to enhance the colors. I also added an owl chipboard that I've had for a while. I colored and inked her in also. The quote is from an old Hero Arts set that I have.

  I also debated whether to add the rest of the photos from our little cabin in Prince Edward Island  that I've been sharing this past week or whether to save them for another post. I think I will save them for another post, but let me share a bit more "face" art from the Art Museum in Halifax, Nova Scotia that we also visited.

 One thing the museum had was a large collection of First Nations Art, including this exhibit of clay masks. You can read about the masks in this next photo, and here's a few of them that I took photos of. 

                                   

   That's all for me today. Wishing everyone a wonderful rest of your Friday and start to your weekend. 

  

Some Favorite Photos from PEI- Sunset Part 1

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. Yesterday I shared some sunrise photos from a little cabin we stayed in while on Prince Edward Island. That post is here: Sunrise Photos. Rather than making you wait, I thought today I would show more photos today. I still have even a few more left to share so there is still a third post to come . As I mentioned yesterday, sometimes the most unexpected places end up being the most photographic. 

   Here's the views as we first drove in towards the cabins. At this point I didn't know quite what to expect.

  That morning we had left Halifax in the rain, and as we went northwest, the weather slowly was improving.  Before we even approached the cabins we drove even a little further west and went into the city of Summerside to have a late lunch (since we had been told the cabin was 20 minutes away from much of anything), so by the time we arrived it was just before 4 in the afternoon.

   As you can see, there were still a few clouds around that occasionally gave us some shadow.

   As the sun started to sink lower, the sky colored. And just an FYI, other than to straighten the horizon a bit in a couple of these photos, I have not played around with color on any of these photos.

   You can even see sunset reflecting on the plate glass window that was in the cabin.

   And here's a zoomed in view on  Seacow Lighthouse.

    Off in the other direction you can see the land's edge and even a bit of the Confederation Bridge.

The light starting to fade

and the moon was coming up.

  This was our first night at the little cabin in Bedeque. Although the sunset night 2 wasn't quite so dramatic, it was still beautiful.  I still have some other photos to share with you. Soon there will be another post of photos. Hopefully, you'll enjoy them all. In the meantime, has a super rest of your day.