It's Time for Another New Challenge

    Hi everyone. It's Tuesday and so it's time for a new challenge at Try It on Tuesday.

    Thank you everyone who joined our Countdown 3-2-1 challenge.  Even though we didn't have our biggest number of participants, there was some really wonderful art. 

  Our newest challenge is Make It Feminine.

   I made a journal page using some acetate printed images as well as some fussy cut images. I left the background white to make the pink really pop. 

    I started with this large pink piece of acetate that felt feminine to me. Then I added the girl with camera. She is from a Stamperia ephemera book, and I thought she was really lovely. Plus, she looks like she is having fun with her camera too.

    From there I added a few acetate images from an older 49 and Market set. I also fussy cut the flowers from a sheet of paper. I chose the pink peonies one because the pink worked with my page, but also because they are such wonderful later spring flowers.

   Finally I stamped a this quote from TH.

  And don't forget to check out the other design team members blogs too.There's lots of lovely art on their pages worth a look.

  As always, this challenge runs for the next 2 weeks and all types of art are accepted.

  I am also linking  my page up to Chris' Art Journal Journey challenge. Her theme this month is Spring Forward. Please remember  only  art journaling is accepted at AJJ.

  I'm looking forward to see what feminine inspired art you share over at Try It On Tuesday. 

T Stands for This, That and also Second on the Second

     Hi everyone. Happy new week and new month to you. Since today is March 2, I will share a second look for  Second on the Second. I will also share my T day post. Both of these link ups are over at  Bleuebard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   So what's new with me? Lately I've been in my February slump. I don't get it every year, but this winter has been long and tough. It's wearing me down for certain. 😒 I spent some of last week starting a bookshelf clean, mainly because I have/had a big pile of books that  were sitting for too long on the floor. I wanted to find some room on my shelves for them. That's when I noticed my shelves were getting disorganized, and the way to fix that was to do a bit of organizing. And OK, I may be weird, but I have fun going through my bookshelves. Grin.

   I also needed a change of scenery last week, so I decided to take a trip out to King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont.  I've mentioned this place before, but if you aren't familiar with them, they are the oldest baking flour producer in the US (they were founded in 1790 in Boston). They've changed a lot since 1790, and now they have a great facility in Vermont. They don't make the flour there, but they have a specialty bake-ware store with lots of hard to find ingredients and some interesting baking tools. There's also a restaurant, an actual bakery where they bake for their restaurant and  classrooms where you can take various baking classes. You can buy any of their flours or baking mixes there too. I'm glad I live  close enough (about 2 hours away) for a once or twice a year trip, but glad I don't live just down the road because I could spend a lot of money there. 😏

   I don't think I've ever shared a photo of inside their store before. It was mobbed when I arrived as there was a bus load of people shopping. When they cleared out it was easier to browse, and I even took this next photo.

Here's part of  their bread baking schedule on the wall outside the baking kitchen. 

You can  even buy bread from their daily baking in the store too.

   Earlier in the week I had asked my husband if he wanted to take a ride to  King Arthur Flour with me. I expected he'd say no. But instead, he decided he wanted to go so Friday morning off we went. After I shopped ( and even  my husband bought a couple of things even though he doesn't like to bake,  he does like to occasionally cook), we decided to go  down the road to the Norwich Inn for lunch. 

   The front view of the Inn is much more impressive than the back, but I didn't get a photo.  Here's their website if you want to see the front: Norwich Inn Website.

    They have a great pub area, but when we opened the door to go inside, there was a big sign that said they were not open for lunch. 😦  We got back in the car and drove  back to New Hampshire. We stopped in Lebanon (NH) which is not very far away since Norwich, Vermont and Lebanon, Ne Hampshire are right on the Connecticut River that divides New Hampshire from Vermont.

   Instead of a pub we went to an Italian restaurant called Lui-Lui. We had never eaten there. We split a large pizza that was quite tasty. I would definitely go back if I was in the area.

 I got a kick out of their brick oven as it had  this painted metal tomato top. 

   We each had a beer (a Switchback brew which is a favorite of ours and is made in Burlington, Vermont) with our pizza so here's drink #1 for T day. Plus when we sat down they served us some of these tasty homemade dinner rolls with some olive oil for dipping.

   Drink #2 is actually my link up for Second on the Second. Here's a tea inspired page I made back in March of 2022.

     Here's the original link up for my page: In Like a Lion.

   That's all for me. Wishing everyone a Happy T day and week ahead.

  postscript:

 Here's the recipe for the sour dough muffins I shared last week and which some of you asked for the recipe. The measurements are not in metric, except where I could change them.

 Sour Dough Discard Muffins

Ingredients:

1 cup sourdough discard

1/2 cup sugar (I added a 1/3 cup)

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

6 Tablespoons of unflavored cooking oil

2 teaspoons of baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup of flour (use the same type that your sourdough is made from) and note below*

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F/190 degrees C. Line a 12 cup standard muffin tin (or grease) or a 6 cup large sized muffin tin.

2. In a bowl, mix by hand the sourdough discard, sugars, eggs, oil and vanilla extract. 

3. Add dry ingredients (baking powder, salt and flour) to the wet ingredients.  Mix well.

4. Add whatever you would like to the muffins-blueberries, raspberries, chocolate chips, etc..  The recipe calls for 1 cup of the addition, but you can add whatever amount you like. I added the zest of 1 orange and also the juice from that orange. I also chopped up some dried dates (I didn't measure the amount) and added them. Gently mix them into the batter.

5. Fill your muffin tins to  the top of each well. Bake for 20-30 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean.

6. This recipe called for a drizzled frosting, but I chose not to use it. If you'd like to use it, the drizzle icing is made with 1/2 cup powdered sugar and  2 1/2 teaspoons milk. Once made and the muffins have cooled, drizzle over the top of each muffin.

* If using Einkorn or quinoa flour in your sourdough, you will need to change the amount of flour added to the recipe. For einkorn use  1 cup of flour and for quinoa use 1 1/4 cups of  flour.

   

Sunday in the Art Room

   Hi everyone. Happy new month to everyone. It's also the start of meteorological spring here in the Northern Hemisphere which for me, even though winter weather isn't done in my area yet, is at least a tiny step towards better weather. 👍 This is my second post today since there's a new challenge over at Art Journal Journey. If you want to check out this month's AJJ theme, you can click on the link at the end of the last sentence.

   Today I am joining Nicole for Sunday in the Art Room and Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

   Last week I didn't do a lot of art because I spent some time cleaning out my bookshelves. That project isn't done yet, but while cleaning out my shelves I spread out some old art journals on the bed in the spare room where my bookshelves are. It was very inspiring, and  now I have some new ideas that make me want to get back to art making. Just like in many things, I've been in a bit of a February art slump lately.

   I thought I would share a few pages from another art journal I made several years ago. This is also a cloth journal, but it's different from the one I shared last Sunday. Instead of binding the entire edge, I used a metal snap ring to hold the pages together.

Hope you enjoy it.

     This book is house shaped, and I used pieces of thin cardboard to stiffen the pages. To make it I cut and sewed whatever I was sewing onto each page. Then I took 2 matching pages and with the cardboard in between (the cardboard was just a tiny bit smaller than the pages) I stitched the fronts and backs together.  I sewed a loop onto each complete page to put the metal snap ring through. 

   The first photo is the front. Notice I made the front door able to be opened.

    To get all the faces on the next page I took some old photo booth photos that I had and transferred the images onto some cloth.

On the page below I used a rubber stamp on some white cotton fabric to create the main image. Then I painted in the window, view and cat using the stamped view as my guide.

   You can also see I did some border stamping. I used a variety of machine stitching and some hand stitching on my pages too. 

   

   I found this journal particularly inspiring. I think I must like the theme of home because I found 3 other home themed journals the day I pulled this one out. 😏

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

Welcome to March

   Hi everyone. Happy new month to you. It's March. Time for spring.💮🤞Or at least we are now another month closer to when spring actually arrives. I'm certainly ready for some nice weather after a long winter with lots of snow and bitter cold in my area.  The good news is the days are getting longer, and the start of the new season (at least meteorologically) has arrived .

   Besides today being the start of meteorological spring. it is time for a new challenge at Art Journal Journey. Thank you Elizabeth  (and Bleubeard too) for hosting last month. You definitely made up for months you didn't post a lot by rocking the number of pages you posted. ❤ And thank you everyone who joined in also. It was fun to see your takes on Elizabeth's challenge.

   Now that it's a new month, we have a new host. I want to welcome back one of our former admins and  talented  hosts. You probably know Chris from her blog Pear Shaped Crafting. This month Chris' theme is SPRING FORWARD.

   My page today is an ode to early spring, before everything greens up.

   I started this page by using some dirty stencils that had stencil paste on them and  cleaning  off the extra paste on my page. Once dry, I used some Chocolate Baroque rubber stamps and a couple of shades of brown ink to create the spring view of a grassy field. I fussy cut both birds from a sheet of printed paper. After they were glued on, I highlighted their beaks with a yellow marker, and I used a bit of light green paint along the bottom to finish off my early spring field. 

   I also stamped a couple of dragonflies, though I do know you don't really see those insects so early in spring (at least around my area). They did fill the background nicely. 

   Then I had this piece of printed acetate on my desk, which I thought worked well as a countdown until real spring weather arrives. I also thought it looked better with this bow that I snipped off an old greeting card.  Finally I stamped  the  quote which is from a very very old Hero Arts set about the month of March.

   Let me remind you of our dreaded rules. We only accept art journaling, but any type of art journal. Please, NO cards, tags, ATCs etc. unless they are attached to a journal page. Also, not all of us admins have every social media type, so please make your link through an online blogging site, unless of course you don't want us to comment. 

  I am really ready for spring this year, and I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of spring themed pages. When I say I can't wait to see what you post, I really do need some spring in my life right now, and until I actually get it, your posts will be taking care of that wish. 

  

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.