Time for a New Challenge

    Hi everyone. It's time for a new challenge once again over at Try It on Tuesday. 

   But first, Thank you Leslie for joining us as a guest designer for our Make It Colorful challenge. And thank you everyone who joined us. It's always fun to  see how people interpret a theme, especially one that's as open as color.

  For our new challenge, we're asking you to be Inspired by a Song. 

   I always have a hard time picking songs because I want to pick one that most people know or recognize. My inspirational song (which might be obvious) on my page is Lemon Tree.  I know the Peter, Paul and Mary version, but I'm not sure if they were the other version but I think there's been a few.  Here's the chorus, which is the part most people might recognize.

Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat
Lemon tree very pretty and the lemon flower is sweet
But the fruit of the poor lemon is impossible to eat

  

   To make my journal page,  I started with some printed background paper. I then fussy cut the lemons from a sheet of very large paper that I've had for a long time. In fact, I bought this sheet (along with a couple of others) back in 2005 in a paper shop I happened to come across while walking around Rome, Italy. I definitely needed to make my page feel warm and sunny because I clearly remember it was a warm and sunny day when I bought this paper. 

   The lemon tree part comes from a clear stamps set, which I think is from an old Hero Arts set. I stamped, colored and fussy cut it.  The window comes from a  Ciao Bella ephemera and junk journal book, and it is a clear sticker that I fussy cut. To finish my page, I used some blue ink and stamped the quote.

   Don't forget to check out the other song examples from my design teammates. As always, this challenge at Try It On Tuesday runs for the next 2 weeks and we accept any type of art.

   It hope to see your  song  choice inspired art over at TIOT. 

  I'm also linking up my journal page up to my In The Good Old Summertime challenge at Art Journal Journey.  This challenge runs until the end of the month, and please remember we only accept art journaling (of any kind). 

   

  

T Stands for Pickings from the Garden

  Hi everyone. Happy new week to you, and hello to everyone who stops by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's   blog for T day.

  So what's new with me? By next T day I will have had my first physical therapy session, but I must say since I've been resting my shoulder, it is improving. That is good news. 😊 Hopefully in another month I can go out and do some heavy duty yard projects that were on my agenda for this year. But if it takes longer to feel better, it takes longer. Getting the shoulder/rotator cuff improved is the most important thing.

  This past week I went out fishing one day (didn't catch a thing), went over to Maine to go to Costco, and rested my shoulder. Luckily we had some beautiful weather so I was able to do a lot of afternoon resting in my hammock with a good book, and maybe, but I'm not 100% admitting to it, I also took a couple of nice naps in between pages of my book. 😉

   I've also been picking lots of things from my garden, including a whole lot of cucumbers and zucchini. I made 2 loaves of chocolate zucchini bread (sorry forgot to take photos- I gave one loaf to my daughter and have frozen the other one), and I also did some pickling.

    My first pickling project was to make some chunky sweet pickle and onion relish. I halved the recipe for the cucumbers and onions because I didn't need jars and jars of relish. You can see in this next photo the pre-soak with some salt. If you aren't familiar with pickle making, the salt pulls out the excess water, which you then drain before you finish.

   I wasn't sure how much pickle juice I would need with my chopped veggies, so I made a full batch. I actually only needed about half of this, which make sense since I only made about half a batch of chopped cukes and onions.

 I decided instead of wasting the extra juice, and since I had more cucumbers, I would make some bread and butter pickles.

   Here's all my finished canning after I put them in jars and then processed them in boiling water.  

   Before I filled any jars I took a photo, and I happened to get my mug filled with some homemade ice tea. Here's my drink for T day this week. 

   I'm letting my pickles and relish sit a few weeks to really flavor up, and then I'll be having some. I can't wait to try the pickles especially. Usually homemade pickles beat the kind you buy in jars at the store.

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

 

Some Adventures in Gelli Printing

 Hi everyone. Hope you are having a nice weekend. Today I am off to a gender reveal get together. It's the first time I've ever been to one of these types of parties. More about that in some other post, but this party might mean I get a bit behind (once again) visiting blogs.

  Today I'm joining Nicole for her SITAR/Sunday in the Art Room and also Gillena for her Sunday Smiles.

  After several very busy days, finally in the middle of last week I had a couple of days to myself. 😊 I love having days to myself, but then again, I like to do things too. In the big scheme it's nice to have a bit of a balance. One thing that always gives me balance is having some art time. And one thing I've been wanting to do for a while is pull out my Gelli plate and do some mono printing.

   Since I had the day to myself, it was time play.

   It's been quite a while since I last printed. Maybe even close to a year. Not that anything was stopping me from doing it. Sometimes I just get into the swing of something, and I have to practically hit myself in the head 😏to move onto something different.

   It actually took me  several pulls to my technique back. I love to layer images over other images when I Gelli print. However, my first few pieces just ended up all brown muddy YUK. I must have forgotten how to layer I guess.  😉 However, no page, however a mess, is really a waste. I'll show you how I fixed those further down in this post. But first, here's a few prints that I like.

   I brought in a few squash leaves from the garden. I also pulled out a sunflower mask I had. Mostly I played with those items, as well as some ripped up paper and a couple of stencils.

   This next one is just color but I really like  how it came out. The fine lines are from a plastic roller I have that is striped. It's meant for working with clay, but it also works great with a Gelli plate.

   And now for the muddy brown ones. On these first 2, I used the sunflower mask and then I pulled out some bright paints which really popped off the mud. On the last one I managed to get some muddy brown textured sunflowers, and then I added the bright pink sunflowers.

    I can't say I'm 100% happy with the muddy brown ones, but they are growing on me. And at least, if I decide I don't want to use them as they are, I can cut them up and use bits and pieces. 

    That's all for me. I hope you have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

How About These Faces?

  Hi everyone. Another week has flown by, at least it has for me. My husband's favorite thing is to say in the summer is that there is only one month that goes faster than July, and that's August. It certainly seems to be true this year. 😉 (Unfortunately too. They're predicting a tough winter ahead...😞)

  Today I am joining Nicole for Friday Face Off and Gillena for her  Friday Lunch Break. Here's some assorted random summer faces I've recently come across.

    I took this photo (above) because I really liked how this table was made from an old workbench. Then I noticed there are a few faces on it too.  

     The next 2 photos are a couple of other yard ornament faces from this same little shop.

   I took this beach photo when we were out cruising on the boat one day. I was actually going for the umbrellas because I loved all the colors, but with all the people, there are lots of faces too. 

  Here's one day's worth of mackerel that we caught when out fishing. They are swimming around in the boat's wet-well. The faces are a little blurry, but you can see them.

And here's a cormorant flying by.

     Next I have a couple of views of a metal flying raven that I splurged on and bought for my garden this summer. (Actually it was on mark down and not all that expensive.)  I don't know if he's easier to make out in the first or second photo.

Next, a metal mosquito sculpture at my local botanical garden. I'm so glad the real ones aren't as big as this one.

And here's a carved wooden dog face also found at my local botanical garden.

   And finally, ha-ha, the other day I came across this oldie of me and my husband at someone's wedding or dress up event. I think this has to be back in the 1980's.  I can't  ID the people to the right of my husband, and I can't remember the event either. Hmmm.

   That's all for me today. Have a super Friday and start to your weekend. 

Wednesday Art Post

      Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. Today I am sharing a couple of pieces of art for a few challenges. 

      My first piece is for my In The Good Old Summertime challenge over at  Art Journal Journey .    

   I'm also linking this up to  Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge #129. Their theme is always Anything Goes. 

   I used some yellow striped paper to represent a beach towel or blanket on the sand. I hope it looks that way. 😏  To make the background I first painted yellow stripes to coordinate with the ones on the beach blanket/towel paper. However, together they looked terrible.  I had to fix it, so to do that I then inked the whole page with some juicy yellow and light yellow-green inks. Now the page was starting to look better. To finish the background,  I rubbed some brown ink  to add a bit more sand texture. You might also notice that I inked the striped paper that was the beach  blanket/towel too. If you wonder why I didn't leave the blanket/towel paper uncolored, it was because it was dark yellow and white, and the white just seemed too stark with all  my other coloring additions.

  In the middle of the page I added my take on the waves at the beach. I used some blue ink on a Hero Arts background stamp. I thought the design looked like water and waves, so I cut out a strip out and added it. Then I used a sheet of Graphic 45 paper and fussy cut the fish.  The starfish are a very old Sizzix embossing folder. After I embossed them I inked them to highlight the embossing. Then I fussy cut them.  I also added a little gemstone detail. The scallops are both stickers and some fussy cut ones from my Ciao Bella ephemera book. The die cut quote is another oldie from my stash, and then I finished my page with a couple of fussy cut sentiments from the same ephemera book  that the scallops came from. 

   I also have a tag to share. I'll be linking  this up to this month's Fashion challenge over at Tag Along (and ATCs too). Pinky is hosting and if fashion is not your thing, they always accept the theme of Anything Goes also. 

   My tag is all about Back to School fashions, although I have mixed feelings about the way my tag looks. Not the tag itself,  but how it photographed. I always find I have a hard time getting things that are red to look in the photo like they do in person. 😉

   I used an AALL&Create tag die to make the tag itself. I also used an AALL&Create back to school stamp set by Janet Klein for all the images. The little student is mounted first on some notebook style paper that I then fussy cut around the image. I found this made her stand out more on the page than just gluing her down directly.

  I  added a scrap of paper along the bottom and some leftover small scraps of door screening that were laying on my work table. On top of the screening,  I added a few plastic confetti apples to go along with the stamped and glittered glued apples on the tag.  I also had this tan scrap of paper on my work table. Since one edge looks like it was pulled out of a spiral ring notebook, I added it to the bottom. It seemed to fit the back to school theme of the tag. 

 That's all for me today. I hope you're having a good week, and thanks for stopping by my blog.

T Stands for Lake Days

   Hi everyone. Happy T day. I hope everyone is having a great start to the new week. And I want to also say hello to those of you who stop by for T day this week over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   What's new with me? First of all I'm still icing and using heat on my shoulder. I've called a few more physical therapy places, and everyone is saying they can't get me in until early September. What? And that's with a referral from the orthopedic doctor. I've decided I will just stick with my August 24th appointment (the first one I made) and continue with my self care until then. Hopefully since I'm on the cancellation list I'll get a call that they can take me sooner.

   I also received a happy mail package this past week from  CJ. We were the only 2 to sign up for the T Day anniversary swap, and we decided we'd do a swap just a little more leisurely than the actual anniversary date.

   Thank you CJ for this fun package! I love the little journal and the other playful items, especially the microscope stickers. ❤😊👍🔬

  Last week was busy as it was one of my husband's and my weeks having my mother-in-law's house. During the summer everyone gets 3 assigned weeks at the lake. Since my husband and his 2 sisters are all splitting the costs of the taxes, electricity, heat, etc., it's only fair everyone gets some time to use the lake as they like. We get along really well with one of my husband's sisters, and we always invite them over for a few days during our weeks and vice versa. The other sister-in-law doesn't play well in the sandbox (so to speak) so that doesn't happen during her weeks.

   Last week we had some hot and humid weather so it was great that it was our week at the lake. Mostly it was relaxing time (and I read too), but Saturday, my daughter came for the day with some of her  husband's family.  Her in-laws were also supposed to come, but her mother-in-law stepped in a yellow jacket nest earlier in the week and her foot was three times its normal size, so sadly they weren't able to join us.  Anyhow, my son-in-law's sister joined us, and we had a day full of laughs hanging out with the 30 something's.

   It's too bad none of us had a totally waterproof camera because we all had a great float in the lake to cool off. I took this photo of the "kids" before I hopped in myself.

    I like this (above) photo so I thought I'd include it. The colors of the watermelon really pop off the white table.  There is a story behind the watermelon too. It rolled out of my husband's truck, plopped onto the ground and then rolled down the hill until my son-in-law's foot stopped it. But luckily, it didn't break so we could enjoy it! 😁

    Here's my T day photo for the week. If you look carefully at our lunch you can see a water bottle  and a tall metal drinking cup with a straw (to the left of the paper towel roll). And on the far right you can see part of a canned drink just at the edge of the photo. The nice part about lunch is everyone chipped in with the work. My son-in-law did the grilling, I did some chopping, my daughter did the table cleaning, the son-in-law's sister did some carrying out. OK I lied a bit because I'm not sure what my husband did (which was maybe something because I had just finished a lake dip and was the last one to come up to the house once I dripped off a bit), but in his defense the neighbor, who he hasn't seen all summer, stopped by. 

   We did have one rainy day last week. That day I met a friend and we went to see the Odyssey. It was long but a very good film that I enjoyed. Other than that, that's all  for me this week. Have a great T day and week ahead. 

  

  

Happy Weekend

   Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you're having a nice weekend. Mine's been busy, so if I haven't been by, I will be once things settle down a bit. 😉

    Today I'll be joining Nicole for her Sunday in the Art Room (SITAR) challenge and Gillena for her Sunday Smiles. I'm also going to start this post with another journal page for my In The Good Old Summertime challenge at Art Journal Journey.

    This page is part of a journal I made using some things from my stash along with some items  from a  Ciao Bella ephemera book. (I am NOT brand endorsing them, just mentioning this because I used a whole lot of this Rivera collection throughout my journal.)

    To keep the background light and summery, I used some green and some light blue paint to make some rough stripes. Then I took a piece of printed paper with some darker green and blue check and cut it  so it would make a slightly oversized frame for the photo. The photo is from a packet of Tim Holtz photos. I then added the citrus fruit stickers  to help frame out the old photo.

    I finished by die cutting the Adirondack chair out of white paper and inking it light blue to blend in with the stripes a bit. I finish by stamping the quote which is an old one without a brand on the wood base. Easy peasy. I love how just a few random assorted items can end up telling a story! It looks like it was a great day for this group of people. 👍

  I'll finish this post with a few summer views to go along with my summer themed page. Since there's flowers and plants in the background in the photo on my page, let me share the gardens/flowers in my yard. You'll also notice there aren't many close ups. With my shoulder issues I can't get much weeding done, but from afar, they look  thick and full of luscious growth in that later summer overgrown mode.

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

Friday This and That

    Hi everyone. It's already another Friday. This week, other than some rain on Monday, has been on the warmer side. But at least it's our week at my mother-in-law's lake house so I have gotten in some cooling water time. 😏

   Speaking of heat, I wanted to share this summer page for my challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month the theme is In The Good Old Summertime. I'm also sharing with Nicole's Friday Face Off and Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

   Today's journal page is a mostly paper collage. I started by using this sheet of blue paper as my background. Then I painted in some sand and added some blue paper for water at the edge of the sand. However, I couldn't get the sand to look like I wanted it to, so eventually I dug through all my art supplies and pulled out this bottle of these sand looking paint chips  called Fragments. I spread some glue and then put them down. Next I fussy cut the 2 bathers (Ciao Bella emphera book) and then added a sailboat to give the page more depth (49 and Market). Finally I stamped some various words/phrases and colored in the story word. There is definitely some kind of story going on with those 2 people. You can decide what you'd like that story to be. 👍

   I also have a few other faces to share that I snapped around my yard recently.

Isn't the baffle supposed to keep the squirrels out of the bird feeder? 😏  

The bird bath is actually a bee bath in my yard.

I know there is nothing for scale in this photo, but a tiny little toad was hopping around the yard.

I got lucky and could get a photo of this dragonfly before he flew off.

A pickerel frog in the garden

Here's a diva dog who didn't want just dog food for breakfast one day. (When I put in a tiny bit of shredded cheese she ate it all in about 3 minutes. 😉)

Another dragonfly

and finally a couple of photos that aren't really faces.

The wild blackberries near my driveway have been ripening. Yum!

And a morning's pick from my garden. I've never grown or even seen an albino zucchini before.

        Have a super Friday and start to your weekend.