How I spent the first day of my vacation

It was fabulously the kind of day I needed. I read in bed in the morning, got up at 8, took a walk, did a small amount of cleaning-just enough to make me feel better-worked in my studio, did a small amount of studio organizing (YEAH!) , napped, watched some more of Dark Shadows and lounged on my screen porch reading.

The perfect get vacation started day and the kind of day everyone needs every now and again.

The kind of day if you did too often you would probably get bored.

But Tuesday, it was SO needed -the day flew and I crave another 12 hours of it.

Of course, if I still need to mentally recoup today or tomorrow I can do this kind of day again too!

Knowing that is the best part of any vacation.

And it helped to get me thinking in summer mode and not in the go to work everyday kind of mode.

Allowing yourself to be lazy which doesn't happen when you go off to work.

Here's what I read yesterday. It is my latest book group book-we're meeting in a couple of weeks. This a graphic novel- about the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970's and early 1980's through the eyes of a young girl. I really like the graphic novel format, and her drawings especially, but I am not sure about the topic. It is interesting, and I am learning a bunch, but not sure I would have picked it up on my own. Not that it is a bad book, but probably not my personal choice.

But that is the best part of book club, you get to read a book that someone picked and you get to be exposed to something you wouldn't expose yourself to. It is also the worst part of book club because sometimes you just want to read what you want to read-especially when you're busy.

But I am enjoying this book.

And today is the summer solstice!!!
Longest day of the year!
And the first heat wave too-
so we go to plug in our portable ac-which spent the winter in our basement-and come to find out there are a couple of dead mice in there. Dave had to turn around and come home to try to get them out-easier said than done too.
Always an adventure.

So yesterday I worked on my summer scrap-journal  but I didn't photograph any of those pages I made. Yet. 

But here's a page I had made and photographed before that I especially like how it came out.

I used Crafter's Workshop/Julie Fei-Fan Balzar's fire stencil. I outlined and colored the shapes with Tim Holtz's water based markers. No permanent markers or ink or anything like that. I used several different colors in various spots around the stencil.

Then I took a wet paint brush and lifted the stencil and then swirled the colors. Made them look for organic and fire-like.

Then I brushed on some black ink on the white page to make it look a little smokey.

Stamped the month and attached a black-colored grunge board number.

And added a few little notes to follow the swirls in the fire. A bit of definition with that too.

So Happy Wednesday.

Is it Wednesday?

This is only my second day off and already I am forgetting the days.

LOL!

Thanks for visiting!