Found Treasures

Hi everyone. Greetings from a very hot  New Hampshire. They say it could get stormy this afternoon as the hot  weather finally moves out. My daughter is leaving this morning, and my plan is to relax with a new book. It's been a very busy last several days.

 Can you believe June will be over in just a few hours?  (Or maybe when you read this, it will be over.)

I have one final art selection to add to Mia's Butterfly challenge at Art Journal Journey.

First let me say a huge thank you to Mia from Craftartista for hosting this month.  Butterflies was a fun challenge topic, and I really enjoyed it.

I also want to thank all of you who joined Mia at Art Journal Journey this month also. There's been so much amazing and inspirational butterfly art.

Today I am going to share another one of those journals I found up in a bin in my attic earlier this year. This one is a cloth journal with stitching, paint and stamping. 

I just love these bright colors. The journal itself was sewn white muslin, and any color on it is from paint.

You can also see there are a few butterflies, and since this has been in hiding and never put on my blog,   I am going to link it up to Mia's challenge at Art Journal Journey.  I thought it was a bright and colorful way to end the month.

I remember making this journal over an April school vacation because my daughter and her friend were around. Her friend thought making this was a total waste of my life and told me so directly.  I should have been out doing a sport or something useful. I am not sure exactly what that useful thing would be, but I am thankful that this friendship didn't last very long. Most of my daughter's friends thought making art was very cool, and they would join me too.

It has been a real inspiration for me to have found this bin in the attic.  This book in particular has me thinking about making not only another painted journal, but some bright pages in my other journals too.

Butterflies have also been an inspiration also.  I hope you enjoyed this challenge at AJJ, my art today and had a great month of June.

Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for "Take Out"

 Hi everyone. I can't believe we are at the end of June already.  Summer is really here.  This coming weekend in the US we celebrate the Fourth of July or Independence Day. In my husband's family it is the biggest holiday of the year. 

My daughter's been home for a few days as she is on vacation from work this week. Today was very hot, but she and I visited the beach for a few hours this morning. It was a good thing we had a beach umbrella as if was comfortable sitting in the shade.

Then the tide was coming in which made the beach much smaller, so at lunch time we took off. Like so many places right now, it was very hot.

This week for T day over at  Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog  I thought I would share a summer evening  photo. 

When my daughter was home  a couple of weekends ago, we lit an outdoor fire and cooked dinner  over the fire pit out in the back yard.  Nothing fancy, either a burger or a hot dog, take your pick. If you eat vegetarian, I apologize there is nothing for you. Although we did have strawberries for dessert.

The best thing about this photo (other than recording the time together) is how green and plush my grass looks.  It really is awful with bare spots if you walk across it, like you can see in the forefront of the photo.

The drink for this week's T is my daughter's water bottle you can see next to her chair. You can also see Pete laying next to my husband and waiting for his hotdog. Maddie was waiting for hers too, but she must have been over next to me and therefore not in the photo. Yes the dogs get hotdogs when we do a firepit, not in bread or fixed up, but just a plain grilled one. OK, they are a little bit spoiled. Smile.

That's all for me this week. Have a wonderful T day and week ahead. And for those of you in the US who only stop by for T, have a great July 4th also.

Natural Memory

Hi there. Happy Sunday everyone.  Hope your weekend is going well.

I'm back with another page for Mia, also known as Craftartista's butterfly challenge at Art Journal Journey.

There's still a few days left to join us if you're interested.

Today I have a page from my gardening journal. It has a tropical theme because when I was cutting out images for a different page, I cut more than I needed.  I thought I would use them with some other images and make a page about natural memory.

If you look up natural memory on the internet you find advertisements and research for keeping your memory working as you age, as well as finding out about memory in general. This quote  I used in my art was on a piece of scrapbook paper  along with animals and plants.  I'm sure it refers to how connecting with nature keeps us healthier and more connected to the earth. It also means  being able to read nature and use that information. Even with all our human discoveries and inventions, we are still a part of nature.

In case you haven't heard of natural memory,  a quote from an internet search that didn't want to sell me memory improvers or give me brain research  said:   

Being in nature, or even viewing scenes of nature, reduces anger, fear, and stress and increases pleasant feelings. Exposure to nature not only makes you feel better emotionally, it contributes to your physical well being, reducing blood pressure, heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of stress hormones.

I started my page by using matte medium and a strip of green paper. I used a stencil and some various paints and modeling paste to create my background.  Then I used some TH images as well as my left overs from a Grahpic 45 sheet of paper to complete the basic layout. I finished with just a few sequins.

Hope you like it.

And as a few of you were curious about my latest bee check, here's a few photos.

The white comb at the very top is honey. Most of the yellow comb is capped off worker bee pupa. Looks like there should be bees hatching out and adding to the numbers in the hive soon.  That is a good thing as it means the hive is flourishing and the queen is laying eggs. (I still couldn't notice her, but since there is more capped off comb that means she had to be there to lay eggs.)

I also added the second hive box on also. Once that starts to fill up it will be time to add my honey super. I don't plan on getting any honey this season as my bees (since they are starting to scratch) will need it to get through the winter. The beekeeper I spoke with the other day told me he always collections honey in the spring, taking whatever is left after the bees winter over. I thought that was a pretty good idea for this cold winter climate.

The week ahead is going to be a busy one for me. My daughter is on vacation, and  she is planning on being home for the early part of the week, leaving, and then she and her beau will be back for at least part of the July 4th long holiday weekend.  It should be fun though, as my daughter and I have a few "girl days" planned for the first part of the week. 

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great start to the new week.

 

 

Saturday Photos

 Hi everyone. Happy Saturday. And happy weekend. 

Today I thought I would share some photos  from my trip this past Thursday to Tower Hill Botanical Garden in Boyalston, Massachusetts. I heard about this garden several weeks ago on T day when Nan mentioned it in her post. I think CJ has also mentioned these gardens before also.

This has been the spring and now summer of garden visits for me, and when I mentioned Tower Hill to a couple of my friends, we decided to take a roadtrip and visit. For me it wasn't even quite as far as going to visit my mom who lives a little further down the road.

We had a wonderful day out, and of course, I took lots of photos.

This is the first  actual living wall I have seen. It was really amazing.

The flowers on the living wall made a lovely reflection on this reflecting pool statue.

This was a gorgeous garden screen, and it made really a really fabulous shadow.

There were some trails through the woods, and along one of trails we walked were some fun classic style statues.

Including this folly.

My friend took a photo of these traffic cones that were on the trail. She was sending them to our friend who couldn't come saying we saw these interesting "cone flowers", Ha-ha-ha!

 

There was a display of these cool giant flowers made of recycled materials.

And there was this fun music statue too.

If you look carefully you can make out the musical notes and other markings.

And you wonder where the flowers are? Here's a few. I'll show you more another day.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Girls

 Hi everyone.  Happy Friday.

Yesterday I went off on a mini-adventure with a couple of friends. We went off to visit a botanical garden, yes another one. We had a nice day out, and as the gardens were a little bit of a drive, we left practically at the crack of dawn to get there. (OK I exaggerate seeing the crack of dawn is like 4:30 in the morning, but it was an early start .)They were fantastic to visit, and we had lots of drive time to chat. 

I'll share more another day once I get my photos squared away.

Today I'm back today with some art to share.

My first share is some paper collage on a textured background. Notice the butterflies. I'll once again be linking my journal page up to Mia's challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Since so many butterflies are found in the tropical part of the world,  I though I needed to make a page that celebrates those places. 

I cut  most of these images from a couple of pieces of printed Graphic 45 paper I had, layering them to make the design. The big fern on the right, underneath some other images, and also the bottom butterfly, are actually stickers I had in my stash.  I finished off my page with a gold metallic paper daisy chain and the stamped word for butterfly in French. My background was made with spray paints, some soft modeling paste and a stencil.

My second share is another tag for Wendy's tag on tag challenge at Tag Tuesday.

I love this TH group of ladies. They look like they are great friends. They look too young and nothing like my 2 friends I went out with yesterday, but I like to think we'd make such a great photo together. 

I made my background to match the the quote I used on the punched piece paper tag; the wild dots and the sweet flowers. 

The contrast between the girls in my 2 pieces of art today is a lot. 

I'm hoping to get out and do a bee check today because the heat is coming back over the weekend, and I don't want to don the  bee gear when its 90 degrees (around 35 degrees C). I am excited to see the changes in the past week in my hive. I had one of those it's a small world moments the other day when my brother told me he worked with a man who kept bees and lives right in my town. That is no small feat since my brother works right in Boston, and I live close to 2 hours away from Boston.

With my brother's help we exchanged phone numbers, and I was able to talk to my brother's friend the local bee keeper. He has over 15 years of experience bee keeping, and he answered my questions. Between him and what our blog friend Kathy told me, I am feeling much more confident I am doing the right things.  Thanks again Kathy for your help.

Hope you have a great start to your weekend. 

And thanks for stopping by.

Take Wing

Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. 

Today I have a page for Mia's butterfly challenge at Art Journal Journey . You might better recognize Mia by her blog's name which is Craftartista.

My page began with some assorted colored acrylic paints. I stamped the Dina Wakely face several times on the page after that. I colored the faces in with markers.  I then used matte medium to attach down these pieces of lace cut paper I had. Unfortunately ithese pieces of lace paper were too pink so I sponged on a bit of blue acrylic paint to tone it down.  That did the trick.

Then this page sat for about 2 months because I didn't know what to do with it.

Finally when I had  some butterfly stamps out to make pages for Mia's challenge, I saw the quote. It was speaking to me to be used on this page. I used a stamped and fussy cut butterfly, but I decided to leave it uncolored so it was stand out more against the background. I added some sticky swirly gemstones to give it motion. Then I finished my page with a few assorted sequins. 

And although my pages and photos all month have been mostly on the garden/nature side, how about something different? How about a few industrial photos from our couple of boat trips this year so far?

Cranes at the Naval Shipyard and also to do unloading on the commercial pier.

The New Hampshire side of the river has a lot of industry. The Maine side has none until you reach the Naval shipyard.

And then there's some bridges. First the old next to the new.

The drawbridges.

And the ones with simpler (than a drawbridge) smaller pile driven supports.

And one big permanent bridge to finish off my post.

Hope your week is going well so far.