Dandelions

 Hi everyone.

I'm back from my short trip to New York state. The Hudson River Valley is an interesting place, and even though this is my second trip to the area, I wish I had more time to do a few other things.  Art gardens were on our agenda however. We saw some huge modern art pieces, statues really, as well as lots of other interesting art, along with fields of wild flowers and  butterflies.  We walked a lot. It was a fun trip, and nice to get away for a couple of days.  I took lots of photos that I will share share  once I get them squared away.

 I can't believe July has just about wrapped up.  Back in my teaching days when I  had to return to school in late August, the joke in my house was how the only month faster than July is August. Smile. I will say summer mode has hit me. I'm having a hard time getting to a few "projects" around the house that I've wanted to do, like finish cleaning up my sewing area and also picking up my "studio" happy space. Instead I spend a lot of time outside either in the garden or screen porch. 

I tell myself that it is better to enjoy the nice summer days (especially when it isn't raining) since the mess isn't going any place. Smile.  Hopefully when the weather cools off I'll get some motivation back.

Today I want to share my last journal page for Alison's summer countryside challenge at Art Journal Journey.

It's inspired by all the dandelions that grow in the summer countryside.

Most of my page is painted except some stamped dandelions in fluffy seed mode.  I used various acrylic paints, some green shiny modeling paste, as well as some white gesso to create the painted part of my page. I added texture and details with some markers and some Stabilo pencils.  In the same set as my fluffy dandelions gone to seed images are some loose dandelion seed stamps that I stamped as they blew around in the gentle summer breeze. The quote (from an older TH set) is stamped on paper, cut out and colored light yellow for contrast but also to somewhat match the dandelions.

Before I finish this post I want to say thank you to Alison for being a wonderful host this month. This was a fun challenge for certain, and I really enjoyed the countryside inspiration.

I also want to thank all of you who joined us this month with your summer countryside art. There was so much wonderful inspiration up on the web page!

Have a great end of the month, and I shall see you soon at Art Journal Journey with a new challenge for August.