Back to School

 Hi everyone. 

Can you believe in a week it will be September first? If I wasn't retired, today would be my first day back to work at school after summer break.  Although  I retired from teaching in June of 2020, with summer's off from school, retirement didn't feel like it began until a year ago now. Even with covid and the fact that my first year didn't go anything like I hoped (nor did anyone else's I'm sure), it was a good year. 

Let's hope in this next year our covid world becomes even less covid restricted and more back to normal. So onto the adventure of year 2 of retirement. I am looking forward to it.

To celebrate the big day for the many people  who are still  going or are already back to class, I made this journal page. And with my added type, I am going to link my page to Neet's type challenge at Art Journal Journey.

It started with a page that I scraped some left over blue paint onto.   I also used some left over terracotta  paint and a stencil on top of the blue background.  Finally to finish my background, I ripped bits off of a paint covered paper towel (kitchen towel) that I had been using to wipe up painty messes with for quite some time. I liked the color combo on the paper towel, and it worked well here. I added those scraps with matte medium. 

I used this Sizzix/TH embossing folder to create the type letters. I emphasized them by rubbing a brown ink pad over them. 

I am glad TH released this set of groups of people last spring. Besides having some new faces to craft with, I liked these 3 boys sitting crossed legged. They fit the bottom of the embossed paper just perfect. The bicycle may be a girl's style, but it is the only bike die cut I have. This was a spare from another project that was sitting on my work table.  I drew and colored the pencil before fussy cutting it and adding it to my page. I did use a real pencil and scribble in some writing in various spots on the page, not enough to stand out, but if you look carefully something to see.

I thought about adding other back to school details, but then  I decided there was enough on the page. The boy on the bottom right makes me think he doesn't want summer vacation to end because his expression looks rather forced and not focused on the camera. I bet he is thinking about taking the bike and riding off into the day, skipping school so early in the year. That wouldn't be good if he did, would it?

Perhaps those boys are also thinking about the teachers and staff inside the school building. I wonder, if in the boys minds, they look like these next faces do.

With mean teacher faces like that, who would want to go back to school? 

Not me. 

(Smile- I wasn't known as one of those mean teachers! It is amazing how much you accomplish being kind but strict enough maintain a productive classroom.)

My tree face photos  today are also from  the Sunflower festival I was showing you last week. When we visited we asked about these trees and were told that they were left over from when the farm had a haunted Halloween hayride. They would be scary at night, but pretty fun to see on an August morning.

Hope your day is going well!