September Owl

 Hi everyone. 

I mentioned last week that I've been working on a journal about owls. Today's page contains this vintage owl trading style "card". I'm not sure what it would have been a part of or come from, but I received it a few years back in a package of bird images I bought off of ETSY. 

I am linking today's page up to 2 challenges. First to Wendy's vintage challenge at Art Journal Journey. Secondly I am linking my page up the this month's new challenge at Creative Artiste Mixed Media where the challenge is Anything Goes, but be sure to use a big selection of media.

I really like this page except for the all the little stamped leaves. They were the last things I added, and unfortunately, the page looks more cluttered now that they are there. Of course I also got carried away adding them( smile), but once I stamped them, it was now too late to take them off, unless I wanted to paint over those parts. Anyhow, I decided to keep this page as it is, so what you see is what is going to be.

My page also has some vintage style mini game cards. These were actually  printed on the back packaging of a set sold many years back. They weren’t meant to be used in art but more for the buyer to see what was in the package. In the package were 6 larger versions of these game cards. I thought theses mini ones would be useful one day, so I saved that back packaging sheet. For this piece I cut some of them off of the sheet and used them here.

I also added  (to my page) the bottom of a small paper bag with a blue design on it, a stamped September block,  a black paper circle as my game piece,  and this gold foil trim. I started with some grey paint and some black stenciling. These  felt sunflowers were something I found a few weeks back at Hobby Lobby (and luckily on sale 40% off) when I stopped to get a new tube of glue. I used  that glue and added the small plastic bead like pieces to their centers. I found the skeleton leaves in my stash. And then there was those stamped mini leaves. 

Don't you just love the felt sunflowers though? I thought they were a lucky find.

Speaking of flowers, let me share some flower photos with you today. First a quick story.

On my way home from the NY sculpture gardens at the end of July, my friend and I exited the highway to get some lunch in western Massachusetts. When we got off, we saw a sign for the Berkshires Botanical Garden, so we forgot about eating and off we went to find the garden.

 When we arrived a few minutes later it had started to rain, but luckily the gardens had a tea room where we could stay dry and also get a bite to eat. They had a photo at the counter of a cheese plate you could buy  that didn't look that good, but I figured it would at least tie us over so I talked my friend into splitting one. In fact we had a delicious ploughman's lunch with  various local cheeses, fruit, veggies, ham, pickles and a half of loaf of some homemade bread. It was certainly more delicious that most lunches we would have likely found. (And I wish I had got a photo of it too before we gobbled it down.)

 While we ate the sky opened up, and it poured. Also lucky for us, as soon as we finally finished our huge platter of food, the rain stopped and although wet and overcast, we could walk around the gardens without getting more than our feet wet.   Thankfully it didn't rain the rest of the visit. And to add a third charm to our visit, we got into the garden free as they were part of the same horticultural association as Bedrock Gardens, which are the gardens we each bought a season pass to back in the spring. Reciprocal memberships are great.

So here's some photos.

Hope you enjoyed the visit as well as my art today. I'll share more garden photos another day.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.