Black and White

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of your week. And happy last day of August. Wow, this month flew!

Today I  want to share a tag for Sandie's challenge at Tag Tuesday. Sandie asks us to make a tag that is black and white  with just a tiny spot of color.

I made my tag by stamping a white cardstock tag with some black images. Then I added the TH gentlemen and the quote.

Originally I used a strip of washi tape that was white with a small red design on it. Then I realized it was too much color, so I added some black and white tape over it. It was an easy fix. For my pop of color I added this tiny little bright foam grapefruit image. 

And since August is wrapping up, let me share my last round of photos from TurnPark Art Space. I visited some other interesting places that I will share with you in later posts also.

TurnPark Art Space  had a couple of small indoor galleries. Here's a few pieces, starting with these 2 sided heads.

And then in the other gallery, they had some of these abstract mixed media pieces that I very much enjoyed.

The shadow on this next piece is as interesting as the piece itself.

And there you have it.

Wishing everyone a great end of this month and start to (do dare I even write it) September. 

Wrapping Up August

Hi everyone. It's hard to believe that August is just about over. 

Today I want to share my final page for Chris' When We Were Young challenge at 

Art Journal Journey.

Thank you Chris for a fun challenge. And thank you to everyone who joined in also. There were some really interesting ideas for this challenge.  It was great to think about being young; of course, we are still all young, aren't we? (grin)

I thought I would end the month with this page which is about transitions. There are so many of them in life, aren't there? But since  this challenge is about being young and since it is the end of August, I was thinking about going back to school, and how summer fun is over for another year. By the time summer rolls around again, the kids are a year older, and maybe even too old for make believe, playtime and hide and seek. I used to notice that a lot as I taught a lot of high school sophomores (or second year students if you aren't familiar with US schools). The kids in the fall would  still seem so young, but by the end of school year they had grown up a lot, both physically and mentally. 

My page's background is inked and the words are stamped. I used a scrap of painted paper to make the tag, and I added the girl. I attached it to my page and also added the die cut key. The words are stamped on white paper and then cut out. Finally I added a couple of sunflower gemstones.

Enjoy what's left to August. Thanks for visiting my blog. See you next month.

 

T Stands for Beer, the Beach and A Gingerbread House

 Hi everyone. Happy T day to you.

Last week I had a quiet week to myself, and it was lovely!!!! It's been a busy  summer for me.  A fun summer, but I was really ready for some me time.

And since today is T day, I need a drink photo to join everyone over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. Sadly I didn't stop  to take one single drink photo all week. Let me share  one from a few weeks ago. My husband and I had been out fishing, and afterwards, we went and picked up a mooring at the marina next to a small beach. The only way to get to this beach is by boat or to take a nice long walk through a wooded state park, so it's not like the usual long ocean beach most people think of.

This is the beach. I was more interested in the sky when I took this photo, but you can see the beach.

When the tide is high (as it was on the day I took this next photo-it was when we had the super moon), about half of the beach goes underwater.

Anyhow I am getting off track. After fishing we stopped to have a snack and a beer before we motored back up the river to where we keep the boat. And here's my drink photo for T this week. 

Shed beer is a brown beer brewed by the Shed Brewery in Vermont and is one of the favorites in my house.

I thought today  I would also wrap up a few photos from my last T day post. You might remember  that last week I showed you my walk to and from the ruins at Ashintully Gardens and Ruins. My friend and I had spent an afternoon there when we took a couple of days roadtrip to the southern Berkshires in western Massachusetts a few weeks back.

On our way to and from the gardens, we passed this interesting building. We stopped on our way back towards town.

 

The name sign said Santarella. Although this place looks a little worse for wear, especially the roof which looked in bad shape, it is still an eye catching piece of architecture. 

It's too bad the grounds weren't open to the public, as they sound interesting with those gardens and turrets. You can just make out the peak of one turret from the front. We could only park along the road and view this facade. I bet a lot of passers by stop. When we stopped there were 3 other cars of people who had also stopped.  

It would be a shame to think of this structure being ruined by a leaky roof and lack of care. I bet it costs a fortune to fix that roof though. In this next photo you can see the roof up close. There's sure a lot of shingles on it.

Here's 3 other photos I found online as I was trying to discover more about this property. This first photo is what the inside of the studio (now function hall) looks like. The is the inside of the building you see in my photos.

And the plaque outside said there were gardens. I found these photos of of the grounds online.

I would have loved to see more, and maybe in the future people will be able to.

That's all for me this week. 

Have a nice T day and week ahead.

Playtime

Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice weekend.

I'm back today with a short post with another page for Chris' When We Were Young challenge at Art Journal Journey. I realized how little time we have left to share art for this challenge, and I had some art left to post, so you get 2 pages in 2 days. This month is going to be over way too soon, isn't it? 

I have these 2 Victorian children rubber stamps in my stash, and I really wanted to use them. I noticed the little girl had a vintage hoop and stick toy, so I decided to use the word  play as my page's inspiration. This page  goes well with the games page I shared yesterday also.

I started by inking my page with several colors of ink. Then I stamped and fussy cut the children, as well as the teddy bear and the kitty image. I decided to leave them uncolored because of all the color in the background.  I placed those down on my page, and then added the white stenciled deli paper around them to make the page a little less flat. 

I had a very old chipboard set that came as a freebie when I bought something from  Technique Tuesday years ago. There were some dice and card suits images, puzzle pieces and some chess pieces too.  I inked them all with black and then randomly arranged them on my page.

I didn't know that the hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades on our American playing cards are not what you find on cards worldwide.  Our cards with those 4 suits go back to the French design and our 52 card decks with those suits are called the English style. I don't know if Victorian children played any games with die, but there were lots of card games for them.

  

I finished my page by stamping my quote. 

And today's piece(s) from Turnpark Art Space are game related, but definitely not Victorian game related.

I'm not sure if these colored tubes actually went with the game sculpture, but they easily could.

The artist created a Twister game, and implied how Putin's War (or on the big scale any war) is much like a game of Twister. I thought that was very clever.

I like how none of the words were completed. I think that says a lot.

This exhibit was hard to photograph, so I hope it made sense.

That’s all for me.  Enjoy the rest of your weekend. 

 

Games of All Kinds

 Hi everyone. Happy Saturday to you. 

Today I want to share a page I made for Chris' When We Were Young challenge at Art Journal Journey. My theme for today's collaged page is games of all types and kinds.

When I was younger, I loved to play board games. Clue  and Life were  favorites of mine, as well as card games like Go Fish and Rummey. As I got older I added Cribbage  and what we called High-Low-Jack to the car game mix. In fact I still like to play games, but my husband isn't a big game player so I don't get to play as often as I would like. As for sports, I was never a very good athlete, but I did enjoy skipping rope, playing tennis, and riding my bike, but I haven't played tennis in years. I'm not sure I would even be any good at all now. I have always been a walker though, even as  a kid, and I've always loved to swim, even if I'm not a very strong or particularly graceful looking swimmer. The past few summers I've been swimming laps at my MIL's place on the lake, and now I've got my husband and his sister swimming with me. I feel like such a trend setter-ha ha.

I made my page by inking the background and using a book page as my base. The images are ones I had in my stash, and I did have to color the boy as he was black and white. I stamped the black stitches across the bottom of the page, and I added the little foamy flowers.

And let me wrap up my post today with a few more photos from TurnPark Art Space in western Massachusetts.

There's a disco style ball hanging with a chair nearby. The reflection in the mirrors was pretty. I tried to get my face to show up in the squares, but this is the best I was able to photograph.

The park space was long and narrow. On one side was a little river or big brook and then this rocky cliff. Just beyond the cliff was Mass Turnpike, Route 90, a big highway. At first I noticed the traffic noise, and then I got wrapped up in the art and surprisingly I didn't notice the noise any longer.

There was some art connected to the  river, like this golden body floating.

And we never did figure out  what exactly this next piece was, but I am guessing, something that was supposed break down over time.

There were a couple of fun ceramics exhibits too. I really liked these little houses.

And this next piece looked messy at first glance, but it did photograph great and made me appreciate it more.

The mixed glazes were really great.

And I'll finish my post with this interesting piece.  I believe it was called Hunger.

I hope you haven't been bored with all these sculptures from TurnPark Art Space. 

Have a great weekend.