Faces and Signs

 Hi everyone. Happy last day of June. Wow.  It's been a busy week and a very wet week for me. Finally yesterday we saw the sun. 😀

And it is Friday.It's an extra long weekend for my husband and many other people.  Well sort of a long weekend for me because I'm still working Monday and Tuesday mornings at the lake. :) That is if it's not raining again.

Today I am linking up to Nicole's Friday Face Off and also to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

My husband is someone who likes to travel, but also someone  can't get excited about a trip until it's actually happening.  I'm glad I don't wait for him to plan trips or we'd never go anywhere other than on his boat. (I think his boat is only thing he really gets excited about early.) Smile.

These next 3 photos for Friday Face Off are him showing me how excited he is. The first one is when we boarded the plane, the second one is when we were getting close to landing, and the last one is when we were in Iceland.

And I'm always interested by signs when I travel, so let me share some from Iceland with you today. I am still going through photos, so some of these need a bit of straightening out or a bit of lightning up which I  have yet to do. Yet showing them as they are only adds a bit to the spontaneity of travel.

And this next sign was actually crooked so my photo is straight.

I tried some of that ice cream too, and it was very delicious.

Below, a whale tail sign in Husavik, the whale capital of Iceland. This one definitely needs some lightening.

And as you can see, as long as you can read English, you should be ok most places.

Icelandic poem plaque on a bright orange lighthouse.

We did a lot of backroads exploring (always the best part of a trip), and we found this hot spring spot that was used for baptizing people  starting around the year 1000 when Iceland became Christian. You could take a little walk into where the spring is located. Since the spring was on private property, someone, at some point, had been selling rhubarb jam, this sign was up.

Our Reykjavik studio hotel room was near this wine bar.

And to find our way back when out on a walk, I took a photo of  our hotel's street sign.

Here's a rock sign at the geysers in Geyser, and 

here's another sign that could use a bit of straightening and cropping. This sign was at the Bridge Between the Continents where you could walk from the European geologic plate to the North American plate.  

I'll be back with more Iceland photos next week since I have new AJJ posts scheduled for this weekend. Have a  great end of June, start of July, weekend and celebration if you country celebrates a holiday over the next few days.

Wrapping Up June at AJJ

 Hi everyone. I hope you're having a nice week. Mine has been busy with appointments, a couple of shortened work mornings because of heavy rains and thunderstorms, as well as  a few things I was trying to accomplish.

As today is the second to last day of June, I want to share my last page for Matilde's All About Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey. You still have one more day to join us of you're interested.

I'd forgotten that I had paper rollers that texturize paper when it is rolled though. These tools are some of the first tools I bought back when I started scrapbooking in the 1990's, and basically they are small rollers with texture. You take a strip of paper,turn the side handle to roll it through and end up with a textured strip. I have 3-one that does circles, one that does lines and one with stars. I thought I had a heart one too, but who knows what happened to that.

One day I out of the blue remembered those tools, so I dug them out and textured some cardstock. I then used strips of that paper to create some of my background.

On the parts where there was no textured cardstock I used some very old rub-on numbers. After that I used some inks and some blobs of bright watercolors to finish off my background.

It was then time for something horizontal (the washi tape), some TH people, a TH quote, and finally a couple of Art by Marlene punch out images. I used a white pen on the bunting to add some contrast to it. 

**And I definitely want to say THANK YOU to Matilde for hosting and I also want to say THANK YOU to everyone who joined in at AJJ .**  Numbers was a really fun challenge.

I am also linking up to Rain's  Art and Dinner Date , even if I'm not on topic this week.

And yesterday I promised a few more photos from Iceland. Here they are for those who are interested. We're now on the far eastern side of the island, still along the south shore.

Here's another of those one way bridges that I wrote about yesterday. This one was scary as it was long, and because  it was foggy, we couldn't clearly see the other end of it. Luckily no one was coming the other way (which would have meant someone would have had to back up). 

We have now arrived at the popular spot called Jokulsarlon, the iceberg lagoon. These icebergs in the fog are interesting.

This is a popular place, and it was very crowded. They even have an overflow parking lot here. One thing you can do  is take an iceberg boat tour. We did an iceberg boat tour (as you might remember from an earlier post), but not here. There is a less crazy place about 15 minutes away. The big difference between the 2 is that where we went is on an iceberg lake, and these photos are taken at an iceberg ocean cove.

Here's some photos from where we took our iceberg tour. It wasn't foggy where we were, and there were only 20 people instead of the big crowds.

These first few are from the zodiac boat, and I have yet to do anything to them.

Here's the hubby and I at the head of the glacier. Our captain took this photo.

Just to give you a scale of things, you can see the next boat group walking down to the glacier lake.

And even though some of these icebergs don't look that large, don't be fooled. I'm not sure of their exact height, but they towered over us in our zodiac boat. And remember, only about 1/3 of an iceberg is above the water. 

That's all for me today. 

Wednesday Art-Going Abstract

Hi everyone. Yesterday a really cool thing happened. All afternoon I was thinking about having a grilled cheese sandwich. When my husband came home from work he was carrying a nice artisan loaf of bread and package of some cheese. When I asked him if he was thinking of grilled cheese, he smiled.  I love  when we're both thinking the same thing without talking about it. (Or smile- maybe we've been together for too long...nope I don't think that could happen.)

June is starting to wind down which doesn't seem possible to me. I think being away and then having a couple of busy weeks has really made this month fly quickly by.

My page today is for Matilde's s Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey  It is made with some transparencies and some scraps off my work table.  And, let me add, it was really fun to make. 

I started by glueing down a scrap of cheesecloth and my transparencies.  The transparency was one big circle that I cut apart. Then I used some hot pink watercolors and painted with them in a purposefully very messy way.  To tie the watercolor side with the transparency side I added a few scraps of painted deli paper.  I also added the little piece of scrap printed tissue paper because it had some numbers on it for Matilde's challenge. 

Finally I added the other transparency (all of these transparencies are from a set by Dina Wakely). I also added some little foam confetti dots as well as a number 3 that I cut out of a sheet of scrap paper.  Finally I added the TH quote. 

Making this page was quite freeing because I  did what felt right, and I didn't think a lot about layout. I love how it just came together.

And let me share some more photos from Iceland for those of you who are interested. Today we're heading east on the Ring Road. We're still along the south side of the island, not far from where we'd turn north and head into the fjords but further east than the waterfalls I showed you last week. That whole day seemed to have a photographic marine layer fog whenever we dipped close to the shore.

Iceland also has many of these one lane bridges. For the majority of them, you just look and see if anyone is coming. Luckily the traffic is fairly light, except in this next photo where we followed someone across the bridge.

One of the other very common birds I saw in Iceland were Whooper Swans. You can see 4 just to the bottom left of the glacier in this above photo. This next photo isn't great, but I have others that I'll share when I get to that part of the trip.

That's all for me today. I have some more  photos that I'll share tomorrow.

Thanks for visiting.