Happy Leap Day

 Hi everyone. Today is February 29th, and for some folks, they  get to celebrate their birthdays on their actual birthdays. Besides the fact that those of us who use the Julian calendar get an extra day this year, today is also the last day of meteorological  winter.  I am ready for spring (which may or may not actually arrive tomorrow in New Hampshire), and my journal page for today celebrates the idea of the upcoming season.

This is my last page for Vicki's Keeping It Light challenge at Art Journal Journey. Thank you Vicki for hosting. I really enjoyed your challenge theme too. It was perfect for February as the days start to get lighter.  I also want to thank everyone who joined in as we had some great art  and ideas this past month.

My page today uses light in 2 ways. Most of my images are light colors, and I also used the yellow-gold color. Yellow is a color of light. My lady is the goddess of light and nice weather. She brings the sunshine back, and with that sunshine we get flowers and butterflies. 

I also have one more tag for Sandie's asemic writing challenge at Tag Tuesday.  I think I should have written the word what instead of who because someone may be asking what the  writing on my tag says. And of course, asemic writing doesn't really say anything.  Grin😏.

I hope everyone's month wraps up in a good way. "See" you tomorrow with our new AJJ challenge for March.

The Rest of My Harry Potter Journal

Hi everyone.  It’s just about the end of February, but as you know,  we do get an extra day this year. I thought I’d save my end of the month final   Art Journal Journey post for tomorrow, the 29th.

I am linking up this first page to Vicki’s Keeping It Light challenge at Art Journal Journey.  This page, even though it is on a black background,  is again a contrast between light and dark. It may not be the most creative nor varied media page I've ever made however.   😏

I used mostly stickers as well as die cut spoon for this page. But the ice cream circle is the actual top from my little personal sized tub of butter beer ice cream. (And it was very yummy!❤)

And here are some other pages not for AJJ. Let me start with the cover. I've shown this before, but my friend Deb had the idea that I should add some actual Harry Potter quotes i my journal, so I added one to the cover to finish it off.

Dobby is one of the house elves in the HP books. House elves are more like a slave than a servant.  I made a house elf page and created another window view because they had some house elves in windows around the park.  This time the window lifts up.

The background is made with sponged on paint glaze.

We went to the Hard Rock for lunch one day, and I had a sandwich. We chose the Hard Rock because it was located in the City Walk area (of the parks) which is quiet during the day. It was nice to have a little crowd escape and to sit down at a more private table.  I made a page about that meal.

My background  started with a napkin I brought home. I gave it a spray of some liquid ink, and then I used some stickers, die cuts and the little flag that was in my sandwich.  

One night we went over to Disney Springs and walked around the shops. I hadn’t been there in close to 20 years and boy has that area gotten huge. I picked up this post card ( you can see it above) at the Coca Cola store. I also picked up a free Mickey Mouse sticker  at the world's biggest Disney Store and grabbed a menu from the ice cream shop where we had dinner. You can see those in the photo below.  Dinner was that hot fudge brownie sundae shown on the right hand page.  (And boy was that yummy too. ❤)

And who doesn’t love a minion? If you're not familiar with them, they are from some children's movies, and they're looking to work for the most evil person there is. I had a blast making this page.

You might remember my post about my new mug and the insane ride on the Veloci-coaster. I had to make a page for each of those.

I should have drawn in some upside down riders on my page. I might go back and do that.

And next here's a page I made with the saved tea packages from some mugs of tea I had in our hotel room. One thing our hotel did not have was free tea (what hotel doesn't have free tea?), but luckily my friend Deb brought some from home.

Then it was time to get ready to go home.

I made this (above) page using the inner packaging from some Hogwart's Express tickets I bought as a souvenir.  I liked the gold border around  the packaging. Above, I added the polka dot paper and the stickers.

Below I just attached the Hogwart's Ticket.  My ticket package had 2 tickets, one for each direction. I used the going to Hogwart's ticket in the front of my journal, and this one in the back.

And finally, the back of my journal. 

The final page was stenciled before I made a sticker collage. 

And on the inside of the back cover, I used some stickers and painted some buildings. I also used another quote from the Harry Potter stories.

I have a couple more pages I haven't shared. If I have time I might share them on another day, and if not, you basically saw all of the journal.

I hope it wasn't too boring.

Have a great day.

T Stands for a Few Random Things.

 Hi everyone. It is the beginning of the new week and time for T.   I hope everyone had a lovely week since we last met.

Last week was a weird week for  me, but not a bad week. Some of you might have read how my husband was diagnosed with pneumonia and spent a night in the hospital. Luckily the antibiotics are doing what they should, but that totally changed  how I expected the end of the week to go.  It also wasn't how my husband expected his week to end either. And luckily, it went a lot better than is could have  😏. 

Last week,  I also squeezed in a couple of ocean side walks.  One day I was at the beach and on another I went to a state park near the beach. It was a beautiful day when I went to the state park, and I managed to get a few photos that I thought I'd share.

It was fun to see this large ship so closely passing by, and below, I really liked the view looking up at the sun through this cedar tree.

This tree lined path always looks so inviting to walk down.  The high clouds were quickly moving in even though the bad weather didn't hit until Friday.

Since it is T day, I need to share a drink  over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

Last Friday the hubby and I went down to the pharmacy to get his antibiotic prescriptions filled. He also  owed me breakfast.  I say that because last Wednesday he had a colonoscopy scheduled, and I was his designated driver. He told me that once he got out of his colonoscopy, he would take me to breakfast. He was the first patient of the day at 6:30 AM. He suspected he would be out by 9 or 9:30.  However,

after his colonoscopy  he  was having some breathing issues, and this is when they discovered he had a mild case of pneumonia. That was when he was admitted to the hospital so they could pump some antibiotics into him. Needless to say we never made it to breakfast. 

To keep this short, he came home Thursday afternoon, and Friday we had to get his prescriptions filled. We decided we'd stop for a late breakfast at our favorite hole in the wall breakfast and lunch place. Here's my diet Pepsi along with my meal.

I had a cheese omelette, some cinnamon raisin toast along with home made baked beans. Yum.

That's all for me this week. Have a super T day and week ahead. 

More of My Harry Potter Journal

Hi everyone. I hope your weekend is going well. 

Since my husband is in recuperation mode, it's a fairly quiet weekend at my house. Our dining room light stopped working the other day, so  that's been the project my husband is playing around with. He's not feeling 100%, but pretty close, so the light project is just enough to keep him busy, but not so strenuous it will wear him out. Yesterday  I cleaned out a cabinet that needed to be organized for about 10 years. Phew, I am glad that is done because every year I write it down on the to do list. I'm glad I won't have to add next year!😀

 I'm back today with some more pages from my Harry Potter journal. I had  a lot of fun making this project.  One reason I had so much fun was the subject and the fact that I already had this book of HP stickers. I was glad to have a good place to use some of the stickers, and I tried to use them in a creative way and not just stick them onto paper. Whether I succeeded or not is up the eye of the viewer.

I also enjoyed making this album in a 3 ring binder. I certainly was able to get it completed a lot faster than in a bound or glued journal because I could work on multiple pages during a sitting. Of course that meant I had a lot of pages on the floor drying too. 😏 

This first page in today's post was actually quite easy to make because I recently found a half done card I had started a long time ago. The back of it had gotten crushed, but the dragon in the window design on the front was still in good shape. Since the dragon in Diagon Alley at Harry Potter world was my favorite  "creature" in the park, I cut out this image from the card.  My background was made by inking some blue and wine colored ink pads, and then I added the sticker quote

The page below is actually the front of a greeting card I picked up in the park. The Dumbledore image is actually holographic, but with my camera it didn't pick up the other view.

I cut the front of the card off, and on the back  I made this page.

  My next page is about a ride we took, Hagrid's Flying Motorbikes. I used stickers and some rubber stamps on this one, as well as a bit of drawing. 

I also die cut the pumpkins and added a postage stamp that came on a card from Elle either on a Halloween or Christmas card. The ride is similar to the postage stamp, a motorcycle with the sidecar.

It was easy to do a bit of window shopping in Diagon Alley, and my sticker book had lots of matching stickers. The top page is made from acetate with a die cut window and are the windows we looked into.

You can lift it and see what's underneath.

And the rest of the pages for this post are various places we visited in the park, starting with the Knight's Bus. I stenciled and colored in the stars and added the other postage stamp that came on the same card from Elle I mentioned earlier. The quote is stamped. I used a couple of stickers on the page also.

We also went to a wand store where they had a little demonstration of how your wand picks you. I chose to use Dunbledore with his wand fighting "he who should not be named", even though the show was nothing to do with any battle scenes.Those of you not familiar with Harry Potter, Dumbledore is the head of the school, and "he who should not be named" is the dark and evil character.

 Gringott's, the bank, is where the witches and wizards stored their gold, so I needed gold paper for my background. 

Finally for this post a sticker page about the Weasley twins  joke shop.  I had a lot of stickers that worked for this store. 

 I have one more post to show you  of my journal. I hope you're enjoying seeing it. 

I'll be linking up this post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles . 

Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Some Random Faces

Hi everyone. Happy Friday. 

Let me first thank all of you for your thoughts that my husband gets better quickly. If you didn't stop by my blog yesterday I mentioned how he ended up in the hospital for a night with pneumonia. I think most people would have been sent home with antibiotics,  but because he is immuno-comprimised  the doctors were playing it safe. The good news is that he is now home and recovering. 😀❤👍

Today for Gillena's Friday Lunch Break and for Nicole's  Friday Face Off   I have the rest of my faces from my January trip to Universal Studios in Florida.  There is more to the parks than Harry Potter.

This first face is definitely different.

One night before we headed back to our hotel room we stopped at the Voodoo Donuts in the park, and we each picked out 1 donut for our breakfast. The park hotel didn't include breakfast, so we had done a grocery store run to get some food, and we figured a donut would be a nice little accompaniment.  Mine was the chocolate frosted one (that was delicious by the way). 

I think his scream looks better with half his body missing because now he really has something to moan about-not just the pretzel voodoo poke.

And there are some faces on the donut box too.

Years ago I was in Portland, Oregon and went to the original Voodoo donut shop. I see now they are in many places, including at Universal Studios.

One show we went to while in the park was on horror film make up. It was interesting, and I learned a lot. It was also pretty funny. (But they didn't allow photography.)

While waiting for the show we went through the small museum in the front of the building. I didn't know it was Universal Movie Studios who made the first ever horror movies.

And they made TV shows too. You might remember The Munsters from 1313 Mockingbird Lane. 

And how can you not love the Minions?

One ride we went on was called The Mummy, based on the 1999 Brandon Fraser film  by the same name. Here's an Anubis view from when we waited in the line for the ride.

And finally, I'll end with me about to get eaten by a T. rex.  I don't look very afraid😏, even though I was trying to act like I was. I think had I known how bad the Jurassic Park roller coaster ride was going to be I would have looked petrified at this point.

That's all for me today. Have a great weekend.

 

Blue Skies and Sunshine

 Hi everyone. It's already getting into the  second half of the week. I hope your week is going well.  

Today I have a journal page and a tag for a couple of challenges.

First here's my page for Vicki's challenge at Art Journal Journey. You probably know by the now her theme is Keeping It Light.

My page started with this scrap of packaging that you see on the left. I liked the image too much to throw it out, but I was a little stuck about what to do with it.

Before I attached it to my journal page I painted my background blue. The background on the packaging was white, so I used some blue paint glaze over my whole  page hoping it would pull the 2 parts together. The glaze colored the packaging nicely, but the rest of the page was still too blue. To fix that I used my favorite  color fading trick. I sponged a bit of gesso over the dark blue.

I then stamped my favorite cow image. She has such a  sweet face; I just love her. I actually stamped the image twice, once on the page and once on acetate. I added the acetate image over the other image because doing that really makes the image pop more. 

I die cut some small butterflies and flowers. I inked them for color. I added them, along with some  confetti foam circles to the packaging design. I also added a metallic paper sun, and I colored in a few of the details. Finally I used an old stamp set for my quote.

I also have a tag today for Sandie's Asemic Writing challenge at Tag Tuesday.

I don't know if you can see the turtles in the water. 

I originally had asemic writing on all of the tag, and it made me think of water.  I thought turtles in the water was a great idea, but then they didn't look right being on the water.   I tried using a narrow tipped paint bottle to write  over the turtles,  and that just looked weird and not like the ocean, so I added some darker blue paint. This is how my tag ended up when I was finally (mostly) happy with it. I just wish the quote was smaller in size, but it fit the boat on my tag so well that I decided the heck with it and used it.

I had an early morning commitment yesterday morning, and I also have one for each of the next couple of days.  However, Wednesday's appointment ended up with my husband being admitted to the hospital. He had some pneumonia in part of his lungs, and since he's immune suppressed, they wanted him to go in  for observations.  At least he doesn't have covid, because that test came back negative. I'm hoping when I hear from him this morning he'll be doing better and able to get home.  So please excuse me if I don't/ didn't get by your blog.

That's all for me today.   

New Challenge at TIOT

 Hi everyone. It's Tuesday which means it's time once again for another new challenge at Try It On Tuesday

Thank you Uschi for hosting our Hearts and/or Flowers challenge. And thank you everyone who joined in too. It was great to see so many participants. ❤

Now we're onto a new challenge. Like all our challenges, this one  runs for the next 2 weeks.  This time our challenge is something that was new for me. We're asking you to make some art

IN THE SPOTLIGHT

If you're like me and didn't know what was meant by In the Spotlight, spotlight art is when you only color in a small area (or areas)  of your design. That way your colored image stands out.

I made a card for this challenge. I started by stamping a piece of white paper with this old Hero Arts quilted image.  Then I  used a pencil to outline a circle and colored in that area. I wasn't  the neatest along the edge of the circle, so I die cut a black ring to not only enhance the colors, but also to cover up where I went outside the lines.  😉  Since there was not a focal point in my colored part, I added the small die cut heart and a metallic paper bow. I then stitched my quilted piece onto a white card. I over-sewed the corners so the stitching would actually stand out more. I finished by adding the stamped quote. 

You should definitely check out the rest of the design team's art because some of them were much more familiar with this technique than I was and really made some great spotlight pieces.

We hoped you'll be inspired and make some In The Spotlight art to share with us during this challenge.

And thanks for visiting my blog also. ❤

T Stands for Walking and the Shorelineat

 Hi everyone. Here's a big hello to the T day ladies since it is time once again to share our drinks and lots of other things too. And of course that hello goes to everyone who stops by.

Last week I had a fun week. I was home for a few days with no place I had to go. ❤ I made good use of my  time and made a lot of art while listening to a couple of different books. It was the perfect way to spend a few windy and cold February days especially since the spare bedroom (now my art space) gets lots of wonderful sunshine.

On a couple of other days  last week I met up with some friends and went walking. Between mud, ice and snow, we can't trail walk right now, so one day a friend and I walked around the outside of 2 back to back shopping malls. But later in the week the tides were finally right at the beach so Thursday I had plans to meet my  friend at the beach.

We had a fun surprise for our beach walk too. Just before I reached the beach I stopped at a gas station to use the bathroom (since there is none during the winter at the beach). I was back in my car getting ready to drive when I heard a lot of horn beeping. I looked up and  who had pulled into the space  next to me but 2 other friends.  They also had planned to go to the beach to walk and were taking a  pre-walk potty stop. It worked out great that all 4 of us could walk together and catch up, and then we all decided to go get lunch afterwards.  I love these kind of spontaneous events. 

This photo is looking down on the beach from up on the road.

The storm surges had been rather rough at the shore lately.   Storms have been hitting during the very high tides (spring tides) that happen when there is a full or new moon.  I think I've shown the remains of this shipwreck before, but the other day it was more exposed than I've ever seen it.

These houses lost a bit of their " front yards" in one of the recent storms we've had. You can see just above the stone retaining wall some erosion.

I'm guessing the high tide surges went as far as where the erosion is, but maybe some people even got a  bit of water into their houses. I'm not sure.

And someone lost part of a walkway that led down to the beach. 

A couple of recent  ocean storms really wracked a bit of havoc on the  road that runs along the beach also. It's a state road, and it was closed for over a week.  Now there are still signs of the mess, including these debris piles all along the edge of several  miles of the road.  These piles are a mixture of sand and mostly small rocks that the waves brought up and then left behind when they receded. They all were plowed off to the side   using snow plows or some type of heavy equipment.

This next photo is a pull off where you can park and watch the ocean. Right now it's still a big  mess.

I'm just sharing these views, but  for those of you who might point out what's going on other places, I know  this is small damage compared to some locations on the planet.

After our beach walk the four of us went and had lunch. You can see my glass of water which is my ticket to T day this week over at Elizabeth"s and Bleubeard's blog . You can also see my sandwich which was a pulled pork grilled cheese. I could only eat half of it, since the fries were pretty tasty. I managed to devour them.

But that meant I had  half a sandwich for later. 😏 

That's all for me today. I hope everyone has a super T day and week ahead.