Wrapping Up July

Hi everyone. Can you believe it is just about the end of July?  

It's time for me to post my last page for Halle's "I've Got a Notion" challenge at Art Journal Journey It was fun thinking about sewing themed pages; I haven't done that for a while. And as usual, I get on a roll and then the month ends. 😏 Thank you everyone who joined in, or who will join in between this post and the end of the month. And Halle, I hope you had fun and you'll join us again soon.  Thanks for being a great host.

     I knew exactly what I wanted to do on this page. Funny how sometimes building a page is a process of unknowns and trying out ideas, and sometimes everything goes with a plan. This was a planned page, and I'm very happy with it.

     I have an old set of clear stamps that are the ends of thread spools. I stamped various ones in different colors.  The red felt heart was in my stash; I have a few that came in a Valentine's supply package. Before I attached it, I stitched around it on my sewing machine.  I also die cut the flowers and attached them to the page so they would be behind the heart. I used a white pen to add some depth, as well as some glitter glue and a white button for the middle  flower. To finish my page I used a couple of old word dies to make my quote for the page. I used the word sunshine because it is needed for the plants that flower to grow. 

    That's all for me for this month. Enjoy the end of July,  and I'll be back first thing in August with the new AJJ challenge. 

 

T Stands for Some Random Photos

 Hi everyone. And a special hello to the folks who stop by at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog  for T Day.

For this T day I’ll be sharing some random photos from around my little spot on the planet. FYI-this is a photo heavy post today.

I not only captured this cabbage white butterfly on my starting to bloom oregano, but I also got the bumblebee at the top too. I didn't even notice the bee until  I looked at the photo.

And I'm not great at dragonfly identification, but I think this is a blue darner on my bee balm.

A busy lady (honey bee) on this sunflower.

I'm pretty happy with my woods little garden. The sweet woodruff took off like crazy this year, and I recently picked up some coral bells to fill spots. (The greenhouse near me is now closed, but for a couple of weeks before closing for the year they have buy 1 get 1 free to unload all their plants.) I'm waiting for my Vinca to start spreading a bit more though.

I'm not too happy about these elephant ears bulbs though. I bought a big shade garden collection of them from Costco. Some went into a couple of pots and some went into the ground. There's nothing wrong with the ones in the pots, but the *+!@* chipmunks ate all the ones I put in the ground, which was most of them. Live and learn I guess. 

But these 3 year old zinnia seeds grew great and look nice in my rusting old  bucket.

And this plant started growing on the edge of the grass. I wasn't sure what it was, until now. It's a huge goldenrod. It doesn't look good the way it is all flopped over, but I know the bees and other insects really rely on it in August. And FYI- golden rod is NOT ragweed, which some people are allergic to.

A terrible photo, but I'm finally getting some little cucumbers in my garden.. 👍

  I made a blueberry with some cherries pie last week. I've never made crust in a food processor before, but it made a very good crust.

You may have seen the photos about my visit to Star Island that I posted about last week. (Here's the post Star Island if you are interested). We went into the hotel on the island to use the bathroom, and we explored it just a bit too. Here's a few photos. You can see how not modern it is. I bet it didn't look very different when it was built in 1876, except maybe these electric lights were actually gas lamps.

In the Pink Parlor  they had a small display about a famous historical local named Celia Thaxter. She was born in Portsmouth (New Hampshire), and then grew up on  one of the Isles of Shoals. It was a small island and the family was the only ones on it because her father was the lighthouse keeper.  The lighthouse was the only thing on the island. Thaxter became a relatively famous poet and writer. She  hosted writers on Star Island during the summers that included some big names in American literature such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Greenleaf Whittier and Sarah Orne Jewett. And to connect this to my T day post, Celia Thaxter also  liked to paint dinnerware too.

Here's some examples of her dinnerware that were on display in the pink parlor. She did a lovely job. 

You might notice a cup in the bottom left, and there's a couple of drink pitchers at the top left. Those are my tickets to T this week.

They also had one of her handwritten poems  framed and hanging on the wall.

I think that is enough for me today. I hope everyone has a great T day and week ahead.

It's Sunday

 Hi everyone.  I hope you're having a great weekend. Our weather is beautiful, and  I finally got out and did some much much needed garden weeding yesterday morning. Right now I'm in a self-discussion about my big flower garden and how my tall phlox and bee balm have relocated (over the last few years) themselves to the sunny side. They don't look bad there, but they're so tall they're blocking the shorter plants. The question is, once the blooming season is over do I move them back to the other side of the garden or move the shorter plants?  Somehow I think in the long run it will be less work to move the shorter plants because I swear those phlox and bee balm have feet and walk. 😏

Here's a pre-weeding photo I took the other day to show you what I mean about the tall plants. Boy my garden looks wild! (And out of control too-grin)

Today I have a bit of art to share, both a journal page and a tag. Let me start with the tag.

      This time around Valerie is hosting at Tag Tuesday, and her theme is Summer Holidays.

     One thing I like to do in the summer is float around in the water, especially if it's hot. I'm sure lots of folks like a pool,lake or ocean to get wet in. That's the theme of my Summer Holidays tag. I started by using a stencil and some blue ink. Then I used a new die set that I recently splurged on. I really liked the floating lady (by Concord and Ninth), and I die cut all the pieces using scraps of paper. I didn't bother with a face because by the time I cut all pieces, I didn't want to ruin the face and have to start cutting all over again. 😏  The words come from an old stamp set I have, and I have no idea who made that because I'd thrown out the packaging a long time ago. 

I also have another journal page for Halle's "I've Got a Notion" challenge at Art Journal Journey.

       I covered my page in some fabric looking paper, and then I stamped the stitched flowers. They reminded me of pin cushions actually. I die cut the dress form, the sewing needle and the scissors. I first glued down the dress form and added a bit of cheesecloth to it. After I glued the other die cuts down, I used a white paint pen to make the thread in the needle look white.   I had some of these gemstone sunflower stickers  so I added them. The trim along the top and bottom borders is a punch out and finally I stamped the quote and fussy cut that before adding it to my page.

         There's still a few more days to join Halle at AJJ as her challenge runs through the end of the month.

       I am also linking this page up to Creative Artiste's Mixed Media challenge blog. This is challenge number 106, as as always, the theme is Anything Goes. 

         And last but never least, I am linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles at her blog.

        Enjoy whatever is left to your weekend and have a great start to the new week.

My Greece Travel Journal

Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I hope everyone has had a great week and will have a nice weekend ahead. Today I am linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break and Nicole's Friday Face Off.

Last week I finished up and bound my Greece travel journal. Some of you already know, but for those who don't, I save lots of scraps from my trip, and when I get home I like to make a journal about my trip. It's not exactly a scrapbook, and I rarely include photos. I try my hand at making scenes; I do a bunch of collage, and there's also some stamping too.

Let me show you my cover and bound journal first.

     I used a blue fat quarter of fabric to cover an old book cover. I cut the cover boards off of the book by removing the spine and pages, then I added the fabric to both cover pieces. After the matte medium dried, I stenciled on some Greek letters, added a die cut of a wreath (to mimic a laurel or olive wreath), and then I added this evil eye applique. I found the applique marked down on a sale rack after I was home from the trip. The back is similar to this front except for there is only the stenciled blue fabric cover. 

I tried something different for the binding this time. It's a little  flexible, but overall I like it. I took some more of the blue fabric, folded it over a few times and added some rigid sewing interfacing to it. All that is sewn together. It's a little shorter than the front and back covers, but I did that on purpose because I thought it would look nice to have the edges of the pages sticking out on the top and bottom. I used some super sticky tape to attach it to the front and back covers, and then I took some blue bookbinding tape (which I bought for this project) to hold it together. If you've never used bookbinding tape it is great stuff. It is very sticky fabric  tape, and it can be used for a book binding by itself.

You can see from the binding that this journal is quite thick. You can also see where I stitched in the signatures of my journal (using wax book binding thread). Then I stitched in this blue and white "bracelet that I got for free in Athens. On one end, where you would tie it around your wrist, I added some beads from my stash.

     Since I am linking up to Nicole's Friday Face Off, let me share some "faces" from this journal. These are mostly snippets of pages and not the whole page. These first few pages include some postcards I bought or snippets of postcards that I cut apart.

On this next page I added this stamped image after I found the rubber stamp in my stash (I forgot I even had it). Of course I had to add him to the book. 

And this bakery bag came from a breakfast treat in Corfu. The owl is from a bookmark I bought.

And more postcard creations.

Here's an image I printed off the internet. I learned about St. Barbara when I visited Meteora.

Does the Starbucks face look familiar to anyone? My daughter wanted one of their mugs that said Greece. This is off the bag it came in.

The tour groups in this next photo were not at the Acropolis when I visited. I cut this photo out of an old book because it worked well.

And finally, a patch I did buy in Athens, but I added the little glass pieces to the eyes.

I still have some Greece photos to share which I will hopefully get back to soon.

Have a super weekend ahead. 

 

This Week Is Quiet But Last Week Wasn't

    Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. I am really enjoying a very unscheduled week along with the rain and clouds we've been having.  I'm not really a rainy day person, but it was so dry we needed the moisture. Plus, since I haven't had much on the calendar this week (hurrah for a quiet week), it's great to have some time to do a few art projects, make a blueberry pie with some native blueberries I bought and even get a bit of a cleaning project accomplished. 😀

     During the summer my husband only works until noon on Friday's, so that's our boating/fishing day. Last week we took a break from fishing and invited a friend of mine and her sister out for a cruise. It was an absolutely gorgeous weather day (as tomorrow promises to be), and we went a bit offshore to Star Island, which is a part of the Isles of Shoals. The Isles of Shoals is a small group of islands about 7 miles offshore. Some islands are in the state of Maine, and some are in of New Hampshire.

     Star Island is owned by the Unitarian Universalist Church. It is definitely a  place to escape. Not only does the island run self-growth retreats, but it also runs art, writing, birding and a variety of other classes that are not religiously based. Star Island has a history of being a retreat for some of New England's most famous classic writers back in the mid-1800's when it was not owned by the Unitarian Church, and a famous local poet, Celia Thaxter actually grew up on one of the other Isles of Shoals as she was lighthouse keeper's daughter.

     Today there is  an old hotel on Star Island. The Oceanic was built in 1876. It is still a very bare bones place and hasn't had a lot of updating. You are welcome to come ashore and visit. We usually take  1 or 2 boat rides out there during the summer, and I have visited the island in the past. However, I haven't gone ashore since before COVID hit. It's always fun to take a step back in time, and I think the island is very scenic. One day I might even go for one of their (non-religious) programs and stay over.

     My husband dropped us off at the boat dock, and he took the boat and anchored in the harbor. I think he took a nap while we went for a walk around the island and explored. I thought I shared a few photos today of our trip.

My husband's boat is the tiny one on the far left of the photo.

The views from our walk were very scenic.

Besides the hotel there are some cute little cottages on the island. I'm not sure who lives in them during the summer, but I'm guessing the people who run the island.

The island is the largest off-grid solar farm off the coast of New England, all to be as  self-sufficient as possible.

     This post is getting long, so I'll share some more photos another day. But let me end this post with a few photos from another island in the Shoals. I don't know the name of this island, but I do know that the cormorants love it. We cruised by it before we ended up in Gosport Harbor at Star Island.

Enjoy your day!