T Stands for Spring Things

Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday (or Monday evening). I'm stopping by Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog for T day, and I'll be sharing my drink at the end of this post. 

     Last week we finally turned the corner and started having some late spring weather. Hurrah! It's good to finally have some warm up. (And this week we are supposed to really warm up!)

     This photo (that is looking out my window) says that we're getting into late May. You can see my husband has his boat out to clean, and secondly you can see my flats of flowers that I bought last week. Here in my area of New England they recommend not planting tender annuals until we get close to Memorial Day weekend (the last weekend and Monday in May) because of the chance of frost. But this week is going to be HOT so I started my planting in the last few days. ❤

     Last week for T I shared my screen porch mess. My other project this past week was to get that cleaned up. I haven't yet painted the floor, nor moved my indoor plants  out onto it, but I did get it cleaned and set up so I can use it.  It only takes me an afternoon to do it, and the longest part is waiting for the floor dry after I wash it. 

It doesn't look any different than it has for several years, which some of you might notice. 

My local botanical garden opened last week, and I visited one afternoon. I thought I'd share some spring views with you.

This plant in the next photo is Sweet Woodruff. I have a lot of it blooming in my yard right now also.

My peonies have small buds, but this one (above) looks almost ready to pop open.

 And since even small plants can be beautiful, don't forget to look down.

And finally at the garden, here's the bees, which many of you know I am quite fond of.

I went out to lunch twice last week, and both times forgot to take any photos 😟, so for my T day link for 

let me share a cup of tea I made one evening.

     That's all for me this week. Wishing you a happy T day and week ahead. 

 

Green

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

    Today I have a page for Valerie's and my challenge at Art Journal Journey.  This month, as you probably already know, we're celebrating Poetry.  My journal page is all about the color green. Along with blue, green is my favorite color. Plus, with all the leaves bursting forth in my area, I am very inspired by that color right now.

     The background is a painted and then while still wet, I used a wet rag  and a stencil to wipe away some of the paint. I also took some bright apple green paint and used that same stencil to make the design which I thought looked a lot like green leaves. The actual leaves, the moon, and the circles along the bottom are all die cuts, and I used a couple of ancient paper punches to make the apples and the stars. I did stamp with a darker green onto the die cut green leaves. I added the printed poem.

     I also added some green confetti bits to the circle border at the bottom, colored in the moon, added a bit of glitter glue to give the stars some sparkle, and then I finished my page with a bit of white splattered paint. I also used a marker and outlined the edges of my page.

     I  am also going to share my page over at Creative Artiste Mixed Media Blog. Their theme is always Anything Goes, as long as you use at least 3 types of media. And last but never least,  I am also linking up to Gillena's  Sunday Smiles .

     And since I am on the subject of green, let me share this page I made in my Greece travel journal. One of the hotels we stayed in during our trip had a card about housekeeping. I snagged the card and cut out the feeling green words as well as the thank you phrase at the bottom of my page. I drew in the rest of my page using all the ingredients in a Greek Salad, which I enjoyed with many meals on my travels.

     The veggies are drawn, painted and colored using markers. They're outlined with a Sharpie or other markers. The drizzle of olive oil at the top is made with some yellow translucent paint in a drawn in bottle. I need to learn how to make glass look more like glass. It would be very useful. 

That's all for me today. Have a great rest of your weekend and/or start to the new week. 

 

Spring Blooms

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has flown by, and in my area we've finally had some  summery feeling weather. I think we've finally turned the corner from early spring. 😏

The other day my local botanical garden opened for the season. We had our first summer like day so far this year, and there was barely a cloud in the sky, so I met a couple of friends and we went to check out the spring blooms. 

Let me start with some faces for Nicole's Friday Face Off.  I'll also be linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

These are just some of the many fun faces in the garden.

And here's 2 frogs. One is  definitely a statue, but we couldn't decide if the other one was alive or a statue.

I guess I will need a trip back to see if the frog-that-looks-alive is still sitting there.

And let me share a few other spring blooms and views with you.

The crab apple trees were gorgeous.

     It was a fantastic visit, well mostly. The black-flies have finally arrived en masse. They're on the later side this year, but they shouldn't be around too much longer I would think.  Still, our first summer like day, blue skies, and all these spring scenes made it hard to let the bugs ruin the day.

Have a great start to your weekend. 

Alphabet Pages

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

     Today I am linking up to May's More Than Words Monthly Challenge. This month their theme is TRAVEL. I thought I would share a couple of pages from my Greece travel journal that I've been working on.

        At some point early in the trip, my friends and I had a conversation about what people think about when they want to fall asleep but can't. The idea of an alphabet list came up, and  from that discussion we decided we could make an alphabet list  about our trip. Most evenings we would add words from our day  and match them up to the letters that they start with.  

      My friend Deb kept the list and typed it up when we were home. (Thanks Deb.) I'm using that typed up list  in some of the pages in my travel journal, and I'll share a couple of pages today. 

     

     For this first page I used some scrap paper, some stickers, die cut trim and fussy cut stamped kitties. To this I added my A and B letter lists, a map of Athens and our hotel key from where we stayed in the city. Since this is my travel journal I marked where the hotel was located.

     My K, L and M page celebrates the spring weather and flowers we had. I used some crayons, some little plastic flowers, a die cut sun and cloud, some sticky fabric sunglasses, paper, a rubber stamps and 2 inks, markers and finally a tiny thermometer from a packet I bought probably 10 or more years ago.

      I love this list idea. ❤  Now that I'm home, it helps remind me of many items and experiences we had while  traveling, and it was also a great way to recap a day.   And you should have seen how excited we were when we came across a Q,X or Z words. Grin. 😏

     I'll definitely be doing this again next time I go on a trip. It's fun, can be done with the whole group, or done by yourself, whatever strikes your fancy. 

      That's all for me today. I hope your week is going well. 

Wednesday Art

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.

     Today I'll start my post with a bit of poetry. Here's a silly piece I made for Valerie's and my Poetry challenge at Art Journal Journey.  I wrote a poem about my page using some words. These words came in a  box of  assorted words that I thought would be useful, but mostly were kind of a "pain" to dig through to find what you wanted. 😏 (That's why they've been sitting in my happy place for at least a decade.)

     To make my page I started with a bit of sheet music. I glued that down and then colored my entire background with yellow, red and orange inks. I stamped the couple, colored them and fussy cut them out. I stamped the instruments and fussy cut them out.  I added a strip of striped paper vertically to give me a place  to add all my cut outs. I also added the couple, but before I added the instruments, I put down an acetate frame and used a white paint pen to color in that area so the couple will stand out.  Finally I used some pre-printed words  to write a poem about the couple.

I'll finish my post with a few views from the 4 mile (6.4 km) walk my daughter and I took on  Mother's Day morning. How about some sunbathing turtles?

This Canada goose was busy eating.

This sky speaks for itself.

This next one is not a great photo, but there was a small group of Eastern Kingbirds a long one stretch of the trail. This one was the only one brave enough where I could get even slightly close for a photo. (I just had my phone with me that morning.)

And can you see this spiky guy sitting in the tree?  I’m glad we didn’t have the dogs with us because I’m sure one of them would want to check out this porcupine.

I love seeing fern fiddleheads popping open. These look like they will continue to unwrap even in this still photo.  (Just a note, not all fiddleheads are edible.)

And our turn around spot is this beach. We went early, and except before we just returned to the car, the trail was quiet and empty.

Have a great middle of your week. 

Small Things

 Hi everyone. It's time for another new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

Thank you Tracey from New Beginnings...Creating in My Corner for being the guest designer for our fantasy challenge. And let me say a  big thank you to everyone who joined our last challenge as well.

This time at TIOT we've got a challenge theme that can be taken a lot of ways. This time we're looking for

SMALL THINGS

I made a set of ATC's because they are smaller than most journal pages, and the theme I went with was small things with a big impact.

I think you can get where I'm coming from with these 3 ATC's. 

    I inked each card by rubbing an ink pad over it, and I also outlined the edges with a different colored ink pad. The stamps on each card come from an old Hero Arts Set that had 20 small image stamps. The only image not from that set is the baby bottle, and that is an old Cheery Lynn design die cut.

     The rings are stamped, colored with metallic markers and then  I used a bit of glitter on the stone. The drinks glass have glitter glue in the drink and then a bit of glossy accents to make the glass, and the bottle had some white glitter glue in it (which didn't stay white with my ink 😕), and then some glossy accents over that. I colored and outlined the nipple part of the bottle.

The words come from some various rubber stamps. The rings have the "title of the set" stamp on them which is why that one is stamped on white paper and not directly on the card.

There's so many ways to go with this challenge you should check out the other designer's pieces. Remember you have 2 weeks to join in, and all types of art are accepted.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, and I hope you're thinking small.