Wednesday Journal Pages

 Hi everyone. It's the middle of the week again, and almost mid-September.  We're in a bit of a warm up after the start of the week's cooler temperatures too.But I definitely love that the nights are cool and good for sleeping.

Today I have a couple of pages from my Greece travel journal that I haven't shared.  Since Aimeslee's challenge at Art Journal Journey is Anything Goes, I thought this would be a good time to show these.

Today's art is blue and also has recycling.

We sadly didn't get to go sailing on our trip back in March, but we did watch some sail boats. I started with a Greek Key stencil and made the square and then the inner circle. I then added some blue paint around the inner circle and also stamped all the mini suns. I decided my circle needed something, and that's when I added the inner design. It's actually from the center of  a paper plate. We had been at my cousin's funeral back in June, and we left with some cookies for our 2+ hour trip home.  The plate that held the cookies was still fresh and clean, and I liked the design, so I cut out the center and added it to my page.

The waves, compass and  sailboat are die cuts. I was going to leave the sailboat white, but it didn't really stand out, so  I made it darker. I also made some crazy blue sky to represent all the wind you need for sailing.

And my other page is the last page of my Greece journal.

This next page (in both views) is made with the leftovers from my flight home including the boarding passes, the luggage tags, a silverware wrap and a napkin from the flight. I die cut the globe, mini clouds and the plane. I also added a bit of very colorful scrap tissue that was wrapped around something that I bought. It makes a nice pop of color. And all the dot designs  on my page are actually the shape of the island of Corfu. These were on little bags I had, but they make great "decorations" on my page so I cut them out and put them down in whatever direction they worked best.

Finally I outlined my page with a blue marker.

And there you have it. That's all for me today. Have a super day, and thanks for visiting.

Going Wild

     Hi everyone. Happy mid-week already. My week has been a little weird.  Monday night we had a storm right as we were finishing our dinner, and that storm knocked out our power until the middle of the night. At first the power company's text said our power would be back within an hour, so we never started the generator. But then we kept getting delay messages because whatever caused the power outage must have been bigger than  expected. At that point we figured we might as well just go to bed. It was an earlier than usual night, so I woke up bright and early Tuesday. Not a bad thing since I was supposed to be at the boat ramp for 7, except...Tuesday morning it rained, and I don't work when it rains. It would have been a lovely morning to sleep in, but that's OK because I could get a little caught up on blogging and a few other small chores while I watched the weather and waited to see if the rain stopped. 👍 (Which it never did-but that was OK too.)

     Now it's Wednesday, and other than some (potentially heavy from Debby) rain at the end of this week, we're supposed to have some  less tropical weather which I am really excited about. I'm ready for a nice long walk and maybe even a bit of gardening too. 😏

      Besides babbling about the weather, I also have a journal page for today's post. I am linking it up to Jo's Wonderfully Wild challenge at Art Journal Journey. It's the right side of a spread from my Greece travel journal that I don't believe I've shared yet.

     

     The motorcycles driving in Athens were wild. They seemed to drive all over the road and wouldn't think twice about cutting you off. And not to put down Greek drivers, but there are also a few crazy motorcycle drivers around in my neck of the world too. 

     I made my page by first taking a photo from a book and enlarging it to fit my page. Then I used a bit of gesso on it to make the speed limits visible, but less obvious. I used an old motorcycle die that I have and cut out 8 bikes from black cardstock.

     Here's the entire spread .

     

     One the left side I used part of a freebie map I picked up in the city. I added a photo from a book I use for cutting, I also added a Stamperia chipboard column, and I put the pigeon stamped image on top. The reason I added the pigeon was that at a few places in Athens we watched the local pigeons, and it was mating season, so you can image the birds (especially the males) were a little "wild" too. 

     I die cut the buses, and the blue car is a chipboard car that is meant to represent our rental. We ended up with a Range Rover, which was super when we headed up into the mountains, but it really wasn't very roomy for 3 people and their luggage-grin. 😏

Here I am, when it was my turn to ride in the backseat.

That's all for me today.  Have a great day!

 

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. 

 

These Pages Make me Happy

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

     Today I have an art heavy post; it's my penultimate pieces for Matilde's What Makes You Happy challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

       My pages today are from my Greece travel journal, which now just needs to be bound together. Hurrah! 👍😀 ❤Usually I bind the journal and then work on it, but the problem is (as you probably know if you're an art journaler) is that when you have a wet page, you can't turn it to work on a further along page. However, if you haven't yet bound pages, you can work on a lot more of them because if something needs to dry, you just put it aside and move on. I don't have a lot of free counter space in my art room, so often there are pages all over the floor while I work. 

        These pages  make me happy, as I must say, finishing a journal does too. ❤ 

This first page is made by recycling some items I brought home, and I like it, even if it is a bit rough. The main image on this page is the side of a  bag something I bought came in. I liked the blue and the images, so I glued it down on some white watercolor paper that I first quickly and roughly inked. The words and sun came off the top of another bag from the trip, as did the word Greece in the middle of the slightly crooked die cut. At the bottom I added a bit off of another bag, and then added some washi tape across the bottom. I’m not sure the flowers were the best choice,  but the blue matched the blue of the page.

     I like various papered background of this next page. I also like the layering and all the die cut lemons. I don't usually buy dies with a project in mind, but I bought the lemon set because I wanted to add lemons into my book. The Corfu image in the middle is a sticker. This is a very neat and organized page for me. 😏

     All the kites on this next page were doubled stamped. First on this page to lay them out, and then on white paper in  various colored inks. It took me awhile to fussy cut them out, but after I did that I attached them to the original stamped kites. I drew in the strings and the tails.

     The focus of this page is an old postcard taken with a view  of Delphi and also the  olive groves and the far off village that I could see from our hotel room. I used some old punch out paper arrows to label where things were in relation to the photo. Those arrows actually lift up so you can see the unblemished postcard, but I photographed my page with the arrows laying flat.

     You might remember the photos from the mountain village I visited. It was where my friend's grandparents had come from. There were lots of stone buildings, all old and  many a bit mossy, so I stamped this rock background and inked it appropriately. The shutters are closed because most of the village houses had been turned into summer homes.  I thought the fragment phrase described the village today compared to what it had been years ago.

 

And here's my final page for today's post.

    I like all the bits of pieces I used on this page. There's a bit off of a bag, some fabric trim, a painted sky,  a bit of lace, some metal screw "dots", an image off a sheet of paper, some stenciling, and even a few die cuts.  The window image  looks a bit crooked as I tried to fit it in and cover up the map. (But it's only crooked in my photo-of course. 😏

     That's all for me today. I hope you enjoyed these pages. and that you're having a lovely week.

2 Pages from My Greece Travel Journal

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday.  We're in for a real summery day today, hot and very humid. I'm not a fan of humidity, but it is summer (or just about). Luckily it's not going to be a long spell of this super sticky weather.

     Today is also the newest US Holiday called Juneteenth. It is the day the last remaining slaves in the US found freedom in 1865, even though slavery was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. I find it hard to wrap my mind about the concept of "owning" people. Although today with human trafficking and racial judgments,  it's sad to think some things are still with us just under different titles. 

  I have a couple of different types of pages from my Greece journal. I am going to share them for Matilde's "What Make You Happy" challenge at Art Journal Journey. The theme of both of these pages are things I like to do when I travel. One is to try new food, including snacks, and two is to see the various signs we come across.

This first page isn't super attractive nor particularly artistic, but it makes my point. I don't know why it came out so blue, because I use the white adjuster in Photoshop to the maximum. You might also remember that we did an alphabet list of words relating to our trip, and I added a couple of letters from that list to this page. I also added some black dots to try to some something with these glued down labels. 

This second page also didn't photograph very well because it is a small page inside some larger ones.  It is my tribute to signs, especially all the cow signs we saw.  We never did see any cows though, which is the point of my page. 

     

That’s all for me.  Have a super middle of your week. 

Beautiful Days

    Hi everyone.  

      I'm back today with another page for Matilde's What Makes You Happy challenge at Art Journal Journey  One thing that makes me happy is being by, on, or just in the vicinity the ocean. I sometimes think it's because I must have a lot of Viking DNA that was passed down to me. Ha-ha Grin!

      I'm also linking up to Creative Artiste MIxed Media Challenge blog. Their challenges are always Anything Goes, and this time it is challenge #105.

      This is a page from my Greece journal. The background paper reminded me of the many times I was near the ocean in that country including riding a ferry, driving along the shore, or walking near the shore.  The paper was only 8x8 inches, so I had some space on the top and bottom of my page. I filled in the bottom with some die cut waves (using a very old QuicKuzt die) that I then added some white glitter glue too. Along the top I used some fabric ric-rac trim. I would have loved to stitch down that trim in, but sadly the page behind this was already finished and I didn't want to ruin it with stitching. I also added a layered frame, an older quote as well as a die cut seagull.

     Last week after my allergy shot appointment I met up with a friend, and we went for a walk at the shore at Odiorne State Park. It was warm, but not really humid, plus there was a lovely breeze off the water so we had a nice walk. Thought I would share some photos today.

Did you spot the painter?

The path right along the beach looked like it had been re-sanded. It was pretty walking through this patch of beach roses.

Further along we came to pink ones too.

And along the trail, there was a patch of beautiful irises. This was an area of an old homestead, so maybe someone planted them long ago. I don't know.

I just love this part of the park and walking under these oak trees.

And of course the ocean is always great to see.  This view is at one end of the park overlooking a harbor.

The jetty marks the end of the harbor. Some day I am going to be here when the tide is low and when  I can walk out to end of this jetty. I think that the wet area just beyond the first rocks looks a little sketchy when there's water up around it.

And here's some views out to open ocean. (well mostly)

Tomorrow for Friday Face Off I'll have some ocean views from Greece.

Thanks for stopping by my blog, and have a great Thursday.