Wrapping up October

      Hi everyone. Happy October 30th to you. We're already at the end of October, well just about, which means that today I am sharing my last pages for Alison's challenge at Art Journal Journey.  Thank you Alison for a great theme this month and more importantly, for being a wonderful host. And thank you everyone who joined us. Of course there's still a bit of time left to October, so if you want to join in, you still can.

      Today I'm going with pumpkins, since tomorrow is Halloween. In fact my first page has a couple of not so spooky jack-o-lanterns to on it. 

      This first spread is from my Autumn Harvest journal.  Not my favorite from the journal, but it works.

     I used some leaf printed paper for the background. I really wanted to use this old TH photo of the man and boy in the pumpkin patch so my page is centered around that image.  I colored the pumpkins in the photo just to  enhance them.

 

     I also die cut the wagon, and then I stamped as well as fussy cut a few pumpkins to put into it. I added some thin black washi tape and some black die cut lace along the bottom. To finish off my page, I typed and printed some common fall pumpkin foods, inked the paper and then cut it into strips for my page. Then I added a couple of felt jack-o-lanterns I had in my stash to finish it off.

    My other page is in my autumn journal. The back side of this page was already stitched, so I worked around the stitching. I painted the background orange, and then I used a stencil with some white paint. Once dry I added the die cut stars, some punch out leaves, a pipe image, the sparkly moon and another felt pumpkin from my stash. I finished with some sticky quotes.

    I still have some page from my autumn journal to share, but I'll save those for some other post. 

    Right on schedule, we have had just enough wind in the last week that many of the leaves have come down off the trees.

But they're not quite all down yet. Thank goodness Costco had battery operated leaf blowers on sale. 😏

That's all for me. 

Friday Art

    Hi everyone. Happy Friday. The other day I was digging up a lot of my tall phlox plants out of one of my gardens and moving them to a different spot. These plants just got too big where they were. Well in the process I got a nasty kink in my back, so what I hoped to have finished by now, didn't get finished. However, after a few days of not stressing my back, it is feeling great again, so hopefully I can get out and finish moving those phlox plants today. Keep your fingers crossed  that the nasty kink in my back doesn't return. 😏

     My journal pages today are  a spread from my Harvest journal. I've shown you several pages from that project, but there's still some I haven't shared.  Today's spread has an autumn theme so I'll be linking it up to Alison's Fall Colors and Inspiration at Art Journal Journey.

     I had this photo in my stash, and I think it's a riot.  It was black and white and I added just a bit of color. I also mounted it on some black paper and then on a scrap of handmade paper someone gifted me. I don't remember who it was, but thank you if you know it was you. 

     On the right side I die cut the scale. I don't use this die and embossing folder often, and I almost purged it. I'm glad I held onto it because it works well here. I also die cut the big pumpkin. The sparkling trophy was also in my stash.

     The background was made with a numbers stencil, some ink pads, some tissue paper and also some paint. I finally finished the page with the orange ric-rac since I thought the left side needed a bit of orange to match all the orange on the right. 

    I am also linking my page up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media for their challenge number #109, and because it's Friday, I'll also be joining Gillena for her Friday Lunch Break. I'm saving the last installment of my art walk for next week when Nicole is back hosting Friday Face Off, so if you were looking for it, you'll have to wait just a little bit longer.

    And did anyone (in the Northern Hemisphere) see the northern lights last night? My friend texted at about 7:30  and mentioned they were already putting on a show. Wow! It was exciting. I love how my photos even picked up the stars that were out also. 

     And if there weren’t so many trees I bet the view would have been even more spectacular.  

Have a great start to your weekend everyone.

 

Happy October

      Hi everyone. Happy October to you. I feel like I was just writing happy May or happy June (grin) and now here we are in autumn. October is a lovely month though, one of my favorites, and I'm excited for our new Art Journal Journey challenge also. (FYI, this is a scheduled post as I'll be home from Quebec sometime today-October 1.)

     But first, let me thank Aimeslee for being a great host last month. I think we all enjoyed her Anything Goes challenge. It was a lot of fun to see all the various themes people used on their journal pages.  Thanks again Aimeslee for hosting, and thank you everyone who joined in.

     This month I want to welcome the talented Alison, who you probably know from her blog Crafty Trog's Arty Adventures. The theme she chose is

Autumn Colors and Inspiration

    My first page for this Autumn theme is one from my Harvest/Garden journal.  Autumn is the season of Scarecrows, and for some people counting up their garden trophies. And of course, you wouldn't need a scarecrow if it wasn't for crows. 

      On the left side of my page I have a watercolored background, a die cut and colored scarecrow as well as some die cut wheat shafts and crows. There's also a stamped and fussy cut crow and a couple of layers of tape. On the right side I have a watercolored background, a stamped garden image (that I used markers to color), some more die cut crows, and a fussy cut image of a blue ribbon that I then enhanced with a brighter blue marker and some glitter glue.

     Please remember at Art Journal Journey we only accept art journaling, but any type of journaling works for us. Please no cards, tags, ATC's and other non-journaling forms. And if you link up through social media, we may not be able to comment on your post. 

     I hope you're as excited about autumn colors and autumn inspired art, and  we'll see your journaling at Alison's challenge. 

Yellow

      Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.  It's been a lovely week (again) so far weather-wise at my house; these are all bonus days with cool nights for nice sleeping and warm days. I love it!❤

     Today I have a couple of journal spreads to share from my Garden/Harvest journal.  Today's theme is yellow.

     I'm linking up to Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey and also to Creative Artiste Mixed Media challenge blog  #108. The theme there is always Anything Goes.

    This first page is all about bees and honey. My bees are doing very well, and they made a lot of honey. However they didn't make any for me to take.  😒  Oh well, I would rather they have food, especially since we have long winters here in NH.

      The background is made with a bit of paper layering as well as some ink coloring. On the left I used 2 die cut sets.I used black paper and a honeycomb die. I also used a Hero Arts set to make the honey pot, the honey dripped and also the word honey.

      On the right side I used some die cut bees. I used a glitter pen on their wings and added some little art gemstones to their bodies. I also added some yellow ric-rac trim and a felt sunflower from my stash.

      My other spread today is all about  Corn. On the right side I used a sheet of cardboard colored paper. There are 2 holes punched in the top where I added some green twine. I stamped some corn stalks along the bottom, and I also stamped the large corn image which is from Impression Obsession. I used markers to color the corn and watercolor for the background. I framed it with a layered frame and added some vintage yellow stamps (I don't recognize what they are from) behind it. I  used my favorite cow stamp on acetate, added some bright yellow trim and also some yellow washi tape. The corn word is cut from a sheet of paper.

        I had all these little plastic ears of corn I wanted to use, so I created a cornfield with die cut corn stalks and a stamped and fussy cut fence. I first stamped some corn stalks along the bottom for depth, and then I added the die cut stalks and the fence. The windmill top is a slightly altered sticker, and I drew in the legs. The corn seed packet was cut from a  sheet of paper, and I added the punch out quote. Funny, the quote was just laying on the floor as it must have fallen out of an envelope or package, I think it wanted to be on this page, and since it works great, I added it.

      Here's a close up of my favorite cow stamp so you can see it better. I colored in the daisy that was in it's mouth.

There you have it. That's a lot for today, so that's all for me. Have a great rest of your day!

Hot, Hot, Hot

      Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week.  Since I'm not around next week I want to get most of my challenge art posted this week. Today I want to share another page from my Harvest Journal for Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey

    I started with red and orange ink pads as well as some stickers I picked up a couple of weeks ago on markdown. The big peppers are from a stamp set I have. I finished them off by adding some colored glitter glue to them. The little pepper girl and the stamped quotes around the page from a Janet Klein set. I just love her pepper hat.

       It's hard to read the quotes, but they say: Keep it spicy and (the long one) the recipe called for salt, parsley and a sprinkle of pepper.

       I finished by adding some tiny red confetti flowers and a piece of retro looking trim down the center of the spread which is actually the center of my journal. 

     And I have a story to tell about an adventure my husband and I had on his boat this past Sunday afternoon. He was fishing for striped bass.  I decided not to fish because 1) I was more in the mood to relax  and 2) the hubby, although happy for me to have already caught 5 fish this summer, needed to catch one himself. We had very limited bait, but on my husband's first try he caught this large striped bass.

     It was actually too big to keep because here along the coast or New Hampshire (but also in Massachusetts and Maine) you can only keep fish between 28-31 inches/71-78 cm. (And only keep 1 per day too.) This guy was about 36 inches/91cm so Mr. Fish was released back into the water after we got a few photos.

     The hubby decided to throw out another line. Shortly after he did that we were buzzed by this guy. 

     We frequently see eagles while we're out in the boat as they nest on the islands where we cruise.

    He was about 5-6 feet over the boat, and I could have reached up and maybe even touched him. Darn, why wasn't I ready with my camera? He flew up into a tree nearby where we were.  And he sat there for quite a while. Enough time for me to watch him and even get a few more photos.

 

        But what I didn't realize is that he was watching us. About 30 seconds after I put the camera down and turned away, he swooped back down and grabbed my husband's bait fish. It was so fast, we only saw a swish of feathers. What we really noticed was the high pitched sound of the fishing line being pulled out quickly, the sound of catching a fish, but this time instead of the line going out in the water the line was going out above the boat and across the water. 

       There was a flash moment where we looked at each other wondering what we should do. The eagle had swooped back in and grabbed the bait fish that was hooked on my husband's line.  It was flying off  before we could scare it into dropping the fish (which we had to do once several years ago). Never mind the line, but the fish had a hook in it.

         While we went for the scissors to cut the line, it snapped and the eagle took off with the bait fish in his talons. Luckily when the line snapped it pulled the hook  out of the fish, but the eagle got the fish and flew off beyond where we could see him.

      That has me thinking a lot about eagles getting hooked when people fish. They're only looking to eat, but if the fish is small enough, and if the eagle swallowed the fish whole, that hook might be swallowed too. Granted  salt water hooks are meant to rust out fairly quickly because often fish swallow them in what is called gut hooking, but fish are in salt water and an eagle is not. I'm not saying people should give up fishing, and maybe this is a rare occurrence.  Maybe eagles are smart enough to not swallow a hooked fish whole. Eagles are  smart enough to know where an easy meal is.  Anyhow, it was quite exciting, but in other ways concerning because the hooks can pose some serious risk including the eagle having internal bleeding and dying.

     I like to fish but I don't want to kill eagles. Maybe I'm just too much of a softy. (That is absolutely true.) That's enough for me today. Have a great rest of your day.

     

           

Sunday Art

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

Today I have another journal page for Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey.  I'm also linking up to Gillena's  Sunday Smiles.

     This is a page out of my harvest/garden journal that I'm just about finished with. I love how it's bright and cheery.

      The background is an old sheet of denim style paper that's been sitting around since I did a lot of scrapbooking. (I bet it's at least 25 years old if not older. I guess it was  time to use it!) I thought it worked great for a garden theme because you might wear denim while working outside. The fence is a very old stamp by Cornish Heritage Farms. They went out of business a long long time ago ( like maybe 2010 or even before that) , but even though I'd never used it, I could never get rid of it when I did a supply purge. And finally I had a place for it. 😏 I like the details and size since it's big enough to fit across my page.

     The other images came from some other various stamp sets. I stamped, fussy cut and colored the watering can, and then I cut it so the handle would slide behind the fence post. I love the rooster who I'm guessing is getting us up and wanting us outside in the garden. I used several ink pads on the stamp to color him in. He was also a bit tricky to fussy cut, so I left the white edging around him. Finally the quote is stamped directly onto the paper. 

       I painted in the grass, and then to add some brightness to the page I added the sun yellow daisies at the bottom. I decided I wanted to add a sun also, but I didn't decide that  until everything was already glued down. Since the sun should have gone behind the rooster and fence, I decided just to leave it off.  Perhaps Mr. Rooster had a bit of a sleep in and the sun is already high in the sky. 😏

      I thought I'd also share a few more photos from my art walk last week at Alnoba. If you missed my first post about the walk and are curious, you can find it here: Alnoba part 1.

The sign in the back is by Hank Willis Thomas and is a fun play on the words. It is titled Love Over Rules.

This red installation was made of lots of lobster pot line, woven together and painted red. It is by Orly Genger, and is called Going, Going, Gone. You can also walk on top it, so I gave it a try.  It's not really squishy, but a little bit.

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

      

Sunday Art

 Hi everyone. Happy second half of the weekend to you. 

Yesterday my post was about apples, and I mentioned wanting to go apple picking. Well I did.

There's nothing better. 😏

    Today I have another spread in my harvest journal that I've been working on.  I also have a tag too. First I'll show you each side of the spread and then the final spread together. My 2 page journal spread  is being linked up to Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     This right side started with some red ink and a background stamp. I then added the flap of a red envelope on the right. The centerpiece of the page is a label, and the farm girl is cut out of a sheet of printed paper. The word farmhouse and the printed canning jar are both stickers.

        And here's the left side to this spread.

       I used a page out of an old seed catalog as background paper.  The golden brown label holder is a die cut, and all the red labels were cut out of a sheet of paper. I also cut all the canning jars from another sheet of paper. Finally I added some punch out geraniums, leaves and the twine looking bows. Unlike yesterday when I added apples to bow's centers, today I used a small confetti flower 

      To tie both pages together I added (to the right) some fussy cut canning jars from a the same sheet of paper as the ones that on the left.  And finally I used some red ric-rac trim along the bottom. 

      I also have a tag today for Michele's School Days tag challenge at Tag Tuesday I used to love back to school, but the little one on my tag doesn't look very happy. 😏 (perhaps it’s because his (or maybe her) left leg has a fold on it- oh no!)

I wanted a bit of contrast between the outdoors of summer and being inside at school during the fall, so even though I covered my page with some vintage style alphabet paper, I added the green grass for this little angel to stand on.  I also stamped some numbers, outlined my tag and added a bit of bright pink ink at the bottom to represent the summer outside that still hadn't quite ended when school started. 

I'm also linking up my post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles.

That's all for me today. Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start of the new week!

Saturday Art

Hi everyone. Happy weekend. I hope yours is a nice one.

I'm back today with some more art from my harvest journal. This 2 page spread seemed appropriate since it is apple season here in New Hampshire. I'm hoping to go apple picking this weekend, but we'll have to see if it's raining or not. (Since they are predicting some rain tonight/Saturday, but who knows how right they'll be.)

I started on this  side of my spread by stamping this old apple varieties stamp. Then I rubbed a red ink  pad over my page, and I added a bright green piece of washi tape down the left hand side. It's hard to get even a small ink pad right along the inner seam of a bound book, and the tape covers up any blank (not stamped or inked) spots nicely.

I cut a red tag from some checkered paper. The quotes and the apple picking image are from an old Technique Tuesday stamp set. The quote is stamped directly on the tag, but the image is stamped on acetate and then  added after I added the fussy cut apple basket. I also added some sparkles to the apples to give them a bit of glimmer, and I added a few punch out images to finish off my page. 

And the left side of my spread I used some red printed paper for the background. The image is from a garden harvest set of ephemera that I've had for several years. I added the old red postage stamp and the punch out bow.  I thought the people in this image looked to be about the same vintage style as the children  on the tag.  Plus everyone is  picking apples.

Here's the completed spread. You can see I also added 2 little apple decorations, one on each side on the spread 

I'm linking up to Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey. I'm also linking up to this month Inner Child challenge at More Than Words. I'm choosing this piece for that challenge because apples always remind me of back to school. Not only is there the quote "An Apple for the Teacher", but I remember often having an apple in my lunch while in school too. (Both as a kid and as a teacher too 😏).

That's all for me today.

 

September

     Hi everyone.  Happy September. This year is flying by, and we’re now in meteorological fall with the actual season coming in a few weeks. Plus I have only 1 day left of my summer job at the lake. I don't know about you, but I’m wondering what happened to the first 8 months of this year. Grin.

     The new month means a new challenge at Art Journal Journey. First let me once again thank Jo for hosting. It was a great theme, and I enjoyed everyone’s take on wild. ❤ Plus I had a lot of fun myself. My art was almost the most wild thing about last month - ha ha. 🤪

     For this new month, I want to welcome back Aimeslee. You might know her from her blog Paper Paisleys Art Adventures Blog. She joined us last year for the first time, and we’re glad she wanted to be back  this year as a host.  This month I think everyone will like Aimeslee’s challenge which is

ANYTHING GOES

     For my first entry, I want to share a spread from a journal that I’ve been working on for awhile now. It’s all about gardens, harvests and even a bit of down on the farm.I'be been having so much fun making it I even added an extra signature of pages to it.😀 Although I’m not finished yet, let me first share the cover as it is right now, and then I’ll share my 2 page spread. 

I started with an old cookbook  that I removed the pages and the spine from. I liked some of the already-on- the-cover art, so after adding a bit of gesso, I sponged on some blue and yellow paints on the parts I didn't want to keep. I liked the "handwritten" word and also the edges of the recipe cards that were printed on the book's cover, so I left those showing.  Then I added an old copy of a photo and  white stacked frames around it. I also added the little garden plant marker (that I darkened a bit) and the canning jar label.  The photo, the label and the plant marker were in my stash and were part of a garden ephemera set I bought off of Etsy several years back when I first thought about making this project. (Yes it’s taken me a while to get around to it. 👍)

And here's my first page for September's  Anything Goes AJJ challenge.

     Instead of doing anything to the background, I left it plain. I layered some old seed packets, a tag and some bits of paper. I stamped a tractor on some acetate and put it over one of the seed packets.  I also stamped, colored and fussy cut the 2 chickens.  The beans label was cut out of a sheet of paper, the sun is a piece of chipboard, and the acetate flowers were in my stash. I stamped the little chicken feet around the bottom of my page, and I also made a tag (which I'll show some other time) to slide into the right hand seed packet. The last thing I did was stamp the words Farm Fresh at the top of the right hand page. 

   Before I wrap up my post I also need to mention the dreaded rules. At AJJ we only accept art journaling, but the form of art journaling is up to you. No tags, cards, ATC's and other art forms please. 

     I hope you're as excited as I am for Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge, and I also hope you'll join us at AJJ.   Have a great start to September too.

     And I'm not forgetting about the fact that it's Sunday Smiles  at Gillena's blog either.  I'll also be linking this post up there.