Friday Face Off

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday to you. 

I've been missing in action for the last couple of Fridays .  As many of you already know (and are probably sick of reading), my husband and I went on a trip to Iceland. I am home again now, and I'm looking forward to a long and relaxing summer in New Hampshire. Hopefully it will be a good one. 

Today I want to join Nicole's Friday Face Off, Gillena's Friday Lunch Break , and also Matilde's Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I made this journal page by first inking some watercolor paper with some various colored inks. Then I hand painted some  circles with white paint. Once the paint dried I stamped in some numbers. I then used a Sharpie and a thin lined marker to outline the circles.

Once my background was done I cut out this woman from a magazine. I sponged some blue acrylic paint onto her. I used a more fluid acrylic because I didn't want to cover all the details. Once the paint dried, I then went back and used a Sharpie to outline some of her features. I also used some colored markers and colored in a few areas.  I stamped the quote and also the bar code. Finally I took some lace trim and stitched it down along the left edge to cover up the rough bits from where I tore the lady out of a magazine. Too bad I managed to sew the trim on so crookedly. Smile.

And here's a few photo faces I took while on my vacation adventure.

The red chair bolted to the rocks-why? I don't know, but I like this photo of my husband on the chair.

What was I doing at this waterfall ( Dettifoss-called the Beast) that caused me to make this face? HMMMMM. I look better in the next one.

And if you follow the speed limit, they are happy.

Have a great Friday and start to your weekend. 

Home Again

 Hi everyone. Happy weekend. 

I’m home from my travels, and it’s good to be home. It was a busy week and a half away, as well as it being a great adventure too. But nothing is as good getting home again.  And I must admit I was starting to miss the dogs a lot too. 

Those of you who have read my blog for several years might remember I traveled to Iceland with some friends back in 2016. At that time my husband had health issues, and he couldn’t travel. 

Back in 2020 my daughter and I were going to go to Iceland for a short visit to try to see the Northern Lights.  We all know what happened in 2020. I had  a travel voucher that needed to be used before August of this year, and my husband, since he couldn't travel with me in 2016, wanted to go to Iceland rather than using the voucher to go elsewhere. I also wanted to drive the Ring Road, which is the road the circles this island nation. When I visited with friends we spent our time (mostly) in the capital west coast region. 

And that's what my husband and I did. We drove the Ring Road and took a few side trips along the way. We had  a fantastic adventure, and once I  go through my photos, I will have a lot to share. The scenery in Iceland is just amazing! My impressions of Iceland are that  it is very clean: the food is delicious, and if you speak English there is no language barrier (but reading and definitely speaking those Icelandic words is tough). It is expensive though, more than we expected, but I do highly recommend it if you're ever looking for an adventure. And traveling when we did, it never really got dark.  I'll write more about that in future posts.

Here's a few random photos off my phone just to show you what I mean. (I haven't lightened or straightened out any of these so they may not be the best.)

The Eastern Fjords-above

One of the glaciers-below

A view towards Selfoss-above

A view into Reykjavik-below 

This fabulous Viking ship statue in Reykjavik

me waving to you on a rainy morning from out in the lava fields

And finally a couple of views in a geothermal park south of Reykjavik

Today I want to share another page for Matilde's All About Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey. This one is made in a journal that is getting fat and therefore my left hand pages (in the journal) are not laying flat very nicely.

And no, it's not my birthday or anyone's in particular. I used some messy deli paper as part of my background.  It had some colorful splatters on it and that made me think of celebrations.

I only used the deli paper on half the page, and I left parts of it wrinkly for some texture. Now looking at the finished page, I'm not sure the texture does much, but it is what it is.

I also had some bingo playing card cards with these circle numbers on them.  I cut out the circle numbers from 3 cards and decided they would make great balloons. They had red edges and white centers so I colored them in to be more festive.

I looked through some TH people and found these 2  who I'll call Mom and Tommy. Tommy looks ready for a party so I have him holding the balloons. I'm not sure it's his  birthday, but he is going to a special person's party and bringing them a balloon bouquet.  I also glued down a few little plastic sprinkles to liven up the color eventually more, and I added a scrap of green paper and some gold daisy paper trim to finish off the page. And I stamped the Happy Birthday quote too. 

I am also going to link up to Elle’s pick this month at More Than Words. This month it’s all about your favorite art supplies.  I love using stamps, messy deli paper, and various ephemera on my pages. 

I hope everyone is enjoying your weekend. And  of course thanks for visiting. 

Geology Can Be Amazing

 I few more photos from Iceland today. Today my theme is geology.

Above, this amazing set of waterfalls called Gullfoss. We actually walked down to where all those people are standing, which was a little scary for me since I am not crazy about being close to the edge of heights, especially with powerful waterfalls right next to me, but it was a very different  and interesting view of the falls. I'll show you my water photos some other day.

By the way, I haven't run any of these photos through my photo editing program, so if the color looks a bit dull, that is just the digital camera effect which makes everything a little bit grey.

 Boiling mud pots and in the same area

 steaming vents. Kind of a strange thing to see steam coming out of the ground.

 More boiling mud.

 I can't remember what volcano this is. I want to say Mt Hekla, but I  think I am wrong. I need to dig out my map I guess. It might also be Snaefellsjokull. I was having a lot of problems with some of those Icelandic names.  I love the cloud hanging along the top though. 

 And here's this awesome glacier. You could drive off road to the base (well on this rough gravel road) and actually get right next to the glacier. It was very cool to do, and in fact, I think the highlight of my trip. I have some great photos but I will show those another day too.

 And this is the Blue Lagoon, a thermal pool. It is pretty famous, and we went our first day there. All the mineral water comes out of a geothermal heating plant. And the water is really that cool blue color and looks like tinted milk. I must say I enjoyed lounging in the water for a bit.

 Another heated pool letting off all this steam. Don't touch the water or get to close, otherwise you will be burned.

 The tide was out but these are some of the fantastic sea stacks we saw. This particular cluster was north of Reykjavik on the peninsula at a national park (Snaefellsjokull). 

 Not all beaches we stopped at (to walk- way too cold or to rough to go beaching) were black lava sand, but one near Vik was. It made an amazing background for photos.

 Below this is the bridge between continents. The people in the foreground are standing on the North American plate, and the ridge in the background is the Eurasian plate. The gravelly sand in the middle is where the 2 tectonic plates are pulling apart. Iceland is one place in the world where the land is actually getting bigger. Not by much, a couple of centimeters a year.

 Water at the edge of a geothermal pool/geyser. I love the color on the bottom.

 And more steaming vents. I am actually surprised there aren't more of these around the island. These vents were at Geysir.

And here we are, at Geysir.  This one erupts every 5-15 minutes. Which was fun to see, and we saw it quite a few times, even on the road back to our hotel as we passed by later in the day.

So you can see (if you aren't familiar with) that there is pretty cool geology going on in Iceland.  And this is just a taste of what we saw. :)

I'll be back tomorrow with a little art.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.

Blooming Iceland

 Hi everyone. I've started going through my Iceland trip photos and decided I needed to start with pretty. All over Iceland there were beautiful flowers blooming, both wild and in the towns and cities.

There were blooms in the fields and on the beach and even in the larva fields. 

 Most of these wild flowers were not very tall, but that makes sense with all the wind and cold dark winters. I don't think that environment produces big tall blooms.

 But they were gorgeous just the same.

 This plant barely grew off the rock, but I love these tiny flowers.

 Same here.

 And these fuzzy blooms or seed heads were so cool. I don't know what they are. I don't know what hardly any of these plants are. but I still enjoyed them.

 Gorgeous flowers planted in a park in Reykjavik. 

 Flowers growing on a  turf roof.

 And in fields.

And every flowerbed, whether planted or wild, needs their own little fairy homes.

I love these. I wonder who put them up and how long they had been there. We discovered them when we went off exploring down a gravel road by a beautiful little church next to the sea.

Hope you enjoyed today's photos. There's more to come another day.

Thanks for visiting.

I'm Jetting Off

I'm on my way to explore a new land. Who knows what exciting stories I may have to tell when I get back? Huldufólk (elves), puffins, glaciers, volcanoes, icebergs, Icelandic horses, turf homes and Viking sites...and who knows what else? Us geeky science teachers take off this afternoon.
I have a couple of pre-posts but I won't be joining in for T for Tuesday tomorrow. If I can, I'll post some photos from my travels, but I am not taking my computer so I'll have to see if I can figure it out on my phone. And if not, I'll have plenty to show you when I get home. 
But before I jet off, I have one more piece for Art Journal Journey. Thanks Yvonne, I've really enjoyed your theme of "In My Garden".

See you next week!