Second on the Second-Trip Journals

Hi everyone. Happy July 2. I hope your weekend is going well.

It is time once again for Second on the Second over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. Basically this means you just need to repost  something you have already posted before. Easy peasy.

I picked out some pages from 2018 for Second on the Second  this month. My pages go with Alison's challenge over at Art Journal Journey. As this is a new month, we have a new AJJ challenge,  and this month the challenge is Come Fly with Me.

I copied some photos from multiple posts that had to do with my summer vacation that year. We had gone to Newfoundland for a week in early July. Here are some pages from my trip journal that work with Alison's Come Fly with Me challenge.

Notice the butterflies on these first 2.

And then in my daily journal I had this page with the plane.

Back to my trip journal, I had this page with my flight boarding stubs as well as a hand carved maple leaf stamp.

And here's a new page for AJJ from the journal I've been working on about my weekend trip to Charleston back in May of this year.  I had flown down to North Carolina to visit one of my teacher friends who moved away from New Hampshire about 20 years ago but with whom I've stayed closely in touch. We took a roadtrip down to Charleston.

I used a sheet of printed paper that I cut down to fit the small 6 ring binder I was using.  I added tape to the punched edge to be sure the paper held up when the pages were  flipped.

I then added some textured paper I made with my recently refound paper texturing rollers,  some washi tape and a pre-cut square tag that I wrote my info down on.  I then added a punched out Art by Marlene plane as well as the punched out clouds. 

I'm also going to link up to Gillena's Smile Sunday.

That's all for me today. Thanks for stopping by my blog.  

The Rest of a Travel Journal

Hi everyone. This past weekend I finished up my Newfoundland travel journal. Thought I would show you a few pages I haven't shown you before.

Hopefully I haven't shown you all of these before.

Those of you who have seen my journals before know I love cutting up free travel brochures and other bits and papers I bring home.

 In this journal I made and added a few tags too.

You can never have too many tags.

 And sometimes you come across articles that help tell the story of the place you visited.

It would be fun to have another upcoming trip this fall  so then I could make another journal. Oh well. I will be in the classroom instead. I have to say I am having a little bit of  travel fever right now. Even for a little day trip. I think it's just the change of scenery and something different from the normal routine I crave.  Smile. I always get this way in September. In 2 years I will be able to go away in September. Now that is worth a big smile.

Thanks for visiting. 

Taking a Walk

HI everyone. Just got home from my morning walk, and what a nice walking morning it was. Our humidity is due back by tomorrow, but right now, it is crisp and cool.

And that is the theme of my page today. It is in my Newfoundland travel journal, and it is a bit curled on the bottom so the bottom words look a little tilted.

I made my page using watercolor crayons first to make the base mountain. Then I used watered down acrylic paint for the sky and not so watered down acrylic paint for the clouds.  Then I cut out the people from a travel brochure I brought home (as well as some of the words) and I finished up with a sticker and a little wooden mountain.

Walking is a huge blessing in my life. The worst part about going back to school for me is giving up my morning walk, especially on this crisp and cool fall mornings. I love to walk and as you know, it is good for our bodies too. I wish I could get my husband to walk more often with me, but at least I am blessed with 2 dogs who thinks it the highlight of they morning.

I am linking up this page to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's Count Your Blessings challenge over at Art Journal Journey

This page is when we went on a ranger lead walk on part of the earth's mantel in Gros Morne National Park. Because this is land that came up from under the surface of the earth, it has a high iron content (as well as other heavy metals) and so it is orange as it has rusted when it met the air. Here's the photos I showed you already from this place if you are interested: The Tablelands.

But since my post today is about walking, I will show you some photos from my walks in the last week.

 The beaver pond looks like a prehistoric swamp.

 Tussack moth cterpillar.

 Mushrooms and thistles.

 And a feather I found. It is either from a hawk or owl.

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

Ancient Life

 I recently left a comment on a blog post about how it is good to learn new things. I'm sure you all agree with me.

So today I want to show you a very ancient form of life called a thrombolite.

Don't get too excited that you are going to see some large dinosaur like creature. Thrombolites were some of the first forms of life on Earth and were single celled bacteria type of creatures which used photosynthesis to get food. They grew in round mounds, and some of them even fossilized.

I thought the only remaining fossils of them could be found in Western Australia.  But then, when preparing for a trip, I did my research and found out there is one other place on Earth (that we know of) where thrombolite fossils can be found.

Those who stop by regularly probably guessed it was Newfoundland.  For me, with a biology degree and teaching a class of microbiology, it was really exciting to see these. 

I created this page in my travel journal using material from a brochure write up, some tape, some paper scraps and also stamping this windy face image. Once I stamped him directly onto the page and the other time I stamped him on tissue paper and then used matte medium to attach the tissue paper to the page. But here's the biggest thing I find confusing. On my actual page, they both look the same color. I wonder why one of then (the tissue paper one) didn't photograph the same. (And it's the angle of my photo that makes the bottom piece of tape look so crooked. You'll just have to bear with the photo on that one.)

I used the wind image because it was incredibly windy the day we stopped here. Cold too.

Learning new things and then actually seeing these fossils was a blessing to me. (What a geek I am!) So I am linking up this journal page to Bleubeard and Elizabeth's super challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

And although they might not excite you, here's a few more thrombolite photos.

Thanks for visiting. And enjoy your weekend.

I Get a Day Home

Hi everyone. Another week is flying right by, don't you think? As it always happens at the end of my vacation, I have a bunch of appointments and things I need to do.  So today is my first day without something on my must go out for list all week. Hurrah! Even though I have had some fun days out recently,  for me when I go out a lot the week seems to go  faster than when I am home.  And I am in slow down time mode right now trying to enjoy what's left of my summer break.

And to make today day even better, we should have sun! Hurrah again.

Thought I would share a few views from my latest travel journal from when I went to Newfoundland back in July.

And  a few more photos too.

Here's a couple of pages that aren't the same size so they might look a little weird here. On the left is a tag I made with some assorted bits and pieces fro my stash.  The right hand page is not white on the bottom as the paper is a bit shorter than the one behind it. This right hand page is my sketch of the fjord we took the boat trip on. The boat is the the white  object just below the ticket. If you want to see those photos you can hope over to this post: Gros Morne part 1.

And I punched and added in a tourist brochure (left, below) as well as making this moose tag.  The tag is a piece of "wood"paper which is actually a really thin wood veneer.

And a moose collage page.

We saw 2 moose when we were there, but I only got photos of this one.

And here's another fjord-this time a real fjord where the mountains go right into the sea.

Beautiful views, seeing wild animals and making art about it all are certainly blessings. So I am linking up to Art Journal Journey hosted this month by one handsome cat named Bleubeard and one lovely lady named Elizabeth. They're asking us to count our blessings.
That's all for me today. Thanks for visiting.

Gros Morne Part 2

Hi everyone. It's been another dark and wet day here. Although Friday was gorgeous it's been a washout of a weekend in my world. Looks like most of the week is going to be humid and wet too. Looks like New Hampshire is turning into a tropical rainforest. (Grin)

So first let me show you a page from my Newfoundland travel journal that I have been working on.

It's a mixed media painting of the carnivorous pitcher plant that is also the provincial flower of Newfoundland.

 They were flowering when we were there as you can see these droopy looking flowers.

The leaves are these short tube shaped structures. They fill with sweet fluid/nectar and which attracts insects, and when the insects go in to feed on the nectar they get stuck. Then the plant releases digestive enzymes that changes the insects into food for the plant.

These plants grow really well in stark rocky environments because they don't need to rely on rich soil to grow since these insects give them their nutrients.

We saw a lot of these in a part of Gros Morne National Park called the Tablelands.

We went on a ranger lead hike up into the Tablelands. You can see how the mountain the background has a lot of green trees, but where we are walking is rather rusty brown.

 The reason this area is rusty brown is because there is  high amount of iron and other metals in this rock. And this is very special rock. It comes from a deeper layer of the earth called the mantle.This rock is not like rocks we find on the surface of the Earth. In fact the Tablelands is the largest area of mantle rock you can find on dry land on the entire planet Earth.

This is picture (the one above) is also deceiving. Although the mountain behind the ranger doesn't look that tall it is 2300 feet high. I know that isn't really tall compared to many mountains, but the Appalachian Mountains that run from the southeast US all the way up the North American East Coast into Newfoundland, Canada are one of the planets oldest ranges and have been exposed to lots of glaciation which wore them down. This is the same mountain range that runs through New Hampshire where I live.

And yes there were still little patches of snow.

It was very different from the rest of the park.

Hope you enjoyed your visit today.

And happy new week!