Travel Journal

We're off on our family vacation at the end of next week. I can't wait. This year we are flying out to Seattle, Washington and then spending 10 days doing some road tripping and exploring.

I spent yesterday inside with the AC running because it was pretty hot outside. I put together my travel journal for the trip. I had started the cover- painted it, and then I rubbed some brown ink over it to get rid  of a bit of the brightness and give it more of an older distressed look.
I hand painted the picture in the middle of the mountain. Not sure Mount Rainier or Mount Hood or any of the mountains we will see will look like my mountain, but it does look abstractly like Mount Shasta in Northern California- which is part of the same Cascade Mountain chain. So maybe. I didn't spend a lot of time trying to get all the mountain details exact, but I still am happy with the way it works on the cover. For the forest around the mountain I just brushstroked lines of green in 3 different shades-that part kind of works. All the rest of the cover is stickers I scavenged from my stash. I used to be a big scrapbooker. I actually like to scrapbook-my pages always look more journaly than the typical scrapbook page. I just haven't done as much scrapping as when my daughter was little because I've discovered how much I LOVE to play with paints, stencils and stamps.

Here is my inside cover.  I used the same green and blue paint to cover all of the cardboard pages within the book. This is a Maya Road book I picked up with a 4 ring inner binder to hold pages. It came with a lot of these bulky pages, which I like, but didn't want to use throughout the whole journal.  I used one at each end and then added one in the middle and made my own pages for the inside. Some of my inner pages are just cut pieces of paper, and some are pages I had (also from scrapbooking) that just needed some slight fixing. I also added some envelopes for pages and even a small flat paper bag I had. When I make a journal like this I often hit my stash a lot. You can see that here also. I love the saying above the word July. I recently picked up this set of travel stamps from Technique Tuesday and I think this is my favorite one in the set.

While cleaning out my classroom at the end of the year I came across a bunch of old slides that a retired teacher had had and his replacement had decided to throw away. I grabbed a bunch, not that I can use them in my classroom but figured they would make great embellishments on pages. That's where this little piece of film came from that I used on this page.

An October Afternoon page I had in my stash that I sprayed with ink, added the star, stickers and little cardboard dots (also from my stash).

Not the clearest photo, but you can see some of slides I brought home from work. Thought I would put them to use here.

A couple more fixed over pages for the journal. I have a lot of blank pages in this book and these half done pages too. I need to be able to actually keep the trip journal once we are there!  I will fill in and add things while we travel and then finish up the book once I am home. I bring my supplies- pens, Sharpies, a glue-stick, double side tape roll, scissors and a hole punch, in a little metal lunch box that goes right into my suitcase. It is amazing how little you can actually work with and how many periphery items you manage to accumulate at home when you don't need to keep it to a minimum.

One last page to show you. (Sorry this has been a long post today!) I know we will make it to at least 1 air and space museum in our travels, because my husband is really into that kind of thing. There are 2 he is talking about visiting, so maybe I will need more than this page. I just used some paper from my stash and these embellishments from my stash. Most pages I can't start to fix up since I am never exactly sure what it is we will end up doing.

Ok, time to take a breath and give my fingers a rest.

Thanks for stopping by.

Busy Weekend

This is what I plan to do starting tomorrow-

even though I think it's going to rain.

So I may not be lounging by the ocean,

but here at home

I am going to relax.

Catch up on my SEWN online class...

play in the studio...

pick up the house after a crazy holiday weekend.

Will show you some photos another day.

Image above is from Stampendous, and it does look

absolutely relaxing!

Flip flips are a Spellbinders die cut and the flowers I stamped on them are from Hero Arts.

Another simple card.

I squeezed in a few last week 

(got to start the stash to send to my college daughter in the fall)

between journaling, starting my travel journal for next weeks vacation, and starting a few small painting I want to do.

Die cut of the glass is from memory Box.

So today we are off fishing.

Thanks for visiting and

enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Blogger's Challenge

This week's theme is one that is very close to my heart- the beach- the ocean-the seashore. I love the ocean.

I am not a big sit on the beach person, but walking the beach and just being near the salt air...

helps I live in the general seacoast area and work less than 2 miles from the water. Even though it is New Hampshire so we're not exactly in a  place with year round warmth and palm trees.

So I made this card with blue cardstock, some distressed plaid paper, some Cuttlebug shell die cuts (cut in white and colored and inked. The image is from Stampendous and colored with Copics and the saying is from MSE. Quite an easy card, I layered, outlined the plaid paper with black Sharpie.

Can't wait for beach season to arrive...although I love walking the beach anytime of year we get a nice day.

Thanks for visiting.



It's Such a BEAUTIFUL Friday

Its a gorgeous day today...rather low key at work and now I'm home, windows open and the sun shining. Not a bad Friday the 13th. A bit buggy to go outside-those nasty May blackflies we get that swarm you...YUK!- but Katie went out to a friend's house and I'm home alone for a few hours-HURRAY! Studio time!!!!!!!

So now that blogger is back up let me show you a recently made card-not this week- I've hardly had any studio time this week, but back a coupe of weeks ago. I used blue grey card stock and this blue plaid paper. The scene is Stampendous...colored with Copics. The shells are all die-cuts, colored, and the words are Tweety Jill from one of her ocean sets. I outlined the plaid paper in black to mimic the edge of the stamped image, and I stamped some brown definition over and over along the bottom of the plaid paper to distress it a bit.

Its definately how I feel today- I feel very summery.

In fact if it wasn't so buggy or if they weren't predicting rain the rest of the weekend I'd go out and do some gardening and maybe go buy some plants...but the bugs are thick right now...but they'll slow down a bit in another week.

Happy day to you.

Enjoy this very exciting time of year (we mostly have leaves now and it is SO fantastic to see green and color in the flowers and trees blooming...I can't take it its so GREAT!)

LOL

I Wish

Now that I'm back into the work groove, I wish it was vacation again. I could stay home and do some of the cleaning I didn't do last week. I could finish reading my book. I could...and I would spend a lot of time in the studio and make things and organize and maybe even vaccuum the rug.

But I am a responsible adult who has worked her whole adult life and so I shall go to work and be responsible.

Good thing I love my job teaching.

It would be horrible if I didn't.

I love teaching but its NOT my passion the way art has become.

But I do love my job and I really like teenagers...if you can believe that.

I still wish sometimes I could work in the art field and design things like rubber stamps or cards or items for a big company.

I think that might be quite a lot of fun.

Be a 7Gypsies designer or maybe a Hero Arts designer.

Or maybe run my own stamping store. Some cute little place a little bit cluttered with art on the walls.

But I would probably either hate either of those or suck at either of those.

So anyhow...

Now that I have talked about one of my wishes...(more to follow some other day)...here's some art for you to look at.

A card I made last week using a new Stampendous cling mount stamp which I colored with Copics and used ink to distress the sky like sunset. I put it on greenish paper with a grungeboard die cut that I inked and a heart die cut and painted red. Then I added the words which come from a Tweety Jill ocean set.

I love the ocean. I love working by the ocean and somedays smelling the salt air and living fairly close to the ocean. I don't have to wish that one.

Happy Day!

Do You Prefer Red or Green

Do you prefer the red or green background on these fat kitty cards-is it  Fluffles.?..I believe by Stampendous. I colored Fluffles to match my guy Leo, because he would actually do this in his curioisity about everything.

I prefer the red, that's my pick!

So its a cloudy Saturday and I'm off to vaccum and to work in the studio. Can't wait for studio time, but to vaccum...well if my allergies weren't so nasty right now...but I've got to clean up all the animal hair. Its yucky.

Happy Day!