The Rest of My Harry Potter Journal

Hi everyone.  It’s just about the end of February, but as you know,  we do get an extra day this year. I thought I’d save my end of the month final   Art Journal Journey post for tomorrow, the 29th.

I am linking up this first page to Vicki’s Keeping It Light challenge at Art Journal Journey.  This page, even though it is on a black background,  is again a contrast between light and dark. It may not be the most creative nor varied media page I've ever made however.   😏

I used mostly stickers as well as die cut spoon for this page. But the ice cream circle is the actual top from my little personal sized tub of butter beer ice cream. (And it was very yummy!❤)

And here are some other pages not for AJJ. Let me start with the cover. I've shown this before, but my friend Deb had the idea that I should add some actual Harry Potter quotes i my journal, so I added one to the cover to finish it off.

Dobby is one of the house elves in the HP books. House elves are more like a slave than a servant.  I made a house elf page and created another window view because they had some house elves in windows around the park.  This time the window lifts up.

The background is made with sponged on paint glaze.

We went to the Hard Rock for lunch one day, and I had a sandwich. We chose the Hard Rock because it was located in the City Walk area (of the parks) which is quiet during the day. It was nice to have a little crowd escape and to sit down at a more private table.  I made a page about that meal.

My background  started with a napkin I brought home. I gave it a spray of some liquid ink, and then I used some stickers, die cuts and the little flag that was in my sandwich.  

One night we went over to Disney Springs and walked around the shops. I hadn’t been there in close to 20 years and boy has that area gotten huge. I picked up this post card ( you can see it above) at the Coca Cola store. I also picked up a free Mickey Mouse sticker  at the world's biggest Disney Store and grabbed a menu from the ice cream shop where we had dinner. You can see those in the photo below.  Dinner was that hot fudge brownie sundae shown on the right hand page.  (And boy was that yummy too. ❤)

And who doesn’t love a minion? If you're not familiar with them, they are from some children's movies, and they're looking to work for the most evil person there is. I had a blast making this page.

You might remember my post about my new mug and the insane ride on the Veloci-coaster. I had to make a page for each of those.

I should have drawn in some upside down riders on my page. I might go back and do that.

And next here's a page I made with the saved tea packages from some mugs of tea I had in our hotel room. One thing our hotel did not have was free tea (what hotel doesn't have free tea?), but luckily my friend Deb brought some from home.

Then it was time to get ready to go home.

I made this (above) page using the inner packaging from some Hogwart's Express tickets I bought as a souvenir.  I liked the gold border around  the packaging. Above, I added the polka dot paper and the stickers.

Below I just attached the Hogwart's Ticket.  My ticket package had 2 tickets, one for each direction. I used the going to Hogwart's ticket in the front of my journal, and this one in the back.

And finally, the back of my journal. 

The final page was stenciled before I made a sticker collage. 

And on the inside of the back cover, I used some stickers and painted some buildings. I also used another quote from the Harry Potter stories.

I have a couple more pages I haven't shared. If I have time I might share them on another day, and if not, you basically saw all of the journal.

I hope it wasn't too boring.

Have a great day.

More of My Harry Potter Journal

Hi everyone. I hope your weekend is going well. 

Since my husband is in recuperation mode, it's a fairly quiet weekend at my house. Our dining room light stopped working the other day, so  that's been the project my husband is playing around with. He's not feeling 100%, but pretty close, so the light project is just enough to keep him busy, but not so strenuous it will wear him out. Yesterday  I cleaned out a cabinet that needed to be organized for about 10 years. Phew, I am glad that is done because every year I write it down on the to do list. I'm glad I won't have to add next year!😀

 I'm back today with some more pages from my Harry Potter journal. I had  a lot of fun making this project.  One reason I had so much fun was the subject and the fact that I already had this book of HP stickers. I was glad to have a good place to use some of the stickers, and I tried to use them in a creative way and not just stick them onto paper. Whether I succeeded or not is up the eye of the viewer.

I also enjoyed making this album in a 3 ring binder. I certainly was able to get it completed a lot faster than in a bound or glued journal because I could work on multiple pages during a sitting. Of course that meant I had a lot of pages on the floor drying too. 😏 

This first page in today's post was actually quite easy to make because I recently found a half done card I had started a long time ago. The back of it had gotten crushed, but the dragon in the window design on the front was still in good shape. Since the dragon in Diagon Alley at Harry Potter world was my favorite  "creature" in the park, I cut out this image from the card.  My background was made by inking some blue and wine colored ink pads, and then I added the sticker quote

The page below is actually the front of a greeting card I picked up in the park. The Dumbledore image is actually holographic, but with my camera it didn't pick up the other view.

I cut the front of the card off, and on the back  I made this page.

  My next page is about a ride we took, Hagrid's Flying Motorbikes. I used stickers and some rubber stamps on this one, as well as a bit of drawing. 

I also die cut the pumpkins and added a postage stamp that came on a card from Elle either on a Halloween or Christmas card. The ride is similar to the postage stamp, a motorcycle with the sidecar.

It was easy to do a bit of window shopping in Diagon Alley, and my sticker book had lots of matching stickers. The top page is made from acetate with a die cut window and are the windows we looked into.

You can lift it and see what's underneath.

And the rest of the pages for this post are various places we visited in the park, starting with the Knight's Bus. I stenciled and colored in the stars and added the other postage stamp that came on the same card from Elle I mentioned earlier. The quote is stamped. I used a couple of stickers on the page also.

We also went to a wand store where they had a little demonstration of how your wand picks you. I chose to use Dunbledore with his wand fighting "he who should not be named", even though the show was nothing to do with any battle scenes.Those of you not familiar with Harry Potter, Dumbledore is the head of the school, and "he who should not be named" is the dark and evil character.

 Gringott's, the bank, is where the witches and wizards stored their gold, so I needed gold paper for my background. 

Finally for this post a sticker page about the Weasley twins  joke shop.  I had a lot of stickers that worked for this store. 

 I have one more post to show you  of my journal. I hope you're enjoying seeing it. 

I'll be linking up this post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles . 

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

Harry Potter Journal

 Hi everyone. I hope you're enjoying your weekend. Mine has been "fairly" quiet, and yesterday I spent a lot of time on the couch reading. I'm actually hoping for another relaxing day today. 👍

Those of you who have stopped by my blog for a while might know I like to make journals when I get home from a trip. In my travel journals I include all kinds of paraphernalia I pick up, as well as other items. My trip to Universal Studios at the end of last month is also getting a journal.  I decided it would have an overall Harry Potter theme, since that is how we spent most of our trip. This journal has some paraphernalia  pages, but also some pages made with Harry Potter stickers. I had a book of stickers  that I bought a few years back at Costco, and they work  with the theme of this latest journal.

Here's the cover. I am using a little chipboard 3 ring binder that I painted Hufflepuff yellow (or what the most people would call mustard 😏.) I covered the binding with some brown book binders tape.

I added a Hogswart's sticker from the sticker collection, sanded the edges and then rubbed a bit of paint on those edges. The key is a souvenir I bought at the Gringotts (bank) store on my trip. I still need to add a title, but I haven't decided what or how I want to do that yet.

And this next page is my inner cover. You can also see I painted the inside of my actual cover green. That's because when I've been sorted in Harry Potter schools, I've been sorted as both a Hufflepuff and a Slytherin.  The green stands for the Slytherin and the yellow outside for the Hufflepuff.

(And if you're not into Harry Potter, sorting decides which of the 4 groups/houses within the Hogwarts school you belong.)

I made my page with some stamped stars, a die cut center block, some stickers, confetti dots and some smudging.

Since we rode the train between the 2 Harry Potter parks several times, I made a page using stickers, a stamped and fussy cut train and train ticket, a paper clock, a die cut pointing finger and a paper crown. I used a stenciling brush and a red ink pad to slightly smudge a bit of color on the background.

And on this next page I used stickers, an acetate frame as well as a white Posca paint pen and some little brown plastic dots.

In my travel journal, I try to make pages or include items that bring back memories. Hot butter beer was definitely something I wanted to remember.  On this next page I covered the background with  striped paper.  The cups are stamped, fussy cut and lightly colored with watercolor paint.  The butter beer heading is cut out of the koozie from an actual cup of butter beer I had. I also added a few other embellishments.

Some handwritten journaling, a big sticker, a small sticker and a stamped postmark are used on this next page.

And finally for this post (before it gets too long), I have a  page for  Vicki's Keeping It Light challenge at Art Journal Journey. This time I have a black and white(ish) page which I think shows the contrast between dark and light quite well.

We had lunch one day at the Three Broomsticks, which is what the above page is all about. I added the clock because neither my friend nor I were quite sure about the ordering process, and so a quick lunch took a lot longer than we planned. 

I die cut the center black and white paper as well as the fork from silver paper. The stars are hand drawn. The sticker is from my sticker book but I first put it on some black paper and then trimmed it. 

I have quite a few other pages done, but instead of making a long post, I’ll share those another day. 

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

Enjoy whatever is left to your day. 

More Harry Potter Faces

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. I hope you had a great week and have a great weekend ahead also.

Today I have the rest of my "Harry Potter" faces to share. These faces are for Nicole's Friday Face Off.  I am also linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break. 

You might remember me mentioning that back at the end of January I took a quick trip down to Florida to visit Universal Studios with a friend. We both really wanted to visit the Harry Potter parts of the park, and neither of us was disappointed with the art and atmosphere.

My post today has some fun window views, a couple of statues, and a few other faces too.

If you want to spend $75 for a wand, you can make things happen at certain exhibits. This statue was one of them; water would squirt out. We didn't get wands, because even if it might be fun to play at the park, when you got home the wand would just collect dust.  But it was fun to watch kids who had a wand get the wand exhibits to react.

Dumbledore was a projection in this exhibit, which was along the way into a ride. At least they kept you entertained while you waited. 

Here's some goblins  that worked, looked up and made a comment every now and again. These were also seen while waiting for a ride.

I would hate to see what the lines were on a busy day. Most of the line mazes were closed off when we were there.

And here's some more faces.

This house elf peeked out of the window every few minutes.

And here's a couple of photos of my friend Deb and myself, posing with a couple of characters in the park. Sometimes it was hard to tell the park characters from people who were dressed up visiting the park.

Don't miss the shrunken head (that talked) behind Nigel the Knight's bus driver.

And finally, how about a head of another sort.

Have a great weekend.

T Stands for This, That and a New Mug

 Hi everyone. It's time once again time for T day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. I hope everyone had a lovely week since last week's T.

Last Tuesday (after I'd posted my T Day post) I received some fun mail from our lovely T Day hosts.

Thank you dear Elizabeth and Bleubeard. And I shouldn’t forget Squiggles either. too. The postcards are great, especially the saguaros in the Arizona card.  Saguaros are some of my favorite trees, and definitely not anything we have in New Hampshire. Your ATC is lovely also. And grin, with the way time flies it won't be long until we'll be celebrating year 11 of T Day. But I'm NOT trying to rush time.

Last week I had a mix of quiet days and very busy days. It seemed like a week's worth of eventful days were squeezed into 2. 😏 We also had sun for several days, and even one day the temperature hit 56 degrees F (13 degrees C). It was fantastic to see blue skies and the sun for so many days. It was also especially nice to have a day when I didn't need to wear my winter jacket  either.  ❤

For T there is some light snow in my local forecast, but originally they were saying heavier snow so I hope the latest forecast is correct.

My drink this week for T is some new tea and a new mug.

I was at Costco last week, and they had jars of this jellied peach oolong tea. Everything is mixed together in the gel, and you just need to add a spoon or 2 to some hot water, stir until the gel dissolves, and you have your cup of tea. I've had lemon tea like this before, which gives you a delicious and intense lemon taste. And seeing I am ready for spring, the idea of peach tea sounded very tempting. It was so tempting I bought the jar, even though it is huge and I would have to drink peach tea every day for months (if not longer) to finish it. But it does make a nice cup of peach flavored tea, and I can also use it in the warm weather to make peach iced tea. ❤

And did you notice my new mug? Mr. DNA is from the original Jurassic Park movie, and since  I'm into Biology, I love this movie series. I probably wouldn't have bought the mug on my trip to Universal Studios  except we went on this  killer roller coaster ride.

I don't mind roller coaster rides in general, but what I didn't know, is quite how INTENSE this ride was. Thankfully I didn't know before the ride, or I would have chickened out. This one was too much for me.

It hits speeds of 70 miles per hour (112 km/hr), has this intense drop you can see in the above photo, and you're only held in by a waist lock. There are no shoulder locks. 

And you are upside down  over open water and the boardwalk  that leads into Harry Potter world too.

Oh boy. I was shaking when I got off of it, and luckily, it was the last day of our 3 day trip, because I was done with rides at that point. 

 I was so relieved when it was over and also so pleased with myself that I got through it, that I could have bought up the whole Jurassic Park store to celebrate. I settled for the mug to remember the event, which I will NEVER do again. 😏

So cheers to all of us who step outside of our comfort zones and go for it.

Have a happy T day and a great week ahead too. And for those of you who I don't see during the week. Happy Valentine's Day to you also.