Assorted Faces

     Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Yes this is post #2 for today because when I publish the month's first day post introducing our new host and challenge at Art Journal Journey I like to keep that post only about that challenge. However, it is Friday and I want to join Nicole's Friday Face Off and also Gillena's Friday Lunch Break so I have another short post here with some faces to join those challenges.

     This past week the only art I worked on was some I can't share yet, but I realized I haven't posted much from my envelope journal that I made back in the spring. The entire book except the covers are made from some large envelopes that had  been used for storing papers so they had writing on them and weren't any good for actually mailing things in. I folded them in half the long way, cut off some of the bottom part to make them a manageable size, and created a journal using them.

      I picked 3 pages to share today. They all have faces. This book is not only about envelopes but also about the grunge look, so I hope you enjoy them. (Because I know not everyone likes the grunge look. 😏)

     That's it for me today. Have a super Friday and weekend ahead. 

May Is Winding Down

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

   This week's been busy, and I've also been trying to get some final outside chores done (other than the dreaded never ending weeding), so if I haven't been by your blog and  you've commented on mine, let me apologize before I go on any further.

   As Saturday is the last day of May, I want to share my penultimate page for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Today's page is from my envelope journal which I've mentioned before.

     For this page I used several fussy cut or punched out images as well as some sewing machine stitching. I also used a metallic paper moon and some marker around it to represent it shining.  I stamped the quote, which I think is from the same Impression Obsession set as the lunar moth. I stamped the moth on clear acetate and cut it out. 

    This is my first week with 2 mornings of work at the boat ramp. Monday, being a holiday and finally being sunny was quite busy. The morning was mostly fishermen, and then locals who put in their boats for the season. There were also a few pleasure boaters too. 

I really loved the blue skies against the shadow and greens of the mountains.

     Over the long weekend my husband took the winter plastic panels off the screen porch. I washed down all the screen  doors (which make up the walls), and then he put those clean screen  doors up. I still had (and have) cleaning to do out on the porch  so I can use it.

     

     But I did get some flowers planted in the pots on my back deck.

    I needed a couple more bags of soil for my veggie planters, which I picked up yesterday, and I still have to put them in and plant the rest of my veggies. We have rain today, so that will chore will have to wait. Hopefully tomorrow I can get out and do some of these chores.

     Most of these plants in the greenhouse  are either veggies (still waiting to be planted) or flowers that went into the pots on my back deck. But on the left you can see the size of the potatoes I started, as well as parsley, beets and carrots. I need to move the rest of those pots outside too.

    That's all for me. I hope you had a wonderful day or rest of your day, depending what time it is that you stop by. 

Bluebirds

      Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has zoomed by, and it's time again for Friday Face Off over at Nicole's blog and also Friday Lunch break over at Gillena's blog.

     I hope you don't mind me starting with  some more bird photos. You might remember that last Friday I showed the parent bluebirds feeding some babies, but you could not see any babies, just the parents at the opening of the birdhouse.  Now you can see those babies. Well, you don't see them when you're nearby but if you step in the house and zoom in with your camera you can see them. 

   The baby bluebirds in my birdhouse are getting big. I took these photos a few days ago, so they're  even more developed now and might even be getting ready to fledge. Or maybe that have fledged and I missed it, which would be sad since I wanted to see that.

     I see 2 faces in one of the photos, and the babies' eyes are open. I read that the babies open their eyes at 8 days, so the birds must be at least 8 days old when I had taken these photos. They're obviously even older now. I hope I didn't miss when they fledged. I read that the parents take care of the young for a short period of time after that too, but so far I haven't seen any signs of that either.

     I also have a page from my envelope journal to share for Neet's challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  If you join in you know her challenge is It Must Have Wings. 

     I had some left over music paper scraps (back from Vicki's February's Music challenge at AJJ) that I die cut into circles. I also stamped a Dina Wakely image, added a tissue paper head over the image's actual head, and I added the TH stamped, colored and die cut bird It's blue, and that's my connection to this post. Finally I cut a little balloon and added all the words on my page.

     I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead. We could get more showers at my house (another at least partially wet weekend-it's a not so good trend lately) so I hope your weekend is sunny and bright. 

The Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. 

    I haven't shared any pages from my grunge inspired envelope book for awhile, and this one, with all the bee sequins, is perfect for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Sorry but neither of today's photos are fantastic. The first one is so you can see the whole page in the book, and then I zoomed in for a little bit better view. This book doesn't lay flat very well because it's quite thick, so if the photos look crooked it's because the pages pop up a bit.

     I started this page by die cutting this pretty lace image. After I glued it down, I splattered the page with some blue and brown watercolor paints

     You can see it better in this view. I also added a punch out compass image from 49 and Market. I had this golden-brown colored flower sequins so I added them, and I put a small bronze 1/2 pearl into the center. These flowers were an afterthought since I actually went into the sequin box to find the little bee sequins which you can also see on my page. In fact, they're the park with the wings on my page. (grin)

    I finished by stamping the quote and adding a couple of flat buttons that I ran some waxed thread through first. 

     And I have bees. 👍❤😀  My first batch arrived earlier this week. 

    This time I ordered my bees back where I originally received bees. I used a bee business called Mountain Sweet Honey in Georgia as I've always had high quality bee shipments with them. The man who runs this business only wants successful bee colonies to ship, and when the colonies needed more time for a successful queens, he postponed  shipments for 3 weeks. It worked out for me better also  because now it's warmer and better bee weather here in New Hampshire.

     This is what the box is like when I open up the screening. To release the bees (next photo), I remove this can which contains sugar water that feeds the bees while they are in transit. This time I tried a new variety of honeybees called Caucasian bees. Like their name says, they are originally from the Caucasus mountains which are in southwestern Russia as well as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenian and parts of Iran. One trait of these honeybees is that they like to make a lot of propolis/wax  compared to other varieties. You can see they made some on the can, and it did make it a bit tougher to remove from the box.

     I decided to try this variety because they reach their full colony growth mid-summer. Many bee colonies reach that size earlier in the season, but since spring is later arriving where I live, I thought these bees might do well. I also discovered in my research they have the longest proboscis (a straw like structure coming out of the mouth) of all honey bee varieties.  Time will tell if I like this variety or not.

     When they first go in, there are bees everywhere. I guess if you're disturbed from your closed in space and somewhere new. you are not only a bit out of kilter but also in need of exploring your new turf.

     They find the front of their hive box quickly enough, and after a couple of hours, the swarm of bees calms down and most of them are in the hive.

     And for those who may be wondering, I did not get stung in the process. 😏

     Have a great day ahead. 

Wrapping Up April

       Hi everyone. Happy last day of April to you. What a month it was at my house, starting with winter weather and now we're (happily) into spring.

        Today I want to share my final pages for my Spring Birds challenge at Art Journal Journey. I've been hosting since March 1 with two different challenges, and I'm ready to pass the baton (or should I say journal page) off to our new host tomorrow. Check back then to see who our next talented host is and what the May challenge will be. 

    And before I move on I want to thank everyone who joined in at AJJ this past month. It's always appreciated, and it made for such a colorful as well as flower and  bird filled month.  I always enjoy seeing how people interpret  themes too.  Thank you everyone who linked up.

      For my last art journal pages for April let me share a spread from my envelope journal that is all about spring.

     I used a lot of scraps from my scrap pile including a tag that was cut out of some paper, a luggage tag back from 2022 when we flew home from California, some assorted die cut "extras" and a few stickers too. I also did a bit of stenciling and painting. Plus I used a bit of velvet ribbon. You can see the spring chick, the spring bunny and also the spring flower with the pink button center.

     And here's each side on their own..

     Here's the tag in the pocket of one of these  pages. You can see it peeking up in an above photo.

     I didn't use an actual vintage photo but instead used a copy of one. Then I added the clock and a stamped word.

     That's all for today. I hope everyone has a wonderful end  to April, and a happy start to May. 

Spring Blooms

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a wonderful weekend. We had a lot of rain yesterday, but that was good for the lawn, gardens and woods. Plus, it was a good excuse to take a day off from doing yard work and be a little lazy-grin 😏.

     It's always exciting to see the world greening back up and flowers starting to bloom. I know my area is behind so many other people's, but since I'm happy to see them, I guess you'll have to bear with me. 😁

    The cherry blossoms on the tree that my co-workers gave me when my Dad passed will be blooming very soon.

     My transplanted roses are starting to get leaves. I hope that means they are adjusting well to their new spot.

     And the sugar maple in the yard is blooming too.

     Then those blooms fall to the ground.

     And I'll wrap up this post with some more blooms, this time from the envelope journal I made. I'll be  linking these  up to Art Journal Journey  where the challenge is Spring Birds and which runs through this coming Wednesday. I know there's no birds on today's posts, but the flowers are definitely for spring, especially the second view.

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

    Enjoy the rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

A Page from My Envelope Journal

   Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. I'm very excited to report that so far there has been no snow at my house this week. ❤😏👍

 Before I share my journal page I want to share some happy mail I received the other day from CJ. She said she'd been doing a bit of stash cleaning and came across a couple of bee related images. Would I like them? Yes, definitely.

    Thank you CJ for thinking of me. I can definitely use these in some art, especially since I am still working in my bee journal. I also love the little kitty sticker in the cup. It looks like Calli. Give Calli  (and of course Quill) a little pat for me in thanks too.

     I also wanted to share one spring inspired page from my envelope journal today. I'll be linking this up to my Spring Bird challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     The bird is recycled magazine image. I also used a page from an Icelandic murder mystery that I brought home from Iceland with me in 2023. I don't read Icelandic so I hope it's isn't a bloody gory scene. 😏 I  used a bit of washi tape, a left over scrap from a die cut and some white watered down and sponged on paint. The buttons were in a bag I picked up recently at JoAnn's fabrics, which is a fabric and craft store chain that is going out of business. I picked up several bags in various colors to use on some art because they are super thin, and although I don't think they'd be any good at being buttoned and unbuttoned on clothing because they are so thin and would break easily,  being so thin they work great as a detail on a page.

    And here's the oversized tag you can see peeking out of the pocket, which also has a bird on it.  All of the images are cut out of an old magazine or torn from my Icelandic mystery book. I stamped the postmarks as well as the quote and added a couple of sticky silver half pearls to finish it off.

    That's enough for today. Have a great day everyone.

Recycled Art

 Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday to you.

      Today I'm joining Bleubeard and Elizabeth with a bit of recycled art. Elizabeth's birthday is on Earth Day, and to celebrate she always shares some recycled art in April. Elizabeth asked me if I could make some recycled art to join her. Although I had something else in mind, I didn't have time to get to it. However, I  spent last month making this project which has lots of recycled parts to it. Today I am sharing a few views of my envelope journal.

     I often file certain items  in 9x12 envelopes because it never fails, when I use file folders things always seem to fall out. I had several things filed in some envelopes, and then after doing a bit of cleaning, I didn't need the envelopes any longer. I usually write directly on the envelope what is in it, so these envelopes, although still in very good shape, weren't really useful for mailing. There were also so many of them, and it seemed a waste to throw them all out.

    I decided to use them for an envelope book. I  cut the envelopes down. I decided not to worry that they  all had to be the same size, and instead cut them randomly. I like how some are tall and some are shorter.  I also decided I wanted to leave the top on them, and that allowed me to create lots of open pockets I could fill with tags and other bits.  I stitched the pages down the middle to make 4 signatures, and on some of my pages I even did a bit of stitching just for texture and detail.

    I'll be showing more of these pages another time, but let me go to the cover. The cardboard that makes up the cover is from a set of sheets that I bought  last fall. I kept the cardboard because I thought it would make a great book cover. I covered the entire cardboard with some cloth bookbinding tape.

   The big round circle you can see is also a piece of recycled cardboard. I'm not exactly sure what package it came from, but I'm thinking maybe a Christmas bowl I bought a couple of years ago.  I painted it before I attached it to the cover.  I also added a piece of scrap envelope paper to the cover and the junk word  which is made from a set of stitched letters I found on a markdown table and had in my stash. I also used a pink paint pen to outline the cover.

    Since I've shared my cover, I thought I  would also share it once I bound the inner pages. This time instead of straight binding I tried something with a pattern. It took me a lot longer to do   than a straight binding would have, but I'm happy with how it came out.

    Thank you Elizabeth for asking me to share some recycled art. It was lots of fun to share recycled art to help you celebrate.