More Fish for AJJ

 Hi everyone. Happy new week to you.

Before I show you my fish art, let me share the first fish caught this season when my husband and I went fishing this past Friday on my husband's boat. After yours truly caught him/her, we put the fish in the boat's wet well for a few minutes, mainly so Maddie and Pete could watch him swim around. The dogs are really fascinated by that, and I think they could sit for an hour just watching fish swim.  Then my fish went back into the ocean to spend some more time swimming, eating and growing bigger.

And if you aren't familiar with a wet well, when you turn it on it pumps in ocean water and keeps recycling it through so you can keep fish or other ocean creatures alive.

And eeeew, the boat looks so dirty.

OK the fish  is just a tiny pollack,  but at least I caught something, which was more than my husband did. Well he did hook onto a lobster buoy, but that doesn't count as even if there was lobster in the trap, you legally can't take them. Smile.

Today I want to share  some more pages from my Little Book of Fish. I hope you're not too bored with my little journal project  yet, but if you are, this is the last views from my mini project.  I am linking these up to Mia's fish challenge at Art Journal Journey. There's still a couple more days to join in if you're interested. 

A fun fish stencil and a black Sharpie on a page is all that was needed.

A fish from my old classroom poster (left), some fish images off of a collage sheet (that I copied first) and a green fish from the old aquarium book I had,  make up the images on this spread. I used my "just keep swimming" stamp on the left hand side, only I put some tape over the "just keep" words while I inked it. Then I could pull off the tape and only the swimming word would stamp. I also created a border on the left side with a piece of aquarium book page and some washi tape.

On this next page I used the fish stencil and the same stamping technique to get the word swimming. I also added this chipboard fish. I inked them orange and doodled on the details. I also included a little sticky gemstone dot for the eye and as well as adding some thin washi tape to both pages. 

And then there's this page that is a little different from the rest. I added a bit of paper (do you remember 7Gypsies supplies?), some stenciled gesso, some glitter glue as well as some little sticky gemstones. Finally I stamped the quote, and then went over it with a black marker since it didn't stamp very dark.

I hope you enjoyed  not only all of the fish, but my little book that I've been sharing all month. I have one more fish post before we wrap up June, but this is the last of my Little Book of Fish. If you can't tell, I really enjoyed this fish challenge. Thanks Mia for this fun topic.

Hope you're having or have a great day!

Sunday Fish

 Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you are having a nice weekend. 

The summer heat is here, and it's been  a busy weekend as my daughter was around for the early part of it. Friday my husband and I went out in his boat too. He's been pretty stressed at work, and he's been acting like he's missed the whole summer of boating, even though I keep reminding him it is still June.

Today I have a few pages from my Little Book of Fish to share with you. Mia's challenge at Art Journal Journey is winding down as the month reaches its ending in a few days, and I want to finish sharing my fish pages.

Hope you aren't tired of fish yet.

This first page is more textural.  I wish I didn't stamp the black fish as I don't like them peering through the netting, but I guess they have been caught in a net.

These next pages used an interesting piece of printed paper as background. 

I added the Slipper Dick fish to this ocean view page. This page makes me smile because I didn't know the slippery dick was an actual fish until I cut up the poster. We have a fishing lure called a slippery dick in the tackle box, and I guess it wasn't just the name someone gave it.

And a couple more pages, starting with these colorful fish.

I stamped these fish and colored them in.  And on this next page I used another unique and interesting fish from the poster.

These 2 pages form a spread at the end of my Little Book of Fish, but I still have a few pages left to share (since I haven't been showing them in order).

This book ended up being bigger than I thought once I actually got down to picking out photos for blog posts. 

Thanks for visiting my blog and enjoy what's left of your weekend!

The Last Friday in June-How Did that Happen?

Hi everyone. Time is certainly flying by, and I feel like June should be just beginning instead of starting to enter wind down mode. Today I have some art to share.

First for Mia's fish challenge at Art Journal Journey I have a couple more pages from my Little Book of Fish.

Mia's Art Journal Journey challenge runs through the end of this month, so you still have time to join in if you're interested.

On the left page I added a fish and it's info from the same old poster I have been using all month. I also used a watercolor crayon to create the wiggly wave lines, and some stickers to add the word discover. ON the right side I added the fish which is cut out from an old book about aquariums. I stamp lots of the little fish as well as the quote. I also added a scrap of paper along the top right side and used a Sharpie to make the dotted lines.

I also want to share a page for Nicole's Friday Face Off. I still have some faces in my drawing pad that I made back in 2008 when I participated in a drawing class and group.  I have never posted these on my blog, so even though they are not recently drawn, I'm not re-posting. This week I think Iris will like my faces.

Mom isn't looking too happy in this piece. I used a photo in a wildlife book I have as my model. I didn't get the eyes quite right on the cub's face, and I have to smile as he looks rather cute being cross-eyed. 

I am also linking up to Gillena's Art For Fun at her blog.

Have a great start to the weekend. 

Wednesday Art And Art Space

Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week. Let me share some art with you today. 

I'll start  my post with the center spread from my Little Book of Fish.  I am sharing this because for the next week the theme at Art Journal Journey is Fish. And the lovely Mia is our host.

I also want to mention how too many sharks are needlessly killed for their fins (for soup) or mainly because people think they are all evil killers.  They are predictors, but they do play an important role in the natural ocean ecosystem. Most sharks have very little interactions with humans.

The shark image and the blue ID comes off my fish poster scraps (that I've mentioned before), and the fish jars are from another collage sheet I purchased  way back in the day. The background, like all the pages in my book are watercolored. This time I also stamped some writing. The page is titled with some stickers.

 I also wanted to join Valerie's challenge at Tag Tuesday . This time the challenge is use a die cut.

I die cut several circles as you can see. I also used a scrap of textured paper for the background, an image cut out of a pretty chopped up pattern book, as well as a scrap of pattern tissue. I completed the tag by adding some pink metallic flowers with a dot of white paint in the middle, as well as a quote sticker. 

I've still been very busy trying to set up my new art space. Actually what is taking all the time is going through items and purging/cleaning them out. That and  finding out I need to change something because what I set up isn't working as well as arranging it some other way. We did get the rug down this weekend as well as setting up my new art desk though.

I love the rug and all the color on it.  Even better, it's also an indoor/outdoor washable rug. Another Costco special. It's the only thing other than construction materials I bought for the room.

 Maddie tested it out, and it passed her nap test. Smile.

The table adjusts in height and has 2 big drawers  that will be great to hold scissors, pens, etc. The table was my birthday gift from my husband back in March. Actually he bought it at Home Depot in January, which I knew because when he saw it he sent me over to decide if I would like it. It's been sitting in the box at our house ever since.  It's good to have it set up, although I'm not sure exactly where on the floor it is actually going to sit yet. 

And I have way too much "stuff" as you can see in the photos. I've purged a lot, but when I'm cleaning I have moments where I think I should just get rid of about 90% of it. Smile.  I've filled and taken 8 garbage bags  to the dump/ recycle center that have  junk in them like dried up paints, paper bits I thought I would use or very chopped up magazines. I also have several bins of items like paper and stickers, etc. that I am going to do something with (sell or donate), and I have cleaned out my stamps and purged a few, but I'm disappointed I haven't cleaned away more of them. I'm having a really hard time cleaning out my rubber stamps. It's an addiction, that's for certain.

Thank goodness I have the room. When and if I ever need to downsize more than I have with this project I am going to be in BIG trouble. Smile.

That's it for me today. My daughter informed me she and her beau are coming not only over the July 4th weekend but this weekend also. I don't feel her old room needs to be perfect, but I do need to finish picking up some items  in there also. Luckily there isn't a whole lot left to go through. At this point, I will be glad to get all this cleaning and organizing finished.

 I hope you're having a great week and start to summer.

Thanks for visiting.

Monday Art Post

 Hi everyone. Happy new week to you. Today I am going to squeeze in some Fishy art before tonight's T day post.

Let me share another spread from my My Little Fish book for Mia's fish challenge at Art Journal Journey.

OK, I know this this first page of the spread doesn't have any fish. I like this bit of marbled paper I used, as well as stamping on the background. I also used this gold metallic paper ship and a stamped and cut out in blocks quote.

I carried the dream theme over to my next page. And there is a fish for you there.

This time my fish is a ray or skate. There is no way to tell from the photo.  There are some very interesting fish out there that don't fall into the normal shapes or colors associated with fish.  I'll share a few more as the month continues.

I'm keeping this short as I will be back tonight for T day. Thanks for stopping by.

This Week The Color Is Red

 Hi everyone. 

Today I am posting some more fish for Mia's challenge at Art Journal Journey, and I'm also highlighting the color RED for Rain's Thursday Art Date as that is her color theme for this week.

I'm back with my little book of fish, and although these 2 pages are not side by side spread, they both have red fish.

This first page has a fish image that was in my stash (and I'm not sure where it came from) and this second page has a red fish I snipped off an old poster I brought home from the classroom. There are also 3 red fish on the fake postage stamp from an old collage sheet by Art Chix. You might remember them as they were a big company back before 2010. I wonder if Art Chix even makes collage sheets any longer. I searched for them, and they came up on Etsy, but I didn't see any results.

Both of my pages are smaller, and you can see a bit of the page underneath.

And here's some more red inspired photos.

 My roses are starting to bloom. 

And pink is just  white mixed with red.

And here's some red peonies I saw while visiting Bedrock Gardens recently.

And I've shown this next photo before, but a glass of red wine tastes nice sometimes.

And I will leave you sipping some red wine (only if you want it). Have a great day. And thanks for visiting.

Wednesday Ramblings-Art and Bees

Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.

Let me start this post with a page from my little fish book that I will be linking up to Mia's Fish challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

All the pages in my little book have a watercolor background, along with some white ink designs that I outlined with a black pen. For this page I  first used a letter stencil and a Sharpie to write the word wild, and then I used the reverse of white ink with black pen, meaning I used a white pen on the black ink.

I used a crayon to make some water around the wild word, and then I used some of these little confetti fish to create my school of tropical beauties. These all came in the same package, and I simply glued them down.

And some of you have been asking about my bees. They are doing well. I have a whole lot of them, and massive amounts of honey already (compared to what I had last year). I keep expecting to see more brood (eggs, larva, etc) when I look at the amount of honey, and I have to remind myself it's only been about a month since the bees arrived. The queen can only lay so many eggs in a day, although she does lay a huge amount.

Here's some photos from 2 weeks ago.

If you click on this next photo and enlarge it you can see the larva in the open honeycomb.  They look like tiny white warms. The yellowish capped honeycomb has older but not yet  hatched bees.

And here's some photos from when I opened the hive last weekend. The photos aren't as close up because my husband was home, and he took the photos on my phone. He's interested in the bees but still very nervous about them, so he didn't get too close.

All the white comb  you can see in this next photo is honey.

I number my frames just so that I can put them back in the order they came out, which someone online suggested. The renumbers are because I have reused frames from last year.

It is interesting how this year's bees are so different from last year's bees. Because I'm still a novice, I don't know if that's good or bad  or just how it is.  We'll see how things go along. At least I am still  learning a lot and enjoying the experience.

Thanks for visiting and have a great middle of the week.

 

Fish and Flowers

 Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you are having a wonderful weekend. 

Today I am posting some more FISH pages from my little fish journal. I will be linking up to Mia's FISH challenge at Art Journal Journey. I apologize for the photos. The book does not want to lay flat no matter what I try. 

The left side page is small, so you can see a bit of the page below it. I used some old fish art fodder postage stamps  that came on a collage image sheet. I actually like this collage sheet a lot so I hadn't used it in all the years I've owned it.  The reality is these images are better on a page than just sitting in a box, so here are some of the fishy postage images. 

I added the quote and the stenciled arrows.

On the right hand page I added some paper scraps to match those peeking through on the top of the left hand page. I also added this big green fish that came out of an old book on aquariums, another bit of classroom "junk" I brought home instead of trashing 2 years ago. I almost tossed it out just a couple of weeks ago as I try to weed down the books I have for collaging, but then I looked and saw all these lovely fish. Many are really colorful. I guess I will save it for at least a while. 

And also while cleaning out my box of stencils, I found this small fish stencil buried at the bottom. I used a black Sharpie to add the fishes, and I really like how they look and contrast to the lighter page. 

I've spent a lot of time the last several days working outside in my gardens. My perennial gardens have some beautiful blooms right now though.

Siberian irises, and below some wild blackberries growing along the driveway.

I was told the other day that peony blossoms need ants to eat the wax coating off of them so they can bloom. That's why you always see ants on the plants. I didn't verify that fact to see if it was true, but it seem to make a lot of sense.

My alliums are attracting a huge number of bees, and not just honey bees.

I still have a few bearded irises blooming, as well as one azalea that's in a shadier spot.

And my grape vine will have flowers soon also. You can see the clusters of buds on it.

Hope you enjoyed the views today. And happy rest of your weekend too.