Oh What a Night

     Hi everyone Happy Tuesday to you. Another 2 weeks have passed so I am here with my latest piece for our new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

      Thank you to everyone who joined our Feeling Blue challenge. Blue is one of my favorite colors so I really enjoyed seeing so much of that color.❤

      Our newest challenge is  Oh What A Night. There's so many ways you can approach that topic. 

    I've been in the middle of a big cleaning out of my art space, so I am sharing a page I made last fall that was only partially completed in an old journal.  That explains the quote.  I still need to finish off this journal, and since I like to have themed journals, this one is all about the night. It's one that I am back working on now.

    I used paints, markers, tissue paper, printed paper, and owl rubber stamp, some small metal stars and also some stickers to make this page.

    As always, you have 2 weeks for this topic, can link up any type of art, and please don't forget to check out the other designer's pieces too. There's lots of ideas for you there.

    I love seeing how people approach the same topic differently, so I hope you join so I can see some other ways to make art about the night.

Thursday Art

 Hi everyone. 

I'm back today with some more assorted art starting with a tag for Michele's Back to School  challenge at Tag Tuesday. Today's tag is a little different as I took the view of a teacher looking at their students, rather than student looking at back to school.

I stamped the quote, die cut the apple, and stamped as well as fussy cut the little bookworm with the mortar board on their head.

I also have a journal page for Aimeslee's Anything Goes challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

     Back in 2017 (or so) I made a journal about the night sky. I should say I started that journal, but when it was put on the shelf, it wasn't quite finished. I decided to finish it this fall, and this is one of the new spreads I recently made.

     The left hand side of the background is a page I pulled out of a very old calendar I had (as you can see from the fringe at the edge of the image). I kept this calendar because it has fascinating very old style illustrated pages.  Since my journal has narrower pages than the calendar was, I cut the illustration.  Most of the page is on the left, and there's a little bit of it on the right. I stamped, colored and fussy cut the rocket and Saturn before adding them to my page.

     On the right hand side I added a strip of black polka dot paper (the darkness and stars) as well as a couple pieces of gold diamond trim. After staining up the remaining uncovered background I stamped this old quote that I had in my stash.

    We've been having such gorgeous weather this week I have been making a lot of effort to get out and enjoy it. Yesterday Mr. Pete and I took a lovely long walk. Maddie spent the day at the vet's getting a day long blood glucose curve done, and finally, for the first time since January when she went on insulin, her blood sugar was down to normal. ❤   

      Here's a few photos from my walk.

That's all for me today.  Hope you're having a great day. 

The Stars

Happy almost weekend everyone. (Or maybe actual weekend for you b the time you read this). 

Every now and again I find something to inspire me to make a page in my night sky journal. It might be taking me quite awhile to finish it up, but I think it is one of favorite ever journals, so better to take it slow and be inspired than to rush and not like the finish.

This page started with some polka-dot and star patterned paper, a bit of stenciling over that, and then a lot of collaging. The sky chart cam out of an old atlas, and the words were cut from some junk mail I got. (but they are awfully good words I think).

And of course the polka-dots make this page the perfect link up to Art Journal Journey where this month's challenge is Polka-dots, stripes, plaids or patterns. There's still a little over a week to the month so I hope to see some more fantastic entries. And of course, big thanks to all the fantastic art already shared. And big thanks to Susi and Elizabeth for getting the webpage working so we can post!

I decided to take the day off from work today. It is a gorgeous day, that and I am fighting the head cold going around work. Too gorgeous to be inside doing some silly teacher workday activities. The kids have a long weekend (so I am not missing class time), and our district administration planned all these warm fuzzy activities that to me is no more than busy work since they couldn't find anything of value for us to do. (But they can't let us do the work we should and could be doing.) OK, enough said, you can guess how I am feeling about all that, but I did manage to get out for a walk this morning. Hurrah for that! There are certainly some signs of fall.

 And there are so many caterpillars this year. Here's a few.

This one below looks like a crawling stick.

Thanks so much for visiting and hope you are having a great day also!

A Fun Take on a Challenge

Hi everyone. Happy Wednesday. 

Today I have a new page for the In The Air/In the Sky challenge at Art Journal Journey  And this one is a little crazy!

I found this image and words on  a magazine cover at school. The magazine was in the ready to go into the trash pile so I snagged it. I took it last year, long before I knew I would be hosting Art Journal Journey, but then I recently found it at home. And even though you wouldn't see this  alien creature in the sky (or t least I hope you wouldn't), you always hear about strange potential alien sightings in the sky, so I decided it was OK to push the envelope and include it. 

This is a spread from my Night Sky journal that I have been working on for over a year now. I started this page by stenciling with some black paint and adding a couple of pieces of printed tissue paper. Then I cut out the image and words and attached those. Finally I added a few little metal stars that I had.

Thanks so far to all of you who are linking up to Art Journal Journey. The art so far this month is fantastic. And if you haven't yet joined us for some In The Air/In The Sky fun, you still have time to do so as we're only half way through May.

Hope your week is going well!

Monday Again

Happy new week everyone. Monday has rolled around again.Hope everyone had a good weekend. More rain in my forecast today, and it's a bit icey this morning. The icy rain woke me up last night and everything outside is slightly white but very glazed over. It is supposed to get above freezing today and hopefully this icey white melts away with the regular old rain that is going fall and fall and fall.
I was hoping to be more ambitious yesterday but the dreary dark day zapped a lot of that hope. I can't say it ended up being a very productive day, even artwise. I was a bit frustrated as I had a list of things I felt I should do. Oh do I hate those lists in my head because after you take a step back you realized none of it had to get done.  The pile of clothes I need to put away and all the dog hair on the floor, well, we'll just live with it a little bit longer I guess. :)
But all in all it was a good weekend, I got my running around done on Saturday and yesterday I did manage to get more packing done and lounged on the couch reading.

Here's a spread in my Night Sky journal called Eclipse. I began with the diagrams of eclipses (left page) cut out of an old book. I mounted it on my page which had some printed tissue on it first. Then I found this piece of a printed acetate in my stash and decided to finish the page off with it, along with some paper tape and some cut out words. 

So then what do you do with the right hand side? 

I abstract painted the eclipse, did some doodling, some stamping and used the outside of scrap paper that I cut a star  out of. The lunar word is cut out of a scrap of an old poster. 

There's bits of collage and bits of recycling in this page so I am going to link up to Alison's great challenge at Art Journal Journey.  It's been a great challenge this month and I've been having fun making these pages.  This is most likely my last page of the month since as many of you know I am off on Thursday and I won't be back until the 28th.  So thanks Alison for the great challenge.
I will be by for T Day tomorrow so see you then.
Thanks for visiting and hope Monday is going well.

T Stands for a Few Assorted Photos

Hi ladies.  Happy T Day to you all.

Tuesday is time to share your drink related photos or art over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog.

So for my drink related photo I have this bottle of wine to show you.

Three Sunday's ago I attended the  bridal shower for my nephew's wife to be. They are to be married next month. At the shower they played bridal bingo and I was the first person to get bingo, so as a prize I won this bottle of wine.

I saved my bingo card (which is completed because I continued to play after I won) and put it into my drawing journal for that day.

I haven't tried the wine yet ,but one of these days I'm going to enjoy a big glassful.

And I tried out Kathy's recipe for chocolate chip cookies in a cast iron pan this past weekend. I printed the recipe she used from America's Test Kitchen, and began by browning some of the butter.

 Then I mixed the batter and spread it in my cast iron pan to bake.

They came out great and it made my husband happy since chocolate chip cookies are his favorite..

And I enjoyed trying something new. I got to use my cast iron pan, which was actually my grandmother's! It got me thinking about her and remembering her with a big smile.

Stop of over Hummingbird Woodland Studio to check out Kathy's blog.

I'm going to link up to her cast iron Friday post this week.

And lastly today I have a recycled collage for Alison's challenge at Art Journal Journey.

It's another page from my Night Sky/Space journal.

I used several photos from an old atlas, as well as these circle dots I made by printing a photo of one of my Gelli prints on a circle sticker sheet. I thought they looked rather like abstract moons.

Hope everyone has a fantastic T day and thanks for visiting my blog today.

Space Age and Then a Trip Back in Time

Hello everyone. I'm showing you my Night Journal again with another space page that I am going to link up to  Art Journal Journey.  Alison is hosting and the latest theme is Collage and Recycle.  This simple collage is made with some black paint, some space words from a glossary in a vintage atlas that came out of my mom's house when we cleaned it 2 1/2 years ago, a few stickers, a collaged paper star, and the astronaut/planet piece ae cut out of a moon poster which someone was throwing into the trash at school.

Once  I attached my pieces to the black paper background, and the matte medium was still wet, I sprinkled some gold glitter and flakes onto the page so it dried with this cool night sky sparkle like stars on the firmament. Or at least my artistic attempt to reproduce that.

And here's a few paintings of T.C. Cannon that I saw the other day when I visited the Peabody Essex Museum. I was taken by his expressions and those bold colors.

 I love the joy and love in this next painting.

 And then some strength and almost anger.

 His self-portrait. I might be wrong but I think his only one.

 And my favorite is this one below.  They said it was the only painting he ever did without someone in it.

So I've been binge watching Raiders of the Lost Art on Netflix. Have you seen it? It's about various famous  artists and pieces of art. It's about missing art and tracking it down.  Fascinating.

That's all for me today. 

Thanks for visiting.

Sunday This and That

Hi everyone. It's the weekend, day 2. I am writing this Sunday morning as I sip a mug of tea. I think Sunday morning while I lounge  is a good time to chit chat.

Let me start off with some art. Maybe you remember the Space/Night Sky journal I was working on last summer and fall. Well I put it aside when the holidays arrived and now I am getting back to finish it off.

Here's a mixed media collage page with some paper tape, some images I cut out of an old atlas, a little paint, some brads, some ink and some printed acetate sheets It's fun to get back to this journal.

And then let me move onto the weather. They are saying we might get another nor'easter snow storm this week. At least last night's weather report said this, but can we believe those weather people? I hope it goes out to sea because here's a photo I took on Friday morning of my backyard.

It doesn't look like spring around here. Yesterday the hubby and I decided the dogs needed a  walk so we took them down to York Beach in Maine for a beach walk. Although there was a cold wind, at least there wasn't snow on the beach.

The dogs were quite excited! 

I like to go to York Beach because back in my 20's, when I started my present job, I spent a couple of winter's there. I rented a condo by the beach in the off-season. The is a long and hard sand beach so it is a great place to walk.

But before we got to the beach we stopped at a rest area and we saw this big truck in the parking lot.

We knew immediately what it was, and you may wonder why there were so many people waiting around the back of the truck.

This truck is delivering dogs. 

Here in the northeast it is very hard to find dogs because we have such a high rate of neutering and spaying so there are very few available dogs. But in other parts of the country they have so many dogs that need homes and end up in kill shelters. So what has happened is that dog shelters here find homes for dogs from the south, and then the dogs get trucked north to their new families. We got our dog Maddie this way in this very same rest area.  She was put on the truck in Georgia and was transported here. Then they brought her out of the truck and we took her home. (I had spoken to the Humane Society where she was in Georgia to find out about her before they shipped her north so I knew a little bit about her.)

Even dogs who have yet to find families get brought up and will be fostered by people until families can be found for them.  That's how we got our other dog Pete. It is just amazing how many dogs make this journey.

We actually parked and watched people collect their new dogs for a little bit.  It was fun to see all the people meeting their new family members.

On our way home, after our beach walk, we stopped at the grocery store. The hubby went in to get us something for dinner, and I went next door to Hobby Lobby. I went in looking for a journal, and I came out with all these bargains.

It seemed like the whole paper arts/mixed media section was marked down.I have been having good luck  finding some pretty exciting deals at Hobby Lobby lately.

 You should have seen the look my husband gave me when I got back in the car with all this. :)

Today I plan on playing with some of these supplies.

And then when I got home I figured out how to clean my washing machine filter so the machine would run again, no help needed. I know it wasn't the most technical repair, but I'm feeling very empowered from that anyhow. It ended up being a banner day for sure!

I have more beach photos to share with you another day, but for now, I am going to say goodbye. We changed our clocks last night, so now it is after 8:30 rather than only being a little after 7:30. Tough in the morning but I love how it will stay light later into the evening.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

In the Sky

Hi everyone. 

I've been working on my Night Sky Journal recently and thought I would share a spread with you today.

As technology changes so does the way people look at the sky. My planet photos on the left aren't particularly recent since I  took them out of an 1970's atlas, but they are much more advanced than the old map and zodiac strips on the right hand side. That image comes from a calendar I used back in 2008 and had a vintage sky map theme. I added a few little bits and bobs to that page too. 

 I recently listened to a book on cosmology by Neil Degrasse Tyson which was really interesting but it amazed me how differently astronomers view the sky today. They measure things like microwaves and talk about the space time continuum and lots of physics going back to Einstein's 2 relativity theories. Way back when the constellations were named people basically just looked bare eyes at the night sky.

So there's not much else new here. I feel like there's been a lot of dark this week as we've had some stormy weather and the days are quickly getting  very short. I'm off from work tomorrow as I need to go back to Boston for my 6 month kidney donation check up.  I can't believe the surgery was already 6 months ago. 

So without anything else to babble about, I will keep this short.  

Have great end of your week.

On Wildlife Art

Hi everyone. It's Thursday, or rather what we at work call Thursday-Friday,  since tomorrow we are off for the Veterans Day (Remembrance Day or Armistice Day) Holiday. The holiday actually falls on Saturday the 11th, but since there is no school on Saturday, we have tomorrow scheduled as a day off.

My holiday plans are to go meet my daughter in a nearby NH city and go shopping. I am hoping to find a few things I can pick up and put away for Christmas for her. Better for her to know what they are and like them than  the opposite situation.  I am looking forward to spending the day with her and actually doing a little holiday shopping before it gets crazy. 

Now as long as she doesn't get too crazy and want more than I plan on buying. :)

So today I first have for you a tag for Tag Tuesday where the theme is Book Print. I covered my tag in an old book page. Not Sure what to do next, I just started stamping the trees and decided to create a nature print. I can't say it's the best tag I've ever made but I'm happy enough with it to post it.

And I also have another page from my Night Journal to show you. I still have some pages left to go, but after  having changed the clocks the other day, I was inspired to make a page about how it gets dark so early now. Not that it getting dark so early is in itself really inspiring. :)

I thought that only the nocturnal animals must like it, so I added the cool owl on the bottom right. 

The other day I was saying how I had started listening to Neil DeGrasse Tyson's book "Astrophysics for People in a Hurry". I had started it while doing some art Sunday afternoon, and I realized afterwards I couldn't remember anything I heard. That made me feel like it blew over my head. Not that I am a physicist in any shape or form, but it was suppose to be a laypersons guide.

But then while driving to work this past week I went back and relistened and voila, it started to make sense. I may not be able to recite all the details, but I must say I have enjoyed the listen. What I learned is that art time is not the time to listen to any book that requires me to concentrate on the book. Guess I will stick with lighter novels in the studio. :)

Happy almost end of the week everyone.