Call of the Wild

    Hi everyone. I hope you're having a good week so far. Mine has been busy but definitely not as busy as the last couple of weeks since I am done working at the lake. 😏 

    Today I have a page for Mia's Background challenge at Art Journal Journey. This page is from my summer journal. In that journal all my pages are made from  colored cardstock. That's what I started with for this page, and you can see the original brought green color along the edges of my page.

    I stamped the large background, which included the mountain, the ground and the 3 trees on the left which are all on one large rubber stamp. I used a bit of watercolor to lightly change the background color. (Some blue in the sky, some brown for the mountain and some green for the ground layers) I didn't want to actually color in those areas; if I had I would have used markers. I just wanted to give them a  light wash of color. Then I stamped the tops of the trees on the bottom right just to give the view a little more depth. To highlight the trees, I used  Sharpies on them. Then I took a couple of old images from some background making sets (1 from Cornish Heritage Farms and 1 from Stampscapes), stamped them on white paper, fussy cut  and added them. I finished my page by framing the edges with some washi tape and stamping the quote.

   Let me finish off this post with a few more photos from Bedrock Gardens, my local botanical garden that I visited one day last week. There were so many bumblebees on flowers that day, which you might notice in many of these photos.

Have a great rest of your day. 

“Outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence.”

-Wendell Berry

Wrapping up August

   Hi everyone. Happy long Labor Day weekend to all of you in the US and happy long Labour Day weekend if you are in Canada. To everyone else, I wish you a happy weekend.

    Today I am sharing my last page for Chris's Hot August (Nights and Days) challenge at Art Journal Journey.  Thank you Chris for hosting. ❤ It was a lot of fun (for me) to create  a small summer themed journal all about hot days.

     Thank you to everyone who joined in also. ❤ I loved seeing everyone's take on Chris' theme.

     I  hope your August wasn't too hot either, other than making art for Chris' Hot August theme that is. Hee hee. 😁 At my house, this month went from too hot to some fall feeling weather. This summer feels like it was shorter than normal (at least to me), and when I think about why, I think it's because  in my area we didn't have all that many beautiful, warm and not crazy humid days. We started with rain and then went into humidity and heat.  I guess with climate change the rain, the heat and the humidity are the new reality.  The chill of the last 2 weeks isn't helping summer feel very long either. 

    For my page today I created a late summer garden. I used some yellow cardstock for the background. First I  took some white gesso and covered most of my paper. Luckily I had some acrylic paint that was the same yellow as the background, and I splattered that over the gesso. I used some Alison Bomber stamps for the flowers. I painted the petals with a paint pen and colored the centers and the stems with markers. I stamped the quotes (various Paper Artsy images), added a small 49 and Market bee, and then added one of the white cloth sun stickers from  a sheet of those stickers that I have  in my stash. This sun was missing a few rays, but it wasn't worth tossing out. Instead I attached it to the top of my page so no one would even notice the missing rays. I used that same yellow paint pen to color it in. Lastly I added some black metallic paper trim along the bottom.

   Speaking of this lovely goldenrod yellow color, there's lots of goldenrod blooming in my wildflower gardens right now. It's definitely a pollinator's dream flower. There are so many species of bees (domestic and wild)  just loving it. Here's a few photos, some with pollinators and some without.

 That's all for me this post.  I'm also linking up this post to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. Enjoy your weekend!

Friday

   Hi everyone. This week is winding down, and it's time to join Nicole at Friday Face Off and Gillena at her Friday Lunch Break. I also want to share some of the rest  of my Hot August (Days and Nights) pieces. I'll be linking these up to Chris' challenge at Art Journal Journey too.

    My 2 art pieces both have faces. You'll have to ignore the glare on the first one. I love using acetate on a page as it adds some cool texture, but it never photographs very well. This acetate quote you can't read well says "come one come all".

  Let me finish off this post by sharing some more garden photos from the past week. My dahlia's are blooming, and they are huge. I bet each flower is close to 6 inches/ 15 cms in size. They are as big on the plant as my face flowers in my last art piece. 

And they are so heavy the plant stems are flopping over.

It is definitely tomato season right now.

I planted a new garden bag with some cucumber seeds. I'm going to see if I can grow them in the greenhouse and maybe get some cukes later in the fall. Not sure if it will work or not, but it's fun to experiment. 

    I have lots of sunflower buds, but no actual blooms yet.

You can see that some of those sunflowers are taller than the greenhouse.  

My leaf-eaten brussel sprouts  are getting new leaves in the center of their crowns,

and the sprouts are really going too.

    I'm going to try moving these plants into the greenhouse in a few weeks also. I want to see if I can get some good sized sprouts before they need to be picked, which is usually around November.

   Wishing everyone a great Friday and start to your weekend.

Sunny Skies

      Hi everyone. It's Thursday, and I hope you're having a super last week of August. 

      Yesterday morning I had my coldest start at the lake as   it was only 46 degrees F/ just under 8 degrees C.Brrr    Iris you asked if I was sad the job was ending, and as much as I enjoyed the job, with getting so chilly, I’ll be glad not to have to sit outside waiting for boats to arrive. Especially if there’s no sun to keep me warm.😏

     As I mentioned yesterday I have a few art  journal pages that I am trying to share before this month wraps up. Here is another one that I will be linking up to Chris' Hot August (Night and Day) at Art Journal Journey.

   This page in my summer journal is made on yellow cardstock, and when I cut it down to fit the journal, I had some scraps with I lightly wiped with a golden yellow ink pad. I decided to use those scraps and cut some strips which I wove and then glued down on my background. I like the texture that it makes. The strips weren't long enough to cover the entire background, so I added some bright blue sky metallic paper trim along the edge where the weaving ended.

   This isn't a very complicated page either. (Who wants to be complicated in the summer? Right?)  I die cut the circle with the Fun in the Sun quote. I used a very old die from my scrapbooking days to make that. Then I used a paint pen and painted the blue edge of the circle quote and added sun rays coming off the circle. Once the paint dried I added some golden glitter glue. 

     I finished by die cutting the glasses, and I left the "glass" inset parts black to make them sunglasses. I then put a bit of glue on the "glass" parts to make the paper have a slight glassy sheen.

   Speaking of sunshine, I seem to have seen and taken photos of some beautiful sky views lately, so let me share a few here. I'll start with a sunset view the night before my niece's wedding, and then just a beautiful day sun view through the trees.

The other morning (Monday) when I was working at the lake,  the clouds and the sun sun were putting on a gorgeous show for me.

A mackerel sky is so photogenic. 

Have a great rest of your day!