Winter Wonderland

 Hi everyone. This Tuesday I am here to tell you that it is time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.  Our newest challenge is

Winter Wonderland.

I made this double page journal spread in my winter journal. It began with the snowman (which I quite like) and part of his background on the right which came from an old journal page I really didn't like.  I cut the snowman and enough of the snowy base out so it would fit on my journal page. 

Then I went to my journal and used lots of green and a bit of blue spray ink. Once dry I used some white paint on the bottom left. I didn't mind that some of green bled through because I was making it into a forest, and unless the snow is deep, there is often some ground greenery poking through the snow. Once this dried I attached the snowman piece into my journal.

I die cut several of these trees using a TH die. I then layered them to create my forest. To tie the 2 sides together I added  bit of thinly torn Dina Wakely printed tissue paper and also added the plastic snowflake sequins. 

You also might notice I added a small stamped, fussy cut and colored cardinal onto the snowman's hat brim.  I am going to link up to Wendy's bird challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Be sure to visit all the design team blogs to get some nice inspiration. All art formats are accepted at Try It On Tuesday, and this challenge runs for a fortnight, and that is 2 weeks.

Lastly, I am linking up to day 24 of Leah's Art Everyday Month Challenge.

Thanks for visiting, and I look forward to seeing your Winter Wonderland art.

Skaters

Hi everyone. Another week is flying by. Today (Thursday as I am writing this Thursday night), I wrapped up my first semester classes. I'm a little sad though; I just finished my microbiology class. Last time ever. That class was my baby that I created and developed. But, this sadness won't last very long. It is just the ending and all the goodbyes as I transition into a new semester.  Tomorrow we have a mid-year teacher workday to get organized for the new semester, and then next week, I get 3 new classes.  And next week we wrap up January also.Before we know it February will be here. Wow!

So today I have another page for Jo's Something New challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

I made this skaters page in my winter journal. I was inspired by this image I had that included the 2 skaters you see here. It was a very vintage image, and I couldn't figure out how I was going to use it. And then I had the idea to make a more modern page and use the vintage people on it. That's what new (for me) with this page, the use of modern and vintage looking pieces together. 

I really liked how I could make all these cool shapes with my ink pad (on a page I showed you this past Saturday)so I repeated it on the bottom of the pages. It reminded me of ice. I used a different blue inkpad to make some sky. Then I used scraps of paper to cut these triangular trees. The clouds are painted; it cut the skaters of of the image, and I painted the clouds.I also used a bit of Stabilo watercolor pencil around the edges of the clouds. Then I used a vellum postmark which I stamped with the posted lines, and I also used a few TH quote words.

Hope you like my latest page.

Thanks so much for visiting.

Wintery Weather

Hi everyone. The weekend is here as well as is winter. At least here in New Hampshire. We've had  some cold temperatures, and the snow is coming. Sounds like a good weekend to stay inside by a warm wood stove fire, watch more movies, read and make a little art.

Well I guess I might have to do a bit of snow shovelling tomorrow, which is not my most favorite thing. Yet it is some exercise and fresh air, so I suppose there is even good in that. (Well, I don't know if it is really my kind of good though. Smile.)

But the winter weather did inspire me to make a tag for Tag Tuesday and their latest winter scenes challenge.

The tag is not about the shoveling, but the pretty views that come after snow. I used this vintage image of some birds on a fence. I attached it to my base, which is actually a flooring sample from a local big box hardware store. I picked up a couple of these on a recent trip there as I thought they might be a good art surface. Then I attached some various items to complete the tag.

After finished the tag I decided to use it on a page in my winter journal. 

I call my page winter blue to celebrate the gorgeous blue skies that come after a snowstorm blows out. I used my ink pad to make some interesting shapes on the background paper as well as color it. Then I used some pieces of tape, my tag, as well as some die cut, plastic and metal snowflake embellishments. 

And since I have never used the plastic flooring sample in art before, I will like this page up to Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey also.
I hope you have a warmer, less wintery weekend than we are having!
Thanks for visiting.

New Ink

Hi everyone.
I'm a little late in showing this holiday page, but it worked out because it fits Jo's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month her challenge is something new, and the background on my page made with some green ink that I hadn't used before.

I had picked up a  pad of this Dyestress ink back in the fall because I found it on markdown and also because really liked the green. I didn't have any ink pads of this particular shade.  (It is the green one on the far left, right underneath the blue.) I was curious how this ink worked  (and how it compared to the Tim Hotlz reactive ink) so finally around Christmas I tried it out.

I stamped the leaves, and then with a wet paintbrush, I did a bit of smearing. I know that it isn't most wild or unusual technique, but I like the sneary leaves. I also used some grey-blue watercolor paint on the background, and I stamped the jingle bells words with some grey ink. The rest of the page is made with some stamped and colored images, some die cuts, a bit of red trim ribbon and also a cute little gnome picture.
It's the last mild today today before winter returns. They say more arctic cold is returning as well s a bit of snow. Yes, it is still January.
That's all for me today. Hope your week is going well.

Happy New Year

Welcome 2020 everyone. 

As I write this some of you are there already and some, like me, have not quite made it to the new year yet.  But it won't be long before the morning and the new year arrives for all of us.

It is time for new stories to be written, new art to be created, new books to be read, new places to visit...I am sure you get my point. It's exciting, and also a little scary. But I am going to put the little bit scary part aside because one must stay focused on the good possibilities. It is all part of the adventure of the new year. I am optimistic about 2020 as there are many good things ahead.

And I hope not just for me but also for you.

Wishing you all a wonderful year with lots of happiness, smiles, good health and peace. 

And since I see that Jo has a new challenge at Art Journal Journey, Something New, I thought this page for the new year would work and I am linking up.

Once again, happy 2020!

Christmas Wind Down

Hi everyone. Christmas is finally winding down at my house. My daughter left this morning and the house is feeling a little bit quiet right now. But I am meeting the hubby for a late afternoon movie when he leaves work. Hopefully we'll make it in to see Star Wars.

 The dogs have completed their doggy advent calendar.

And I am trying to be good and not eat another cinnamon roll that I made for our Christmas breakfast.  I wish the recipe didn't make 8. Smile.

 But luckily I was able to pile up the cookie tray I brought to my sister-in-laws holiday brunch on this past Tuesday so there is only a few left here at the house.

And my husband found these fun hats at the dollar bins at Target, and he decided we all needed fun hats. I look like Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter. Hee-hee. I went around giving our demerits all morning.

And now I start the quiet part of my vacation which I am looking forward to. I can make some art and read and maybe if I feel ambitious early next week I will start to de-decorate the house.

But maybe instead I will follow Maddie's lead and just lounge.

Smile.

And here's a page from my winter journal that I made earlier this month.

I will link it up to Yvonne's Words and Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey.

The little penguins and igloo were stamped but I added the clothing to the penguins. 

The rest of the page is rubbed ink and some white paint, a bit of silver sparkle glue, a stamped phrase and some star stickers.
I also joined Mia's new challenge Craftlandia Challenge which is stars. And I have a few of those on this page!

I hope everyone had a fantastic week and if you celebrated the holiday, I hope it was wonderful.

Thanks for visiting.

Book Post, and a Little More

Hi everyone. Happy weekend. I've been writing this post for days. I've had things going on the last couple of evenings and when that happens, I am usually too tired to write once I sit down. So I write a bit and then stop. Finally it is Saturday morning and I have time to finish this post.

I thought I would share this journal spread with you to begin today's post. I started a new journal recently as I do like  theme journals. This journal is small, 5x8 inches, and I bet you can guess the general idea of where I am going with this one.   I also recently came across this bear image, which I just adore, especially when I gave him a black paper hat. 

I started by inked the base page with blue and green ink. Then I did a bit of stamping with all those dots before adding some paper in the middle. Then I added the vintage bear and pine cones, the little paper rectangles (leftover scraps from die cutting some windows), as well as the big blue die cut snowflake.  To wrap up the page I stamped the bear paw, the little quotes in the rectangles, the let it snow quote, the white snowflakes and also I stamped and cut out the 2 snowflake postage stamps. One last stamp (the postmark) and I was finished.

As there are lots of words, I am going to link this page up to  Art Journal Journey
And since I used some scraps I am also going to link up to Moo Mania, where using up your scraps is their latest challenge.

And so I haven't done a book post in quite awhile, and since I like a list to look back on (for purely selfish reasons), here is one for the  most recent books I've read or listened to. Some of you readers like to browse these lists, and some of you don't. So if you don't, books are the rest of the post. And if you do, you can take a look. 

I didn't think I'd made it through so many books because it doesn't feel like I read much this late fall. But then I am surprised  I've gotten through as many as I did.
Mostly I've been reading mysteries.

When I started Front Page Fatality, I wasn't impressed. I thought it was a a book trying to be too many things. I thought it was trying to be cozy and tough at the same time, and it wasn't working for me. But I stuck with it. I ended up really enjoying it because it finally focused and was pretty exciting. It was a great  hard boiled mystery  set in Richmond, Virginia with the main character being a reporter. I will go on and read more in this series as this is book 1.

And I've been back at these Elly Griffiths books. These are books #9 and #10 in the series. One more to go and then I have to wait until June for the latest to be released. 

I've mentioned this series before, but the main characters are a forensic  archeologist, Dr. Ruth Galloway  and DC Nelson, a police detective. They are set in Norfolk, England-where I would like to go now and see the endless expanses of beaches and the town of Kings Lynn. Of course I have never been to that part of England so I don't know how much artistic license the author used, but I have looked up enough to learn a lot about that area. (Things which are mentioned in the book.) There are lots of other really likeable and well written characters who I have become quite attached to. Plus I love the archeology and the stories of the past.

And my book club book was the first of Louise Penny' Inspector Gamache series.  I finished off the series with latest read (A Better Man) before I went back to book one (Still Life), and it was fun to see where the characters all began after following them through so many books. In fact, I am going to try rereading a few of the other early books in this series. That's on my list for 2020.
For those of you unfamiliar with this series, Penny is a Canadian writer, and she sets this story in southern Quebec, not far north of the Vermont border. She is one of my favorite writers.

I think this summer a little road trip to discover this area might have to be in my future since that area is not too far from home.

The Magician's Diary is another magical mystery series I have been enjoying. This is book 4. They are really a fun read/listen, a bit predictable, but have some magic and even a little romance set in  1890's London. They do have to be read in order because each one picks up where the last one left off.

Here's an oldie. I read Like Water for Chocolate back in the 80's or 90's, but honestly I couldn't remember a lot of details. I listened to it this time and did enjoy it again. It is short but quite rich in details. And has that great mystical magic that Mexican stories are known for.

And 438 days is a book I downloaded for when my husband is in the car with me. It is a fascinating true story of a man lost at sea (the longest in history) and then rescued (you know this ahead of time so it is not much of a give away). We haven't quite finished the book so I can't actually rate it yet, but both of us are enjoying it.

I also enjoyed this book, The Secrets We Kept. It is about the Russian novel Dr. Zhivago and many people involved with it, including Boris Pasternak and his mistress (for lack of a better word).  She was the Lara in his novel. It also talks about how the US used the book as a propaganda tool and dropped many of them  over Russia/ the Soviet Union during the cold war since it was not published in the Soviet Union until later.  This book is historical fiction, but I knew none of this and it was really fascinating.

Which of course lead me to watch Dr. Zhivago the film (love it) and then pick up the book. I had read this book maybe 30 years ago and remember liking it a lot then, and I have to say the same thing now. It is a really descriptive and a classic novel. I learned a lot about the Russian revolution and when the Lenin and the Bolsheviks took over. And as far as Russian novels go, it wasn't too bad in length.But it was certainly not a quick read. (And was one reason why I didn't think I had read many books.)

If you've never read it and you want to become immersed in one of the world classics, then I do highly recommend this book.

And lastly, I most recently listened to this book, written by and read by the late Carrie Fisher. I was hoping it would be more about making the first Star Wars film than about her relationship with Harrison Ford, so that disappointed me, but she did write a good story about that.

And now I have started listening to the new Bill Bryson  book The Body. His books are always enjoyable, and this has a biology twist which is like an extra scoop of hot fudge in my mind, but I am not too far into it so I will save that for another book post.

OK, enough said.

Enjoy your weekend.

Finally Back to School

Hi everyone. Winter surprised us here in parts of New Hampshire by arriving early with 2 good sized  snow storms back to back, so here it is Wednesday (well I am posting Tuesday night since I wrote this and figured I might as well post rather than scheduling) and finally I am heading back to school after the Thanksgiving holiday.

I must admit with this won't go away chest cold that it was nice to have the extra time relaxing at home, including some relaxing art time too.

One thing I made was this tag which works perfectly for the White Christmas challenge at Tag Tuesday

You can see the music tissue paper on the the background as well as Santa and some snowflakes. 

And while I had the snowflake dies out, I also made this spread in my new mini-winter journal. 

The words are what inspired this particular spread, so I will link it up to Yvonne's Words and Numbers challenge at Art Journal Journey.

My background is blue, shimmery silver and grey inks, and I then I added many die cuts, gemstones and some paper ephemera from my stash. 

I guess all the snow we've gotten lately has inspired me, but better that than just complaining about having to shovel.

Smile.

Thanks for visiting!