Black Sand Beaches

Happy new week everyone. I had a good weekend, Saturday was a little sketchy with some passing thunderstorms but the rest of the weekend was beautiful. I actually enjoyed having a day that was not so perfect because it made  Saturday a leisurely day and gave me a chance to squeeze in a little studio time as well as getting a few chores done.  

So today I have a ridiculously simple page for Gill's challenge at Art Journal Journey. The challenge is Nature's Wonders, and I made this page the other day for my Iceland  travel journal.

In parts of Iceland there are black volcanic beaches. We visited on in the town if Vik on the south coast of the island. Although it was a beautiful day, it wasn't a day to lounge your bathing

suit, so basically we walked the beach.

I actually took this photo which inspired me to make this travel journal page. (And my new blog header.)

I used some black molding paste which I mixed with a little sand. And I die cut and added the feather. If I was smart I would have brought home that feather and put it in my journal, but I wasn't thinking that far in advance.

That's all, but black sand is one of natures wonders. (And if you don't know, it is formed when volcanic rock is ground and eroded into tiny little pieces.).

Here's a few more black sand beach photos.

 I love this one with the little red roof church off in the background.

That's all for me today. Make your day a good one.

Using Up Some Left Overs

Hi guys. Hope everyone is having a great weekend.

I have a journal page for Try It On Tuesday. The theme right now is Using Your Leftovers. I used a lot of those for this page.

I started with a giant tag (almost 11 inches tall) that came on a cabinet we bought earlier in the spring. I painted it red with a purple edge, and stamped a background stamp randomly over it. Then I attached the tag to a page in my journal.   I added a playing card sized piece that came from a fun deck of fortune telling cards. Nope, I don't tell fortunes but they make a great set of cards for art. I also added this orange tag (that says B1) which is a left over from carrying luggage onto a bus that goes to the airport. And then I also added a few stickers, all of which come from sets of partially used stickers, except the bottom left sticker (the white Sasquatch/BigFoot on the red circle), which came in a the packaging of a electronic charger.

So that's my page for today. I'm glad you stopped by to visit and check it out.

Puffin Power

Happy Friday everyone. I can't believe this first week of August is almost over. As my hubby says "Nothing goes faster than July but August." And I think that is true.

So today I have a quickly done page for Art Journal Journey. This month's hostess is Gill, aka Gibby Frogett and the great theme is Nature's Wonders. Here's a page in my summer journal that works for that theme.  I painted this background to represent a grassy knoll, some lava rocks and the blue sky. Then I added these 2 adorable puffins I cut out from a tourist brochure, drew in the Icelandic flag and stamped the plane. I added the banner for a title and as a date, since this journal is more of a day to day art journal than just an art journal of random pieces.

I am also linking up to Paint Party Friday since it is Friday and time party with some paint. Thanks to Kristen and Eva for giving us a great site to link up to.

So the one thing in Iceland last week I wanted to see was a puffin, and I came home thinking I didn't manage that. But then when I was going through some of my photos, I looked carefully at this water picture. Well it wasn't just water, but 2 birds that I tried to photograph. They were quite away out from shore, and my zoom lens only goes so far. I thought they were both guillemots, 2 arctic birds.

So when I got home I wanted to enlarge my photos, and low and behold, only 1 was a guillemot and the other was a puffin! That put a big smile on my face for sure.

 Not the clearest photo because I cropped it so much but here is the puffin. Very obvious to see. :)

And here's the guillemot, spreading his wings and stretching. 

Hope everyone has a great weekend coming up and has something fun in their plans. Not sure what is on my agenda yet, or I should say my husband's agenda which effects me, but even so I could easily have fun playing in my happy space and reading in my hammock.

Thanks for visiting today.

Geology Can Be Amazing

 I few more photos from Iceland today. Today my theme is geology.

Above, this amazing set of waterfalls called Gullfoss. We actually walked down to where all those people are standing, which was a little scary for me since I am not crazy about being close to the edge of heights, especially with powerful waterfalls right next to me, but it was a very different  and interesting view of the falls. I'll show you my water photos some other day.

By the way, I haven't run any of these photos through my photo editing program, so if the color looks a bit dull, that is just the digital camera effect which makes everything a little bit grey.

 Boiling mud pots and in the same area

 steaming vents. Kind of a strange thing to see steam coming out of the ground.

 More boiling mud.

 I can't remember what volcano this is. I want to say Mt Hekla, but I  think I am wrong. I need to dig out my map I guess. It might also be Snaefellsjokull. I was having a lot of problems with some of those Icelandic names.  I love the cloud hanging along the top though. 

 And here's this awesome glacier. You could drive off road to the base (well on this rough gravel road) and actually get right next to the glacier. It was very cool to do, and in fact, I think the highlight of my trip. I have some great photos but I will show those another day too.

 And this is the Blue Lagoon, a thermal pool. It is pretty famous, and we went our first day there. All the mineral water comes out of a geothermal heating plant. And the water is really that cool blue color and looks like tinted milk. I must say I enjoyed lounging in the water for a bit.

 Another heated pool letting off all this steam. Don't touch the water or get to close, otherwise you will be burned.

 The tide was out but these are some of the fantastic sea stacks we saw. This particular cluster was north of Reykjavik on the peninsula at a national park (Snaefellsjokull). 

 Not all beaches we stopped at (to walk- way too cold or to rough to go beaching) were black lava sand, but one near Vik was. It made an amazing background for photos.

 Below this is the bridge between continents. The people in the foreground are standing on the North American plate, and the ridge in the background is the Eurasian plate. The gravelly sand in the middle is where the 2 tectonic plates are pulling apart. Iceland is one place in the world where the land is actually getting bigger. Not by much, a couple of centimeters a year.

 Water at the edge of a geothermal pool/geyser. I love the color on the bottom.

 And more steaming vents. I am actually surprised there aren't more of these around the island. These vents were at Geysir.

And here we are, at Geysir.  This one erupts every 5-15 minutes. Which was fun to see, and we saw it quite a few times, even on the road back to our hotel as we passed by later in the day.

So you can see (if you aren't familiar with) that there is pretty cool geology going on in Iceland.  And this is just a taste of what we saw. :)

I'll be back tomorrow with a little art.

Thanks for stopping by to visit.

Blooming Iceland

 Hi everyone. I've started going through my Iceland trip photos and decided I needed to start with pretty. All over Iceland there were beautiful flowers blooming, both wild and in the towns and cities.

There were blooms in the fields and on the beach and even in the larva fields. 

 Most of these wild flowers were not very tall, but that makes sense with all the wind and cold dark winters. I don't think that environment produces big tall blooms.

 But they were gorgeous just the same.

 This plant barely grew off the rock, but I love these tiny flowers.

 Same here.

 And these fuzzy blooms or seed heads were so cool. I don't know what they are. I don't know what hardly any of these plants are. but I still enjoyed them.

 Gorgeous flowers planted in a park in Reykjavik. 

 Flowers growing on a  turf roof.

 And in fields.

And every flowerbed, whether planted or wild, needs their own little fairy homes.

I love these. I wonder who put them up and how long they had been there. We discovered them when we went off exploring down a gravel road by a beautiful little church next to the sea.

Hope you enjoyed today's photos. There's more to come another day.

Thanks for visiting.

A Double Day

Hi guys-I'm back.  I got home late last night and dropped my bags, and there they sit. My plans today include lounging, downloading my photos, doing a bit of on-line catch up and emptying my bags out. Well, I want to do at least the first 3, but we'll see about the last. I suppose a load of laundry isn't asking that much of me. :)

Anyhow I had a fantastic trip. Iceland is one amazing country.  And very beautiful too. I have lots of stories to tell you about Vikings, volcanoes, glaciers, black sand beaches, sheep, Icelandic horses, waterfalls, puffins (OK, no puffin stories except I really wanted to see one and didn't-and they are suppose to be the most common bird in Iceland), good food, not a lot of darkness, one way bridges, lots of tourists, Icelandic sweaters, geysers, good friends, getting lost, peanut M&M's, pickled herring, chocolate cake and geology. And during my week I had lots of laughs. And I missed some horrible heat at home- which was a good thing too. We had temperatures just nice and comfy cool for sightseeing in Iceland. In fact, we were very lucky and had wonderful weather.

I'll have lots to show and some stories in the next few days, once I am a bit more organized. But first of all, it is Tuesday. And Tuesday means its T Day. Stop by    Bluebeard and Elizabeth's blog         and check out all the T Day fun.

This is about my lunch the weekend before I left for Iceland. I was naughty again. We were out in the boat with the dogs, and we needed lunch. Its not possible to go to a restaurant with 2 dogs in tow, but take out works perfect. So we decided to dock and walk over to Pop's  Clam Shack for some fattening but yummy fried food. If you're part of the T gang you might remember last time I went to Pop's and ordered a clam roll. I had another clam roll, which is basically a sandwich where fried clams get put into a  roll. Once again, can you see the roll?
I've been checking out the prices of clam rolls while out and about and I have decided that although this roll was $17.95, most places are charging well over $20-I've even see $24 for a clam roil. That is highway robbery. Plus Pop's breads and fries fresh clams, nothing frozen, so it is really is a good deal for the money. (And yummy to eat!) Makes me a little less reluctant to enjoy one. Although I usually only get to Pop's once or maybe twice a summer, I have now been there 3 times, so maybe I shouldn't get too excited about clam rolls for awhile.

And it is also August second, which means it is time for Second on the Second. Today I have a scrap paper book that I made back in August of 2012.
For more Second on the Second fun, stop by Second on the Second, also on the Altered Book Lover's blog.

There's a name for these book, which I can't remember in my jet lag laziness, but they were big a few years back. You use a board book, and cover it with paper scraps. Mine is an ode to summer here in the Northeast of New Hampshire.

I included some stamped images, die cuts and ephemera in my version.

Even a little bit of cloth and ribbon too.

Ink and a little paint was a part of it too. I've got to remember that idea for pull up clouds. My Iceland journal could certainly use that.

So that's the excitement at my end. I think I might do another one of these books. I've got scraps that need using up and I really like this. I think more so looking back.
Happy T Day and enjoy this new month-Wow-August already! (Now that's a little scary how fast the year is flying by.) I am going to go unload the photos off my camera onto my computer because I am excited to see how many masterpieces (ha-ha) I ended up with.
Hope all of you have been well and looking forward to catching up.