My Little Summer Book-part 1

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

     Today I have part of a project I have been working on. It's a tiny little journal that I am filling with summer pages.  The cover is made from some scrap cardboard that I painted. I will add a title and maybe a bit of decoration to it once I get done with the book.

     The inside is made from some index cards. I even had to cut the index cards down just a little bit so they'd fit in the cover boards. This book measures just a tad bit over 2x3 inches/ 5 x 7.6 cm. 

     Here's a few pages. Some of them are made by using up scraps from my work table, and some of them have been made using other items in my stash.

   When I photographed this next page the lighting reflected off the acetate seaweed on the left. The quote says "sea you soon", but it is underneath the acetate. I couldn't seem to find the right light to not get that reflection.

     This last page I am sharing with Halle's "I've Got  Notion" challenge at  Art Journal Journey .It might not be sewing themed, but I've used my notions in a different way.  It also might be really tiny, but I have added some cloth ric-rac trim as well as a stitched tag. The watermelon is an ancient foam stamp  that I painted and then stamped on my page multiple times.

 

     This book isn't finished yet, so I'll have more to share some other day.  That's all for me. I hope you are having a  nice day!

Wednesday is Here

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week.  Today I have a tag for Michele's challenge at Tag Tuesday and also a journal page for Halle's challenge at Art Journal Journey.

      Here's my journal page for AJJ.  Halle's challenge, as you probably know by now, is I've Got a Notion.

     I stamped the doily image multiple times on the background, and I also added some left over yellow paint as well as some brown ink. Then added the yellow cloth ribbon. You might have noticed it's gotten a lot of use lately. 😏This time to change it up I used some of the brown ink on it. I also added some yellow confetti sunflowers to it.  The other items on the page, except for the spools of thread, are stamped and fussy cut from an old sewing set from Paper Artsy. The spools are from an old sewing themed die set. 

     I stamped  some vintage thread cards (to the left of the spools) on some scraps of polka dot paper and then I wrapped a bit of waxed thread around them.  The sewing machine was stamped on some less transparent paper that came in some packaging. I also had/have a bunch of little hexagons there were the centers of another die cut. They are in a pile on my work table, and I added a few of those at the bottom of the page just because I thought they looked good.

     The quote didn't stamp well as the paper had a bit of a bite, so I enlarged it here. It says: "Each day brings its own gifts/Untie the ribbons".

And  for Michele's Celestial tag challenge, I made this one using a tag die  set  by AALL & Create I'd recently purchased.  

 

     I cut the outer layer out of some oaktag/ tag board  paper and the blue inside from scrap packaging. On the blue I stamped and heat embossed the  little white stars.  The  big stars came with the tag set. I die cut those and then used gold paint on them. The space ship and the quote came from an old stamp set by  Paper Smooches. I stamped and fussy cut the spaceship and it's flames, then I colored and added a bit of glitter glue to make it stand out more on the tag.

       

      I'm off for allergy shots this morning so that's all for me today. Enjoy your day!

T Stands for 11 Years

    Hi everyone. It's time again for T, and this week we are celebrating over at  Bleubeard's and Eliazbeth's blog . This week is the 11th birthday celebration of T Day.   I didn't have time to make any ATC's for the exchange, but that didn't mean I forgot T Day's birthday. 🎂

    This past weekend my husband and I were out and about, and we got talking about going out to dinner. My husband had a smart comment, and that was "Why should we go to a restaurant that's open all year when we can only go to Pop's during the summer?  I thought that was a good point.

     For those of you who may not have read  about Pop's, it is a 1940's post-World War 2 restaurant that sells lots of fried seafood (a long with a few other things) and is only open from about mid-May until the first Monday in September.  You stand in line at one window to order, and wait outside for them to call your number. Your food comes out a second window. Pops doesn’t have seating right in the restaurant, but there is a little building off to side with some enclosed AC seating and outdoor seating up on the roof.

      Pop's is known for yummy food, and you get lots of it. ❤

     I thought since we were celebrating T Day this week, I might as well celebrate with the king of seafood sandwiches (at least here in New Hampshire, Maine and Massachusetts too), the New England lobster roll. After all, it should only be the best for a party.

This was one delicious lobster roll. It comes with one side, and I had  coleslaw. The day's special was a watermelon slushie, and since it was hot, both my husband and I each had a slushie for a drink with our dinner.  I didn't light the candles on my sandwich because I didn't want any wax on my lobster roll. 

That's all for me today. I hope everyone has a happy T day and week ahead. 

     

Sunday Art and Bees

     Hi everyone. I hope you're having a lovely weekend. It's been hot and now the humidity is ramping back up again at my house. I really want it to cool down at least with over night temperatures so I can get back out walking again. I miss my morning strolls a lot. So do the dogs, but between it being practically mid-day temperatures when I get up and all the deer flies, I haven't done much walking in the last couple of weeks.  It's even been too hot to read on my hammock on the screen porch many days 😢. Thank goodness for AC, though I hate to see what my next electric bill will be. 😏

    Today I'm joining Halle's Art Journal Journey challenge, Michele's Tag Tuesday challenge, as well as Gilena's Sunday Smiles. 

     Halle's AJJ challenge is "I  Have a Notion", where she asks us to use some sewing "notions".  I have an older sewing stamp set by Wendy Vecchi, and this is where most of the images on my page come from.

    I did add a cloth daisy chain trim along the bottom, and I also added little pink confetti flowers to it, but the rest of my page is stamped in pink and yellow.

For Michele's "Celestial" challenge at Tag Tuesday I made this piece.

     When I took this photo, the light was coming onto the tag from the top, so you can see the mica ink color much better than at the bottom of the tag, even if the bottom  has as much mica ink as the top. Anyhow, I like how it came out with the stamped stars and moon.All the images are from an oldie by Hero Arts, except the quote.  I especially like the layers die cut tag,

     The bees however do seem to love the heat. I went out and checked them early the other morning. They were  already out and about, and many more of them were very busy inside the hive.

I added the honey super (the smaller top box). The other boxes are pretty full with brood and honey.  I'll harvest whatever honey gets made in the honey super. And if they continue to be so productive, I'll add another box so the bees can make even more honey for their winter food.

Here I am standing down next to the hive looking back up to the house. My "wild" garden is blooming and the milkweed  is overtaking the path.

    Some plants had seeded themselves in this area a few years back, and I decided to turn it into  more of a wildflower garden. I have planted some things here (mostly plants I split or plants people gave me), and some of the plants are self-seeded wildflowers. This garden doesn't require too much maintenance because I don't weed it in the summer. I do some spring and fall work on it and let it be what it is going to be. (But the plants in it love it because it gets a lot of sun!)

   The milkweeds are from pods that I tossed in this area. In the last few years I ended up with a few wild milkweed plants that spontaneously grew in my veggie garden. I  harvested them like a crop. Only the crop was the milkweed seeds.  I tossed  the pods over in this area, and they grew.  I hope next year I'll have an even  bigger patch.

The other day I noticed my first monarchs visiting my milkweed plants. 😀

And here's one last garden view for this post. 

That's all for me today. Have a great rest of your weekend and start to the new week.

Friday's Here

 Hi everyone. Happy end of the week to you.

     Today I have a journal page for Halle's "I've Got a Notion" challenge at Art Journal Journey. Since it has faces I am also linking up to Nicole's  Friday Face Off and also to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break.

     I didn't really know where I would end up with this page, but I like the final result.  I started by making a stamped background and then adding the big paper doily. I have an old pattern book that I bought several years ago, and I cut out the bodies and some of the pattern info. Before I glued them down, I used some yellow cloth trim. Then I glued down all of my pieces, and I also added scissors stickers. I thought I was done, but then one other day when I was digging through my stash, I found these old vintage head stickers, which are a bit big for the bodies, but I just liked how they looked so I added them.

     For those of you who are enjoying my Greece photos, here's a few more also. I last left  you at the Delphi Museum, and today we're heading out to the adjacent archaeological site. I think I mentioned there was no Oracle nor any smoke, so sadly I couldn't get any of life's questions cleared up for me. 😏

It's a little hike up to the site, but the view looking down is pretty amazing. And below, I had a thing for all the old carvings into the stones. I don't know what it says however.

It wasn't too crowded there, except for a couple of bigger school groups. You can see them over on the left side of the photo.

More stone carvings. I could do a whole post of stone carvings. Grin.

A bird for David, since he asked where all the bird photos were. Hopefully I'll have some more next trip.😏

I don't know how old the pathway in the next few photos was, butt he images in it and around it also caught my eye.

I hope everyone has a lovely weekend ahead. 

Buttons, Lace and Flowers

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday  to you.   I hope you are having a nice week. I was hoping my week would be quieter than last week was,  and it is, but only a little bit. However, today I actually have a whole day open-hurrah! 😏

Today I also have another journal page for Halle's "I've Got a Notion" challenge at Art Journal Journey.

    I started my page by first embossing the image in the center of the page. I embossed on brown paper, and then I rubbed both black and then gold ink over it to highlight the sewing notions on it.  I also die cut the dress form, and then I stamped that piece with some flowers using some white pigment ink.

     I stamped  the page with the same flower image in pink, and then  I took a scrap of some printed paper and attached it on the right. I added the embossed image and "stitched" around it with a white pen. I also added a couple of tiny little die cut thread spools and a die cut needle and thread.  I took a scrap of some yellow flower trim and glued it down, then added the die cut dress form. I die cut  some white paper to make the lace along the bottom.  I added some actual buttons, and then, after digging through some of my stash, I found this ancient cloth clothing style label.  I remember buying a package of these labels (that had various words printed on them) back in my scrapbooking days in the late 1990's or early 2000's. I think an old company called Making Memories produced them. 

     And how about a few garden photos to finish off this post?  I'm really happy with my gardens this year (so far), except for 1) the Japanese beetles invading my roses (and I can't spray because my bees visit the plants and bug sprays don't discriminate between beetles and bees) and 2) some bulbs I planted in my shade garden that the chipmunks have totally eaten.  But at least no woodchuck (so far) this year mass destroying plants. 👍

Don't look too close because it's time to weed once again, but our temperatures have been too hot for too much garden time.

My lawn doesn'r look great, but you can see the whole garden here. The building is my husband's workshop that came with the house when we bought it. It needs a new roof and a paint job too.

My one rosebush that seems to be untouched by anything is my climbing rose. It is a very happy plant. This year I planted some creeping thyme underneath it. 

Even my potted asparagus fern is flowering this year. I bring it inside every winter and put it out during the nice weather. It looked pretty scraggly a month ago, but even in this close up photo you can see it has filled back in. 

Have a super day.

Things With Wings

Hi everyone. It's Tuesday which means it's time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

     Thank you Ellie for having been our guest designer for our Here Comes Summer challenge, and thank you everyone who joined in. There were a lot of great pieces last challenge, and I had a lot of fun checking them out. 

     Our next challenge is Things With Wings. Think birds, insects, angels, airplanes...and there are a lot of other winged things too-real or imaginary.

     I made a journal page using an assortment of insect dies that I have. First I inked my page a couple of shades of blue, and then I added some ripped pieces of tissue paper. After that I added my insects, but many of them weren't standing out very well, so I used a bit of gesso to highlight them. Finally I stamped some assorted words that seemed to work with my page.

Don't forget to check out the other design team members art pieces too. 

I hope you'll find your "wings" and join us in this challenge. It will run for the next 2 weeks, and at TIOT, we accept all kinds of art.