The Geisha-Weekend Post

 Hi everyone. I hope everyone had a nice weekend. 

Today I have another page for Valerie's heavy metal challenge at Art Journal Journey.

This page began with the small piece of paper that forms the center of my background.  I then used some old stamps and some watered down acrylic as well as some markers to create the boarder around it.

I went with a Japanese theme as the Geisha image looked good on the background. The poem I glued to her is off a package that some leaf stickers  came in. 

I ended up doing a small amount of stamping and then used a gingko leaf die to cut leaves.  The gingko leaves still needed something  once they were all glued down (as they were pretty flat on the page and didn't pop  as much I had hoped they would). That's why I painted a bit of gold on them also.

I also used some gold painted waxed paper and die cut the lantern you can see at the top.

Some of you may remember when I posted photos from my visit to the  historic area of Kyoto (Japan), and when I actually  saw geishas.  This was back  in April of 2018.

We weren't mobbing this car, but as you can see in the  next photo how narrow the streets are. This woman (we were told she is a Mama-san) walked out and got into a car right where we were standing. I have cropped the photo just a little also so she looks closer than she was.

And earlier I saw these geishas in training walking down the road. We didn't expect to see any  geishas that night as it was drizzling rain, so we were very lucky.

And we had a third sighting too. There was also a woman in this next photo who walked down the street next to our group. You can see her in the back right in the green kimono. The girls (I traveled with school. There were 5 teachers and 8 students.) in our group were beyond excited. We had quite an exciting walk through the old quarter that evening.

If I ever get back to Japan I would love to revisit Kyoto. It's  big city but there are so many historic places we didn't get to see there. 

Thanks so much for visiting my post. Have a great start to the new week. 

Watercolor Book 2

 Hi everyone.  

Yesterday I showed you a watercolor book I made  for a class from Creative Jumpstart. I love making little books, so I made a second one. This time I used a warm color palette, and I made it with the intentions of turning it into a story book. The story this time is spring. I can't wait for it to arrive.

I like to think of spring as a time of lightness after all the heaviness of winter. I decided to go whimsical with my images because they're light, fun and playful.

Instead of taping my pages together, I stitched them together. Since I was at the machine, I added some decorative stitching on some pages.

I used all kinds of images to make book. The majority of my images were stamps or punch outs  from AALL & Create and Stampotique designed by Janet Klein, Paper Artsy's Elenazinski and also Studio Light's Art by Marlene. I also used a few quotes from Technique Tuesday.

I still have a couple of pages to finish up, but spring is mentally needed today so I decided to publish what I had finished. That storm that hit so much of the US has now moved in here in New Hampshire. We're not due for too  much snow or ice (we got our ice the other day), but still, it's a reminder that winter is not on her way out yet.

Have a great start to your weekend. And thanks for visiting.

Watercolor Book, First Version

 Hi everyone. 

Today I am sharing a lot of photos from one of my creations for Creative Jumpstart day 21 class.  Andrea Chebeleu was the instructor. 

Andrea asked us to to freehand paint designs with watercolor onto both the front and back of some watercolor paper. She recommended a limited palate so no one would end up with muddy colors.

I have only a small set of watercolors, so I chose the blues and greens in my set.  For me this activity started out with learning a lot about getting various shades and tones with those colors (since I am not  very practiced with watercolors).

After the pages were dry, Andrea  had us cut and then fold out papers. Along with some tape, she showed us how to create little booklets.  

I always want to add details, as you can see on the right front of my little book.

Here's a few of my undetailed pages and also some pages where Andrea asked us to use a pen and add some markings.

Back to this detail thing I previously mentioned. To me this was now a book ready and waiting to be turned into it's own project. As I made this last week, with Valentine's Day still ahead, I decided it needed a love letter theme. I also decided I would only add shades of red paint to contrast with the blue and green, just to keep a limited color palette.

I should also point out that this might be partially why I am not moving along with Creative Jumpstart as fast as I could be. Smile!

My cover is finished above. Here's the pages in my little book.

I went a little over board with daisies. Also please ignore by not so straight pages. It is hard to keep the book flat and photographic straight.

There you have it. I enjoyed pulling out some old stamps as well as drawing hearts.  I had so much fun with this project  I have made a second book. More about that one in another post.

Thanks for visiting.

Flowers for You

 

Happy Wednesday everyone. We have a snow free day today, and it might be the only one until the weekend. I thought some warm colors and flowers would be a good art journal choice right now.

I'm sharing this page with Valerie's Heavy Metal challenge over at Art Journal Journey.

My background started with yellow paint and some circle stamping with a set from Paper Artsy. I added some dark gold painted rings around each circle stamp (using an empty tape roll), and then I used up that paint by brushing it randomly on the page. 

I've been trying to throw out less waste lately, and I love the way the color was laid out on this old paper towel (kitchen roll), so I tore a strip and attached it down the middle of the page.

Not sure where to go next, I went with the old tried and true add a branch of flowers.

The sun flowers are made with paint and some bronze metallic plastic beads in the center, and the white flowers are from a big package I got on sale (it had about 100 flowers in it) and I added some yellow plastic beads to the center,  The quote from Alison Bomber worked perfect with the page.

This past weekend the town next to ours was having a winter carnival on a bay of the big lake (Lake Winnipesaukee). We took a drive through just to see what was happening. It was crowded out on the ice, so I just hopped out of the car for a minute, stood alone on shore and snapped a couple of photos. 

 I did some cropping in the next photos, and that might make me look closer to people than I actually was .

Can you see the plane out on the ice runway and the one(s) parked after landing?

I'd call these photos, welcome to a New Hampshire winter.

That's all for me today.  Stay safe-and warm if it's cold in your are. 

Thanks for visiting! I always appreciate it.

Oh So Cute-Our New try It On Tuesday Challenge

 

Hi everyone. Time for a new challenge at Try It On Tuesday.

If you're  a cat person you may not appreciate my page today, but I am going to the dogs for this challenge.

Our latest  Try It On Tuesday  challenge is all about being cute, and perhaps like me you thinks dogs are cuties. There's a lot of  adorable faces here, and I tried to include as many types of dogs and faces as possible.

I started my page with paint and a stencil, and then I also added a bit of Dina Wakely's spray paints, just to make the background a little more interesting.

All the pup photos collaged on my page were taken by Jess Sweat. She is one of the 2 women who run the doggie daycare where my dog Maddie goes a couple of days a week to get a break from our other dog Pete. Jess is always taking photos of the dogs and posting them on FB. She does a great job capturing some interesting ones.  At the end of each year the doggie daycare give us a calendar with some of their best dog photos. I cut up some photos from the 2018 calendar to create this page.

 I even included my 2 dogs Maddie and Pete. Those of you who stop by frequently might be able to pick them out.

The bone at the bottom is an ancient stamp from the long defunct Autumn Leaves company.  I also added one of my dog's old dog tags to the top of the page so it would work for the Heavy Metal challenge at   Art Journal Journey.

Be sure to check out all the cute pieces from the design team at  for inspiration on the Try It On Tuesday. website.

And I hope to see your Oh So Cute art work too.

Thanks for visiting.

T Stands for a King Cake

 Hi everyone. It's been cold with some small snow events this past week here in New Hampshire, and more snow arriving on this T day.   I  got spoiled in January when it was relatively mild (around  32 degrees F or  0 degrees C) and fairly snow free, so now when we've had temperatures much lower than freezing and snow falling, I want to hibernate again. Nothing worse than going out and your teeth getting cold.  Smile. 

That is another good thing I (as many of your probably also) have discovered about wearing a mask. It keeps you lower face warm. 

(History.com photo)

This  Tuesday happens to be Fat Tuesday also called Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent begins. I thought I would make my post a carnival or Mardi Gras themed one. This is  the day that is celebrated with parades in many places, and (at least in  New Orleans) beads, masks, doubloons and lots of partying.  Since I'm not hoping a plane for New Orleans or Rio or any place where there are (or would be non-covid years) big celebrations, how about an online celebration. 

I'd like to offer you a slice of King Cake and some T.

King Cake has been on my baking bucket list for awhile now, and since I'm not working and home,  why not make one? Especially since I have been spending so much more time inside with winter here.  I was going  for a traditional New Orleans style cake, and I needed to look up what that actually was. I also learned a lot about this cake in the process.

King Cake has become a symbol of Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but it in many places it is a cake for Epiphany, also called Twelfth Night, celebrated on January 6. This is the day that the 3 Wise Men/Kings visited the baby Jesus.

There were several things to consider before I made my cake. First I needed to get a baby (read on for the baby info) and also purple, green, and gold or yellow sugar for the top. Since I decided to make this cake without enough time to mail order the supplies, I took an early morning trip to a local craft/party store to get them. 

The light in this photo makes all my sugars look green. Ugh! And here's the babies I picked up. I do want to say that these babies are not oven temperature safe, so I ended up slipping the baby into the cake after it had baked and cooled by making a little slit in the cake, pushing in the baby, and then frosting over it to cover the slit. I also washed and dried the baby before inserting it.

Since I am from the land of the Puritans not the land of  fun-filled Mardi Gras, I had to look up  why they put a baby into the cake. I read many things about the baby, but as far as I can tell, the baby represents Jesus, used to be common in Christmas cakes (when King Cakes were first introduced), and if you get the baby in your slice, you will have good luck for the next year. It will also be your job to host the next year's party and supply the King Cake. 

You don't need a baby but could insert a nut,  raisin,  bean or just about anything else into your cake. I liked the baby idea, so I was going with that.

Then I needed to decide on what filling to put in the cake. There were recipes with pecan praline, almond paste, raspberry, cinnamon sugar; you name it, it could probably fill the cake. I figured I'd go for what I had on hand (so I wouldn't need to go out again) and what my husband (the picky eater) would like. That meant  cinnamon-sugar  was the choice.

I've been to New Orleans many years ago. Even in the fall when I went it was mobbed, and I don't think I'd want to be there during the Mardi Gras crowds. Going in the fall, I never had King Cake. In case  you aren't familiar with a New Orleans Mardi Gras King Cake, it is a yeasted cake, more like a coffee bread than a batter cake. I did discover that the first King Cakes were crown shapes made from puff pastry and filled with almond paste, called a Galettes des Rois. In other languages there are different names, but since New Orleans is a city settled when the French controlled the land, I am giving you the French name. Those other style cakes have remained more popular in other places celebrating  Fat Tuesday, at least that's what the internet told me.

I wanted to go more traditional as this is my first King Cake. I got my recipe out of an old cookbook I have by Southern Living Magazine.

I made an enriched dough with Greek yogurt (substituted for sour cream), eggs, yeast, water, sugar and bread flour.  After the first rise, I split the dough into 2, and then rolled, spread the cinnamon sugar mixture and  shaped it into rings. I saw many other "styles" of king cakes on the internet including masks, braided rings, ovals and even single serving ones.

This recipe made 2 rings. I  baked my rings for about 15 minutes at 375degrees F.

Once cooled and the baby inserted, I made the lemon flavored glaze from the  the cake recipe, and then I put on my colored sugar. I saw some people colored the frosting itself, which would also work.

I learned that the purple color stands for justice, the green stands for faith and gold (or yellow) for power.

Since this is T day, let me offer you a slice with a cup of T. For some festivity, I staged my photo with some beads and doubloons (Mardi Gras style, not real Spanish gold ones) that I still have from when I visited the city.

Here's my ticket to T this week over at Bleubeard and Elizabeth's blog where we share a drink related post.

Even though you can't see into my mug in this photo. I went with plain green tea, as the King Cake is on sweet side.

After I took my photo, when I went to eat my slice,  look what I noticed!

Yes, those are legs and a bottom peering out at me.

I guess you'll be having another T day post next year with King Cake from me. Ha-ha!

I made my King Cake  last weekend when my husband didn't have to go to work. That way there they'd be 2 of us eating  it rather than on  Fat Tuesday when it would be just me here all day with the cake in the kitchen. That would be too much temptation.  (I froze ring number 2 for another time.) 

During the weekend when one of us would take a slice of the cake,  the conversation between my husband and myself centered around whether we'd get the slice with the baby.  I think my husband was disappointed he didn't get the baby, but I can't see him making next year's King Cake either. Yet he often still surprises me. 

You might  or might not have known  any of this  info about King Cakes, but I hope you learned something new. Thanks for visiting.

 I hope you have a happy T day. And maybe a little Mardi Gras King Cake too. 

Happy Valentine's Day

 Hi everyone. Happy Valentine's Day.   

I'm not a big one for actually celebrating Valentine's Day, but I must say I love the shape of hearts and making Valentine themed pages. 

Today I send you Valentine Greetings.

I received a gift at Christmas in the red with white polka dot paper you see as my background. I thought it would make great art paper so I saved it. It was  folded and taped, but  I ripped  it  into bits and then glued  those bits down to my watercolor paper  with matte medium to make this background. I like the little white spaces. I wanted it to look worn like a much loved hand made card.

 To glam it up a bit for Valentine's Day, I took some silver glitter glue  and smeared it across the page. That's my addition for Valerie's  Heavy Metal challenge at Art Journal Journey. You can see some silver micro-dots here and there in the background.

The big red heart is a piece of paper doily that was left over after I cut it apart and used most of the inside designs on other projects. I added white to it with a paint pen to help it stand out a bit better.. The other items are bits from my stash, and the letters for the word love are from some ancient rub ons. 

Last fall I was going through some boxes in the attic and besides finding  a few Sizzix dies, I also found this box with some packages of partially used up rub ons.  I think what must have happened is when I cleaned out my studio a few years back, I was on the fence whether to get rid of these items or whether I wanted to keep them. I often start maybe boxes when I clean, and these were my maybes. I put them away in the attic to get them out of the way, and  I forgot about them until I went exploring in the attic this past fall.   Why else would I put a box of rub-ons and some dies into the attic?  (I am sure you might think of many reasons-smile).  I wasn't sure the rub ons even worked anymore because I used them back in the late 90's and early 2000's when I did more scrapbooking. I gave them a try, and sure enough, they sill worked great. It was a nice find.

Hope your weekend is going well. And enjoy the rest of it.