A Magic Page

      Hi everyone. Happy Sunday. I hope you're having a nice weekend. Today the weather is supposed to be better than yesterday's was so I'm planning on a work out garden day 🤞. I hope to get a big project more or less wrapped up but we shall see if that happens. 

     I'm back today with another page for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. While I was thinking about potential pages to make, I remembered that there are a lot of wings in the Harry Potter series. I also have a sticker book based on Harry Potter and some Ciao Bella papers that would work for that theme too, so even though my page is not strictly 100% accurate Harry Potter, it is a magical page inspired by the story.

     I started with this background paper of the castle stairway. I trimmed away the edges and put it down on a background that I used  some gold glaze paint on. I also rubbed the background with brown ink to tune it down a bit. After everything dried, I rubbed some black ink along the edge of my paper.

     I fussy cut the wizard (who is my take on Dumbledore) from another Ciao Bella print out. I glued him down, and then to make him blend into the background I rubbed some light blue paint around most of him and onto my page. I didn't add blue paint around his fiery wand. I added some gold sparkles to that, because of course the wand is where all the magic happens. 

    In the Harry Potter books Dumbledore has a phoenix named Fawkes, and I had this sticker in my HP sticker book. The Phoenix of course has wings, and he looks like he belongs at the top of the arch. I did ink him with some black ink not because I wanted his colors to be more muted but because of the white edge that I wanted dull down a bit. 

    I also had a small Harry Potter sticker in this sticker book, so I put him on the floor behind Dumbledore. I know in the books and movies his robes are not blue, but if I colored it in black it would just look like a blob, so I went with blue because it matched the blue around the wizard.  I also added the Lumos magic spells sticker, and I inked it to have it blend in and not be so white. I also added the blue metallic paper trim along the bottom of my page.

    My page still looked like it needed something, so eventually I thought of the clear crow tape I have. I  cut around some crows and added them to my page. And I know Harry Potter is not from Ravenclaw, where the symbol is a raven, but I thought the crows were interesting and magical enough to finish off my page. 

    I am also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. Have a super rest of your weekend and start to the new week. 

Bluebirds

      Hi everyone. Happy Friday. Another week has zoomed by, and it's time again for Friday Face Off over at Nicole's blog and also Friday Lunch break over at Gillena's blog.

     I hope you don't mind me starting with  some more bird photos. You might remember that last Friday I showed the parent bluebirds feeding some babies, but you could not see any babies, just the parents at the opening of the birdhouse.  Now you can see those babies. Well, you don't see them when you're nearby but if you step in the house and zoom in with your camera you can see them. 

   The baby bluebirds in my birdhouse are getting big. I took these photos a few days ago, so they're  even more developed now and might even be getting ready to fledge. Or maybe that have fledged and I missed it, which would be sad since I wanted to see that.

     I see 2 faces in one of the photos, and the babies' eyes are open. I read that the babies open their eyes at 8 days, so the birds must be at least 8 days old when I had taken these photos. They're obviously even older now. I hope I didn't miss when they fledged. I read that the parents take care of the young for a short period of time after that too, but so far I haven't seen any signs of that either.

     I also have a page from my envelope journal to share for Neet's challenge over at Art Journal Journey.  If you join in you know her challenge is It Must Have Wings. 

     I had some left over music paper scraps (back from Vicki's February's Music challenge at AJJ) that I die cut into circles. I also stamped a Dina Wakely image, added a tissue paper head over the image's actual head, and I added the TH stamped, colored and die cut bird It's blue, and that's my connection to this post. Finally I cut a little balloon and added all the words on my page.

     I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead. We could get more showers at my house (another at least partially wet weekend-it's a not so good trend lately) so I hope your weekend is sunny and bright. 

The Bees

     Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. 

    I haven't shared any pages from my grunge inspired envelope book for awhile, and this one, with all the bee sequins, is perfect for Neet's It Must Have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey. Sorry but neither of today's photos are fantastic. The first one is so you can see the whole page in the book, and then I zoomed in for a little bit better view. This book doesn't lay flat very well because it's quite thick, so if the photos look crooked it's because the pages pop up a bit.

     I started this page by die cutting this pretty lace image. After I glued it down, I splattered the page with some blue and brown watercolor paints

     You can see it better in this view. I also added a punch out compass image from 49 and Market. I had this golden-brown colored flower sequins so I added them, and I put a small bronze 1/2 pearl into the center. These flowers were an afterthought since I actually went into the sequin box to find the little bee sequins which you can also see on my page. In fact, they're the park with the wings on my page. (grin)

    I finished by stamping the quote and adding a couple of flat buttons that I ran some waxed thread through first. 

     And I have bees. 👍❤😀  My first batch arrived earlier this week. 

    This time I ordered my bees back where I originally received bees. I used a bee business called Mountain Sweet Honey in Georgia as I've always had high quality bee shipments with them. The man who runs this business only wants successful bee colonies to ship, and when the colonies needed more time for a successful queens, he postponed  shipments for 3 weeks. It worked out for me better also  because now it's warmer and better bee weather here in New Hampshire.

     This is what the box is like when I open up the screening. To release the bees (next photo), I remove this can which contains sugar water that feeds the bees while they are in transit. This time I tried a new variety of honeybees called Caucasian bees. Like their name says, they are originally from the Caucasus mountains which are in southwestern Russia as well as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Armenian and parts of Iran. One trait of these honeybees is that they like to make a lot of propolis/wax  compared to other varieties. You can see they made some on the can, and it did make it a bit tougher to remove from the box.

     I decided to try this variety because they reach their full colony growth mid-summer. Many bee colonies reach that size earlier in the season, but since spring is later arriving where I live, I thought these bees might do well. I also discovered in my research they have the longest proboscis (a straw like structure coming out of the mouth) of all honey bee varieties.  Time will tell if I like this variety or not.

     When they first go in, there are bees everywhere. I guess if you're disturbed from your closed in space and somewhere new. you are not only a bit out of kilter but also in need of exploring your new turf.

     They find the front of their hive box quickly enough, and after a couple of hours, the swarm of bees calms down and most of them are in the hive.

     And for those who may be wondering, I did not get stung in the process. 😏

     Have a great day ahead. 

Keeping It Simple

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

      First, let me thank everyone who joined  our Deep in The Forest challenge. There was some great pieces  shared. ❤ 

         For the next 2 weeks we're asking for you to create some art and Keep It Simple.

   I decided to go with a journal page even though I think this challenge would  be easier (for me) if I was making  a card.  I just feel like my page isn't finished. 😏 However, I did hold myself back and didn't add in lots of other bits. Grin.

    I began by using a light blue glaze to color the background. Then I took a similar toned and  thicker acrylic  paint and a stencil to add a few basic details to the background. I then added a 49 and Market film frame. The butterfly is actually cut from cloth. I was cleaning last week and came across a couple of packets of cut fabric butterflies that I forgot I had. I glued this one down on my paper, and then even though I wanted to embellish it, I held back and decided to keep it simple and left it as it is. 

     I finished by stamping the quote (from an old Cornish Heritage Farm set) and added a few little plastic bubbles.

     Since the butterfly has wings, I am also joining up to Neet's It Must have Wings challenge at Art Journal Journey.

     I hope you like to go simple and join us at TIOT for this challenge. 

T Stands for Mother's Day

      Hi everyone. Happy new week, and to those of you who celebrated Mother's Day yesterday, I hope it was lovely. And if you're also if you're stopping by for T day over at  Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's  blog, a Happy T day hello to you.

       I spent Mother's Day with my daughter. She lives a couple of hours west of where I live so I headed out first thing in the morning. We had plans to go for a walk and also lunch, and that's what we did. It was a really lovely day. And it was even lovelier since we'd just had almost a full week of rain. If you look carefully you can see how high on the banks the water is. 

      I'll also warn you, there's some food photos later in this post. 😏

     The first half of the walk was through the woods and along the Ashuelet River. 

    On this leg we saw lots of turtles sunning themselves.

    And this fraternity of male mallards. Their green heads really sparkled in the sun.

   After that the trail wound through a wooded area that went under and over a couple of roadways, and then we wandered through the city park and the city sports fields. 

     Finally we wandered through a little neighborhood, crossed another road and were back into the city and  to the car. It was a lovely 4+ mile (6.5 km) stroll.

      While we were walking one thing we talked about was lunch. We both decided it was a good day for ice cream. 😏 Since I had a 2 hours drive back home later in the afternoon, I figured we ought to eat something else first. We decided to stop at a sandwich shop and split a BLT (bacon, lettuce and tomato) with avocado first.

      It was a very yummy sandwich (well half since we split it). And you can also see both my and my daughter's drinks for T this week too. 

       And then we went for ice cream. Since it was Mother's Day she let me pick what I wanted, so we also split a brownie hot fudge sundae. 

We certainly made short work of that too. 😏

  Not only was the weather lovely, but it was a great Mother's Day for me too. And I think my daughter also enjoyed it too. 

   Have a great T day and rest of your week.

An Ode to Moms

       Hi everyone. To all of you who are mother's of human, dog, cat or other forms of children, I hope you have a wonderful Mother's Day. ❤

      I'm heading out to spend the day with my daughter today. We have a walk and lunch planned, and who knows what else.

     Here's a bouquet of flowers for you. This is a mix of silk store bought boughs and also some paper blooms that I made. The bouquet is on my fireplace  mantel.

     Here's my all grown up baby last weekend when she was away on a hiking trip. (I still wonder why she wouldn't hike with us when she was younger and now she hikes/walks all the time.) I'm excited that I get to to see her today.

    Here's my other 2 babies when they were much younger. Now they're 11 and 12 ( Maddie may be even 13) years old with grey hair and some lumps too.

And this is a photo from 2015 of my mom, myself and my daughter.  Happy mother's Day Mom. I miss you.

I am also linking up to Gillena's  Sunday Smiles

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend and start to the new week. And Happy Mother's Day to you Mom's too. 

   

Saturday Art

      Hi everyone. Happy weekend to you. I'm out tomorrow to spend Mother's Day with my daughter, so I thought today I would share another art journal page for Art Journal Journey. This month (as you probably know) Neet is hosting and her theme is Things with Wings.

    This is not the most complicated page I've ever made but it's full of spring joy. My art time has been limited lately since I've been gardening when it isn't raining and also trying to do a big closet clean and clothes change over when it has been raining. Both projects are coming along, but at least when it comes to closet cleaning,  I'd just assume go make some art than do that. 😉 I hope maybe next week I can finish the closet, and if you garden you know that job is never done until winter returns. And I'm not in any rush for winter, that's for sure.

      The background of my page is some torn pieces of tissue paper. I  loved the color, and I wanted to keep my page bright. The images are a combination of some from an Art By Marlene punch out booklet and also some from 49 and Market. I arranged them to create  a lush garden scene. And I added the dragonfly, bee and even (although she doesn't have wings) a garden snail.

    And speaking of wings, this spring I have had an amazing assortment of birds at my feeders. Definitely more than I remember seeing in the past several years. Some of you might have seen my photos in Friday's/yesterday's post. I hope they don't  bore you, because later yesterday I had another visitor to my feeder.   I haven't seen a rose breasted grosbeak in several years.

    I also happened to glance out the window when both Mrs. Oriole and the grosbeak happened to be on the feeder pole. And yes, Mrs. Oriole does look like a robin in this view.

    But you can see in this view she's not a robin. .

     The crazy bent top of the seed tube feeder is thanks to the bear incident that happened back in March. I was able to straighten the bar to hold the seed tube, but I need the hubby to use his strength (which is way more than mine) and a vise to straighten out the top.

    My daughter says I have become an old lady always watching the birds, but although I'm no bird expert, I've been watching the birds since we first bought our house 36 years ago. Hee-hee, maybe I've always just been an old soul based on that definition. 😏

     Have a wonderful rest of your weekend, and for those who don't visit tomorrow, have a wonderful Mother's Day if that applies to you. 

    

It's About Birds

     Hi everyone. Another week is wrapping up. I hope everyone had a nice one. At my house it was wet for a good part of the week, including today. Today I'm linking up to Gillena's Friday Lunch Break and to Nicole's Friday Face Off.

     Mama and Papa bluebird have been busy feeding their babies or baby. I don't know exactly the number of young in the bird house as I haven't seen any signs of them yet. But the parents keep going back and forth with food.  And they seem like they can only get part way into the house.

    It's very exciting since a couple of years ago I only  had an occasional bluebird in my yard. 

    The Baltimore Orioles has been around a lot too. More than I ever remember seeing any. And now Mr. Oriole has a Mrs. who I've glanced at too. Here's a photo of Mr.  as I haven't gotten any photos of his Mrs. 

    If you're wondering about the blob just below the oriole's breast, I took this photo with my phone through the glass sliding door, and I have some leaf window stickers on the door so the birds don't fly into it.

    The other day I had a flicker out there too. And excuse my disastrous looking lawn. But at least there are no surprise dog poops in the photo. 😏

     I've also seen an occasional yellow warbler and a yellow rumped warbler (myrtle form),  but I've never managed to get a photo of them either. And I  saw my first hummingbird of the season yesterday. I've been waiting for them. 👍 But no photo of any hummingbirds yet either. 

    The other day 3 of my friends and I got together at one of those friend's homes. We finally watched the film we tried to stream  back in early April. In April you couldn't stream it; it was only available in theaters. Now it's available on Amazon (and maybe elsewhere, I'm not sure), and the 4 of us split the cost to see it. We each brought snacks to share, and it made a nice afternoon that was much cheaper than the theater too.

     It was a pretty good film. The penguin was definitely the star. The Penguin Lessons was set in the 1970's in Argentina. It also was a good story about life under the military junta and how people, usually young people, went missing if they spoke out about the government. The film mentioned there could be up to 30,000 missing.  At that time many mothers of the missing banded together to form the mother's march, which according to the film and what I saw on the internet, still happens every Thursday even now because it's still not known what happened to those people. 

   That's all for me today.  I hope every one has a great Friday and start to your weekend also.

Flowers and Birds

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. We are supposed to have sunshine all day today. Hurrah. There's been a lot of rain in the past several days. 

   I'm back today with a page for Neet's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month Neet's theme is It Must Have Wings.

     The colors on my page are what they are  because I like to clean off painty brushes on journal pages before I wash them. No sense wasting paint. My page had red and light blue paint on it, so I decided the colors would be red and light blue.

       I used a Andy Skinner Paper Artsy stamp several times to make the background image. Then I used a sheet of 12x12 red and a sheet of 12 x 12 blue cardstock as well as an old Sizzix TH giant flower die to cut out all the flowers.  I layered them on my page and used both a white paint pen and a white pen to add some details.  I then use another older Sizix die and some dark blue scrap paper  to die cut the birds. I cut them I think 3 times to get enough for my page. Finally I used an old rubber stamp and some white ink to stamp the quote randomly around my page. 

     The daffodils are still blooming, at least for now.

    

I took this next photo on this past Monday. The view after that is on Tuesday. The next 2 are on Wednesday. By today, you can imagine it will be even greener.

The tall trees are all oaks, which are always later to leaf out. But I love the bright green lacy look as the trees get leaves. 

The carrot and beet seedlings are getting their next set of leaves. 

And the potatoes I planted are coming up too.

    I'll leave you with this rhubarb plant. I've had it for at least 10 years, and it didn't like where it was growing, so last fall I dug it up and put it into a planting bag. I put the bag in my veggie garden because I wasn't quite sure where else to plant it.  It gets more sun here, and now it is bigger than it's ever been. I am going to transfer it into the sunny end of my veggie garden  later this season so it can have more space to grow. But I think it's just about time to cut a few stems because I like to make rhubarb pie or sauce. Hmm, it will be a big decision which to make.

Have a wonderful day ahead.