Spring changes…

April is turning out to be a month of big changes for me and the month is still young…

a week or so ago I had my hair cut and donated fifteen inches to a good cause (I have donated hair in the past but this time around I learned how much it costs to make a human hair wig confirming that monetary donations are very much needed as well)…

for the first time in my life I have braces and what an adventure that is going to be for the next year or so…

late last year we had some work done to reduce the size of part of our herbaceous border getting rid of wild blackberry and honeysuckle vines to name just a few marauders (I Love them in a wild setting but it wasn’t good that they were choking out so many other plants)…

now we are watching to see what survived the clean out before we do any new planting…

I had fun recently altering vintage spools of silk thread that my always generous friend Carmen shared with our mixed media group using a bit of shredded map, wire, moss, rose ribbon trim and a shiny egg or two for the little chick to sit on and the little boy is from the top of a small valentine candy box that I altered years ago (I created the frame using distressed copper mesh and brads)…

the blue Muscari/Grape Hyacinths are definitely a favorite spring flower of mine ♥ they seem to pop up everywhere…

I am tagging along with everyone over at Elizabeth’s Altered Book Lover to celebrate T Stands for Tuesday and

wish you a happy day…

forever…

joining in again for Elizabeth’s Art Journal Journey BACK TO SCHOOL challenge with a two page spread in an altered book of mine that surfaced in my recent clean up… 

 Lucille Borschke’s school memory book was given to me by a friend that found it in a thrift shop… 

she thought I could make use of the vintage photos and bits of this and that in it… 

seems Lucille was a local girl that attended Notre Dame Academy in Washington, D. C. back in the late 1920’s and her favorite subjects were History, Religion, English and French…

one of the group photos along with an old dictionary page were what got me started and a couple of rubber stamps came in handy too (FOREVER stamp not shown in photo)…

the ridged paper on the right is from light bulb packaging (I noticed when my pages were finished how nicely it worked with the background in the photograph) and the postage stamps were from a letter front included in Lucille’s memory book…

with my father being in the military we moved quite a bit when I was a young girl at all times of the year which made being the “new” girl in class an added adventure… I was quite chatty and made friends easily… I am grateful for memories of a sweet and colorful childhood…

fresh as a daisy…

using a copy of my earlier artwork I got busy on two more journal pages for Yvonne’s IN MY GARDEN there is challenge over at Art Journal Journey…

still playing with daisies and my favorite color blue…

feeling the sizing wasn’t quite right on the first lady … a different lady spoke to me...

I like the way she melted into the painted page framed a bit with pressed flower fusion paper at the top and plaster stenciled book text at the bottom…

“A garden is a delight to the eye and a solace for the soul.” – Sadi

creating Love always…

there was a time after our son’s death in 1999 when I thought I might never make anything again…

all my life I have enjoyed doing things with my hands inspired by creative and busy parents…

several years after Alex’ death I took a class on embossing on velvet with rubber stamps (with thanks to everyone at ARTFULLY SCRIBED in Herndon Virginia… wish they were still in business)…

 creating a few accordion books with embossed velvet covers after that class brought me back from the brink and had me headed toward the mixed media life I now enjoy so much…

this time of year with the anniversaries of loved one’s passings and birthdays that they aren’t here to celebrate I have to work extra hard to try and keep my balance and not sink or fade away…

I am so very grateful for the community of creative souls that I get to connect with here and thank each of you for being a part of my healing journey…

(9 x 12″ on watercolor paper)

I am joining Art Journal Journey’s February challenge “If Music Be the Food of Love“ along with Paint Party Friday where I am still a newbie and so happy to feel inspired to play more with paint…

“I see my path, but I don’t know where it leads. Not knowing where I am going is what inspires me to travel it.”
― Rosalía de Castro

(I just noticed this is blogpost #2000 since I started blogging in 2007)

The Snow Queen …

one of the first winter scenes that came to mind when Chrissie chose Winter Wonderland as the January theme for Art Journal Journey was Varykino the ice palace in Dr Zhivago  (was it really 50 years ago that that movie came out!)…

while I never quite got those ideas worked out of my head I did make a mixed media piece with the snow queen that was also inside my head using some beautiful and special to me Edelweiss stamps (thank you again Johanna!) and I cut into a pretty handkerchief too (this year I am focusing on using up some of my treasures!)…

being in a time crunch with January near its end I did not take any step by step photos and it’s a shame because this piece ended up morphing quite a bit…

the swans were the last thing to be added and my muse Mr Magpie said why just one swan so I ended up adding three swans reminding me of our three sons…

so here is my last piece for AJJ’s January challenge…I made a mosaic of my other winter inspired creations…

thank you very much for your visit(s)…

Second on the 2nd for November 2015…Memory of the Heart

looking back to 27 November 2011 I am sharing these art journal pages for Elizabeth’s second look this month…

Happy November All oxo

…memory of the heart…

“Originally” Posted on November 27, 2011

thank you all for your precious Thanksgiving wishes and I hope that everyone that celebrated had a lovely holiday…

I will share a little of our holiday escape to the mountains in my upcoming Tea Tuesday post…

today I wanted to show you a couple of pages I have been working on for a little while now…

after the spring nesting season earlier this year I ended up with a broken Robin’s egg collection…

I tucked them into a tiny bowl with plans to use those pretty shades of “blue” in a collage some day…

my small fragile Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia/Art Journal pages

(each page measures 4×6″)

had a couple of pages gessoed and ready for more attention with a piece of film stapled on the left…

too bad I didn’t take photos of my pages all along the way…

but you know how it goes when you get busy playing…

the camera is in another location and you just keep working away and before you know it…

well here are my finished pages…

I brushed on some thick gel medium and crushed the shells in place liking that some of the book page was left exposed on the top right…

that image was way too nice to cover up…

a piece of my Citra Solv paper where I included rubber stamping and rub ons added a nice layer as well…

I wrote Love with a white Sharpie Water Based poster pen outlined in fine black marker…

I really like the black and white image of the amazing artist Albrecht Dürer who just happened to be handy on my work table…

more eggshells on the left side along with tissue tape and a scrap piece of paper used to protect my work table…I left the strip of film loose at the bottom and made a list of some of the things I am grateful for underneath…

this page was intentionally left a bit open with room for all the unknown blessings already on their way with more to be grateful for…

“Gratitude is the memory of the heart.” ~Jean Baptiste Massieu, translated from French

build your dreams…

happy to be joining the Art Journal Journey ARCHITECTURE challenge this month after being away for a few weeks…

I worked in a handmade journal that I stitched together and painted a while ago (each page measures 7.5 x 11 inches)…

my inspiration came from our recent visit to Ocracoke Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina using bits of this and that were on my work table (there was even a scrap of map with the Pamlico Sound on it)…

the lighthouse drawing I used is from a photo of a display on the lighthouse grounds...

we have been visiting The Outer Banks for many many years and we continue to be drawn to the Ocracoke Lighthouse…

happy to report that the island still has maintained its quiet and beautiful charm (we do prefer visiting off season) with a full time population of under 1,000 … no traffic lights … no chain businesses or hectic 9 to 5 …

if you click on my finished pages above you’ll find a few statistics and other handwritten notations as well…

this year we headed north on the Atlantic coast for a bit at the beginning of our vacation to visit the Currituck Lighthouse which was also quite charming with a great view from the top…

we like lighthouses!

“An architect is a drawer of dreams.” -Grace McGarvie

dawn was breaking…

a couple more pages in one of my gesso journals for Art Journal Journey’s THROUGH MY WINDOW challenge…

the found poetry on the left and the veiled bust of the lady on the right hand page had been patiently waiting for attention…

the PSX (K-3565) collage rubber stamp that I stamped on white tissue paper led me to searching through my postage stamp collection and the first stamp I found was the 1956 U.S. Children’s Stamp about “Friendship – The Key To World Peace“…

the masking tape like border at the bottom was torn from a lint roller and too good to throw away (I was raised in a waste not want not household and still practice that!) so I stamped lightly with a Stampers Anonymous Tim Holtz Collection border stamp and embellished it with a bit of gold paint…

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.”  -Oscar Wilde

Forget-me-not…

a pot of summer blooming Forget-me-nots that I planted last year has gently spread among our Japanese painted ferns just off the back porch…

it is such a sweet little flower and the delicate blues really speak to me…

the blooms that were hanging over the stone border into the lawn were begging to be picked and I just happened to have a tiny china boot that made a nice vase …

and then I remembered one of my basket girls from Japan (the beautiful English Bone China cup belonged to my sweet mother-in-law)…

as will happen one thing led to another and I finished another chip board piece in my tea cup journal using cut out blooms from some of my photos and a Lord Byron quote…

still deciding with the postage stamp or without as my thought was to keep each cup rather simple (it is a challenge for me sometimes to leave open space)…

just a couple more cups to go and I can show them all to you…

thank you very much for stopping by to visit…

here’s wishing you a Happy T Day along with everyone over at Elizabeth’s Altered Book Lover…

tell me everything…

being in a house with all males for years (Mr Magpie and three sons) I have had to learn how to get them talking… not sure if this is a female or male thing exactly…

all I know is when the boys would come home from school if I asked them “how was your day?” I would most likely get a one word answer… so I came up with questions like “what was the funniest thing that happened today?” and it was amazing sometimes what all was revealed…

the found poetry on my gesso journal page along with one of my moo cards brought that all to mind…

two more pages for AJJ’s “Masculine/Feminine” and Mix-it-Monthly’s “The Facial Profile”

and I am joining in with Moo Mania and More for their “Numbers” challenge...

Love your neighbor…

a bunch of beautiful blue delphiniums jumped into my shopping cart the other day…

which led to some of them ending up in my flower press…

next thing I knew I was playing with flowers from the garden and making a mandala (I miss Dawn’s Mandala Monday’s and her beautiful organic creations!)…

I am in the midst of a long overdue clean out … it feels good to let go of things but it is a lot of work (we’ve filled up our car trunk several times dropping items off at charity shops and also recycling lots of bags of paper and cardboard)…

all of that has kept me away from the computer lately and I have missed visiting everyone as I normally would …

I did take some time to play and alter another cup in my tea cup journal using sprigs of pressed lavender with a piece of single ply tissue glued on top (the green background is one of the security envelopes I had in my vast “collection”)…

here’s wishing you a Happy T Day along with everyone over at Elizabeth’s Altered Book Lover…

“There’s no Black, White, Asian, or Latinos. The only “RACE” is the “HUMAN-RACE”.” -Henry Johnson Jr 

waves of one sea…

 journaling on different kinds of surfaces like my chipboard tea cup book is proving to be a bit of a different challenge that I am having fun with…

last year I created a loose leaf art journal working on both the front and back of each piece…

I liked that format so much I thought I would begin another this time working in landscape/horizontal layout…

here is my first page (layers of paint and plaster cloth) using part of this quote from a Baha’i poem:  “We are all the waves of one sea…We are all the leaves of one tree…We are all the flowers of one garden” for Art Journal Journey’s “favorite poems/quotes” challenge 

it’s Bluebell time again …

this time of year has me feeling a bit like a bumblebee flitting from thing to thing to take in all the beauty and surprises nature has to offer…

 cherry blossom time in Washington, D.C. meant that the Virginia Bluebells could not be far behind…

to our great delight this past weekend we got to visit Bull Run Regional Park several times…

which is something we look forward to each Spring here in Virginia (one of the days three hours had passed before we knew it)…

we took the traveling tea cup along and found lots of welcoming spots for it to rest for a bit being careful to avoid the tender new poison ivy popping up everywhere and remembering to NOT be tempted to touch the mature fuzzy vines clinging to tree trunks…

much like the cherry blossoms the exquisite bluebells are relatively short lived and perhaps all the more precious because of that (depending on weather conditions they can last about 8-10 days)…

there are other blooms to enjoy as well but the bluebells are definitely the stars of the show…

being in the woods for sunrise one day treated us to a bit of extra magic…

there was a mist over the meadow entering the park that stopped us in our tracks…

 Mother Nature made each petal and leaf look like it had been dusted with sugar (you can click the photos for a closer look)…

walking the loop trail through the woods is a little different each time (can you see the goose peeking over the log)…

here’s wishing you a very happy T Day along with everyone over at Elizabeth’s Altered Book Lover…

may your day be full of things you enjoy…