T Stands for In The Garden

      Hi everyone.  It is once again time for T Day over at Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog. I hope everyone had a nice week since our last T day.

      I  want to wish everyone who celebrates Passover a happy holiday week. And  Monday was  Earth Day, which means it was our hostess Elizabeth's big day. I never made it to the post office, but I thought this image was perfect for an Earth Day/ T Day birthday.

I hope it was a great day my friend.

      Last week was a busy one for me, and to top it off, I came down with a head cold that developed into a wheezie cough. Luckily except for one day when I was actually down and out, the cold wasn't bad enough to stop me.  I have been  excited to get back outside and work in my yard, which I know some of you don't get excited about, but I love getting the gardens ready for another season.

I like this photo I took off my back deck. 

      I  managed to get a few areas of the yard cleaned out. My property is most wooded with a lot of oak trees, and their leaves don't decay quickly. That means I get some good exercise cleaning them out. Plus there were a lot of acorns last year, and I've been chucking them back into the woods where new little oak trees can grow without getting in the way.

     I know they say don't rake until May (at least in my area) so the burrowing insects don't get disturbed, but with all the land around me that I don't rake or even do anything to, I think me raking out my flower beds is not a huge overall issue. 

I didn't get as many crocuses (at least so far) as I usually get. Perhaps they were buried under all the oak leaves. Grin. 😏

I raked and then straightened out the granite blocks around this stretch of garden. The blocks were pushed willy-nilly out of place as the ground froze and then thawed over the winter. I decided to tighten them up a bit too, which meant I needed a few more blocks. I went out to buy them, and when I came home I realized I was still 1 block short. 😞 It's a good thing my husband stopped to get fertilizer later that day because he picked up the block I needed. ❤

I should have daffodils this week too.  And hopefully my bees will arrive because they were supposed to have shipped over a week ago, and still the tracking has them at their point of origin. Hmmm.

This past weekend's garden project was to move an arbor that I've had for at least 20 years. It's been in one garden and not really doing much there, so I wanted to move where my grape vine can grow onto it.   I had to move it out of the other garden before all the plants grow up because I didn't want them to get stepped on as we carried it out. 😏

I still need to get some fresh stone for the walkway, but I'm excited to have this moved.

I also need to share a drink to finish off this post. For T this week I have  garden drink related photos.

     I saw someplace online where someone was clever and hung old teapots for bird houses. I ordered this first teapot a few years ago online, and when it came, the top was broken. The company sent me a new teapot and told me not to bother returning the topless one. This teapot has been sitting waiting for me to do something with it. 

     I  have a second teapot to use as a birdhouse also. This one has a little chip, and it isn't as pretty as the other one, but it had a plant in it that I gave my mother for Mother's Day several years  ago. When we cleaned out her apartment, the plant was dead but I took the teapot home. Like the other teapot, it's just been sitting waiting for me to do something with it.

     Let's see if the birds actually like this potential nest site. If not, it still looks pretty. In fact, if I can find a few more topless pots I may end up making a teapot tree. 

That's all for me today. Thanks for visiting. I hope everyone has a great rest of their week.

Weekend Art-Yellow

 Hi everyone. I hope you're having a happy weekend. 

     Today I have a bit of art to share. My first piece is a page for Valerie's Geometric Forms challenge at Art Journal Journey. I was back to using the postage stamp idea. 😏

     I started by putting down a  page out of an old book. All you can see of it now is the edge, but the  color from old yellowing book pages is hard to reproduce with art supplies. It makes a nice contrast between the white base paper and the white around each image.

     Several years ago I bought a sheet of collage images from  Art Chix. Their collage sheets used to be very popular, and I'm not sure if you can even get them any longer.  The images were of dogs and cats, and they had lots of colors of them.  I wanted the images but not in the colors that were on the sheet. I played around and was able to print them off with some bold yellows. This also got rid of the reds and even most of the blues.

     Then I changed my mind and didn't end up using any of these images. I came across them recently, and I decided that since each faux postage stamp was a rectangle, I would use some of them on a page.  I chopped off a whole block of them and attached them to my page.  I cut the large kitty out of another sheet of paper. She looks like my Emmie did. I also had the paper scrap from a die  that didn't cut very well, so I added bits to the top and bottom right of my page.   I finished by adding a few words.

I also have a tag today for Sandie's Anything Goes challenge at Tag Tuesday.

     I tried something different for the background, and I really like how it came out. I took a white cardstock tag, an embossing folder and a sheet of yellow marking paper. I stacked them so the marking side of the paper was up against the actual tag. Then I rolled them through my Big Shot several times. That pressure from the rolling caused some of the marking paper to actually stick to my tag, not just leave marks.  I peeled away what I could, but I really like how the marking paper didn't just color the flowers.   I used some matte medium on the tag to keep the marking paper intact.

     I then used a vintage image I cut off of a sheet of paper. I did enhance the colors on that image by matching some markers to the already colored in parts. Finally I added a bit of dark blue die cut trim (at the top) as well as a yellow button and some craft string in it (at the bottom).

     I'm also linking this tag up to Creative Artiste Mixed Media Challenge.

     And since my post has a lot of yellow today, let me share some photos from Greece that in some way feature that color.

peeling yellow paint and

canned squid

a duck with a very yellow beak

Too bad the sign has a reflection down the middle of it.  I can't remember, but I don't think it flat up against the window. 

A cool partly yellow house  that looks like it has a lot of potential. Can you find the black cat in the photo?

I wish I could remember what type of tree this was. The flowers were big, and yes, very yellow.

And here's another yellow wall.

limoncello bottles too

Another yellow building. Can you notice the metal street art?

A bee busy in a yellow flower.

Yellow nets on a dock by the ocean.

And finally, as I wrap up this post, a beautiful yellow setting sun.

And as they say, better late than never, I am also linking up to Gillena's Sunday Smiles. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Icons

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday.

     Today I have some more photos from Greece  to share. There's lots of faces for Nicole's  FRiday Face Off.. I'll also be linking up to Gillena's  Friday Lunch Break.  Today's photos are something I noticed that were quite common in Greece. Besides churches, it seemed like there were shrines,   icons and  religious images in many places.  I am not very familiar with the Greek Orthodox church, and even though there are some around where I live, I've never visited one before.  Perhaps that is why I found these very interesting.

We saw these little "churches" or "shrines"  in many places. The one above was on a road through the mountains.  And below, there was a small shrine  on the street; this shrine was for St. Barbara and photographed in Corfu. I learned about St. Barbara in Meteora; more about both Meteora and St. Barbara  in another post.

Many shops also had icons hanging in them. This photo was taken in  a bakery in Corfu.

The mosaic work and the gold in this tiled piece in a church in Athens was beautiful.

You can see there's a little shrine next to the ferry terminal in Artkista.

You could go into these little shrines and light a candle. 

My friend lit a candle for the rest of our trip at one in Trikala.

Inside these small shrines you find a lot of icons. I'm not sure of the religious symbolism or meaning behind them, but artistically I find them interesting. Here in New England where I live, (which was settled by the strict and unembellished Puritans) you don't see this type of art unless it is in someone's home or a religious facility. Although styled differently, they remind me of all the icons you see in parts of New Mexico also. 

And in Athens, this pretty little church was smack dab in the middle of some more modern construction.

Inside the church were some artistically beautiful icons also.

And there were more candles you could light.

I know when you visit a new country, you can't learn everything about it in 10 days. However, I love discovering what I can about about places I visit. To me, it makes the visit richer. 

That's all for me today. Have a super start to your weekend.

Generations

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you. I wrote this post last night, and I hope when this goes live, I feel better than I did yesterday. Thank you hubby for giving me your head cold. 😒 (The good news is he was feeling better within 2 days, so let's hope this cold goes the same way for me. 👍) This head cold is also why I might not have stopped by your blog yesterday.

Today I have  another page for Valerie's  Geometric Forms challenge at Art Journal Journey.

I started today's page using a set of Dina Wakely stamps that I had recently bought. Here's the set.

     When I punched out the face stamps from the entire rubber sheet, I realized I could also use the waste around the stamps as a grid image. It was like getting a whole other (unplanned) stamp set. ❤ You might remember this page from a few weeks back showing the left over grid image. 

     The  page is not my AJJ page for today since I've already linked it up, but I wanted to share the grid I also managed to get from this stamp set because a few of you had asked about it.

OK, onto today's page. 

     You can see I stamped some of the face images along the right hand side of a painted background.  I then die cut the tree, inked and colored it, and added it to my page. To make a ground for it, I added some washi tape and stamped the word "generations" on that tape.  Later I added some gold metallic trim.

      I also die cut the sun like circle, and I added that along with the stamped word "always". Finally, I finished this page by splattering some white paint.

      That's all for me today. I hope you're have a great week so far!

Happy Mail

 Hi everyone.  Happy middle of the week to you.

     No, I didn't receive any happy mail lately, but my art journal page for today is one about getting happy mail. This page was  pretty simple to put together, and I did it while "warming up" before an enjoyable full day of creating.

     The background is just a little bit of watercolor paint. I stamped the postcards. Then I finished my page with some Art By Marlene punch-out images as well as one die cut little envelope that I squeezed in between the hands of the  mail fairy.

     I am linking this page up to Valerie's Geometric Forms challenge at Art Journal Journey. There are lots of shapes here, including the rectangular postcards with rectangular spots for stamps,  the triangular roofs on some of the houses, the pentagon shape on the ladies red glasses, a few circles...etc.

     And that's all from me for today. 

Inspired By A Song

 Hi everyone. Happy Tuesday. It's time once again for a new challenge at Try It on Tuesday.

Thank you to everyone who joined  our Rainbow Colors challenge and thank you Chris from Here's One I Made Earlier blog for being our guest designer for our last challenge. Our newest challenge is all about music. Our challenge is

Inspired By A Song

     For my page, I was thinking about the classic tune "Up, Up and Away in my Beautiful Balloon". 

    I made a page with balloons soaring among the clouds.  I started with a dark blue ink pad and then some lighter blue and also some white spray paints. I have an old clear stamp set from Flourishes Rubber Stamps (another company that no longer exists-there's so many-it's sad) that had the balloon on it. I stamped the balloons and colored them in using paint pens. Then to make their structure pop more off the page, I used Staz-on ink and stamped the image again 3 times on some acetate. I fussy cut the acetate pieces and then glued them down over the colored balloons on my page. I finished by adding some  confetti stars to them.

     I drew and fussy cut some clouds. I was trying to figure out how to write UP, UP and Away on my page, but I thought it would look too crowded up among the clouds. Of course later I had a better idea how to add those words, but by then I had already stamped the quote that went with the set containing the balloon. Oh well. 😏

    There is a song by Bryan Adams that came out a few years ago called You Lift Me Up, and it's a good song too,  so if you don't like Up, Up and Away, you could say my page also works for that tune.

      Our challenge at Try It On Tuesday   runs for the next 2 weeks, and since we accept all types of art, we hope you'll be inspired by a song you hear and join us. And if you're stuck for any ideas, please check out all the inspiration from our designers. 

       

T Stands for Bee-ing Busy

 Hi everyone. It's time for T Day once again over at    Bleubeard's and Elizabeth's blog.

   Last week was a busy week for me; I had a lot going on and add to that my skin hives (not bee hives, but actually my medical  chronic urticaria) were flaring so my skin was covered with lots of red itchy welts.  Grumble and groan and scratch.😩 Luckily as of now they are on the improve, and I hope they get back under control ASAP.  But speaking of hives, over this past weekend my husband and I took down the winter windbreak we put up in the autumn around my honey bees.  

     Boy that looks a mess, doesn't it? Because of our cold winters I also wrapped the hive in a hive blanket, and underneath the stand I put some trash bags with leaves to help insulate the bottom.

      I left the hive blankets on because our nights are still on the cold side, but the bags of leaves have been moved. The last couple of years my hive didn't survive the winter, and even though I knew there  were still some bees alive back in February and early March, I hadn't actually gone into the hive to see how many were left. Now that the wind break was off I could easily get in and check.

    While I was removing bags, there were a few greeters that came out of the hive to see what all the commotion was about.

And then I had a big smile when I took the top off if he hive. The good news is that I have a good number of bees functioning inside. ❤❤❤

The white you see in this next photo is some dried winter bee food called fondant. I put it on a screen frame right above the bees so they can eat it but not have it smother them.

It was still a bit cool outside, and I didn't want to lose too much hive heat, so I didn't leave the cover off too long. Here's one more photo I snapped.

I'm so excited they're looking good. 

    I've wanted 2 hives (of bees) for the last few years, and you may remember I've had some issues accomplishing that. One year I had 2 hives going and then all of the bees from 1 hive went into the other hive.  Last year my second batch  of bees arrived with 95% of them dead. Because it was a late order for the bee season, I couldn't replace them. 

      This week I have a batch of bees arriving so keep your fingers crossed they get delivered alive and  settled nicely into their new home.

     Another thing I did last week was make some more liquid bee food to help my present hive and the new arriving batch of bees survive. It's a sugar water solution, and it's my drink for T day this week.

I make my own batches and store them in empty water jugs in our basement refrigerator so it's ready when I need it.  In this last photo there's a cool reflection of the opening to the jug. Doesn't the circle in the liquid look like it's a mouth or a portal into some secret world?

I know none of us want to drink this sugar water. It's not a clear solution because I buy unbleached sugar for the bees which is not pure white. I even use it myself in baking etc. I am sure the bees will love this nutritional drink until there is more plant nectar for them. So cheers to the bees and another hopefully season.

Have a great T day and week ahead everyone.