Carnival

 Hi everyone. Happy Friday. It's almost the weekend again, and I just realized that this is the last weekend of April. Eeks. 

   Today I have some more Greece photos and a page from my travel journal. Neither my friends nor I realized that we would be in Greece during  carnival weekend. It make sense when you think that Greek Orthodox Easter is May 5th, but since of the 3 of us who went, 2 of us were never associated with the Greek Orthodox Church, and my friend who is, isn't religious. It made a nice surprise and added to our travels.

    You'll see some faces  for  Nicole's Friday Face Off, and these also work for Gillena's Friday Face Off.

     I'll start with the page I made for me travel journal. The long confetti paper strings are pieces I actually picked up. I die cut the masks and the clowns (which I left white). You'll see why I added the clowns if scroll down just a bit. I also need to go back and write in the Greek word for carnival, which I just learned as I wrote this post.

This season of festivals right before Lent is called Apokries. The big celebrations occur on the weekend right before Clean Monday. I mentioned Clean Monday in an earlier post as one thing to do on that day is to fly kites. The fact that it was Apokries also explains why there were creepy clown faces all over the place. Clowns originated in Greece a long time ago. One article I read said that the first clowns appeared around 7 BCE in Sparta.

We missed any parades, but we were out on the town with a lot of other people enjoying the spring weather and the holiday decorations. This restaurant in Trikala was decorated for the holiday.

There was a lot of confetti after parades. 

And besides restaurants, stores and other buildings were decorated for the holiday.

As it was carnival,  you can't forget to have some masks.

     And while on Corfu on Clean Monday, we went out for a drive. We were headed north to explore some views of the Ionian Sea and also to maybe find a cute little town or 2 to check out. We should have known when we saw the clown we were riding into a festival.

That meant we were stuck in small town traffic.

Not once but twice.

     It was too bad we couldn't make it to the top of the island, but it still makes a good story. And trips are all about the stories, aren't they? I also think this makes a good reason to head back to Greece (and Corfu) one day. 😀

Have a great weekend ahead.

Circle Art

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday.

     Today I have a spread from my Greece travel journal that I am sharing for Valerie's Geometric Forms challenge at Art Journal Journey.  The left side of the spread is from the Acropolis Museum and the right side from the Acroplis itself.

The right hand page has lots of geometry. There is the big rectangle of the book page (that is part of the background and of course I had to buy a used book printed in Greek) as well as the rectangle of the vintage  black and white postcard I added. There are also 3 circles with the gold embossing. Those were from coasters at the hotel we stayed at. I recycled them  and cut away the outer white around the rings.

You can also see my ticket for the Acropolis. It has some cool blue geometric forms on it also.

The left side of the spread is about my visit to the Acroplis Museum. I included the 2 tickets I bought online and printed off just for this journal page. I also included a bookmark and a chopped up postcard both which I picked up in the gift shop. 

The vase was stamped, colored and fussy cut.

I also have one more tag for Sandie's Anything Goes challenge at Tag Tuesday. It also have some circles on it.

I hope that poor woman's thoughts and life stop feeling like they are going round and round. Grin.

     I embossed  most of the background and then inked it. I also used a different embossing folder and embossed the circles and some white paper before I used an old punch to make the circle.  I inked those also. I cut out the number from a sheet of printed paper, added the Art by Marlene lady, and wrote in the round and round words.

That's all for me. Have a super rest of your day.

Blue

 Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you.

Today I have some randoms bits and pieces to share. I'll start with a page from my Greece travel journal. 

     I was cleaning out some papers one day a few weeks ago, and I came across some black papers I had dipped into some marbling paint. This particular paper reminded me immediately of the jellyfish we saw one day on my trip to Greece. I decided to use it as a memory page, even though the Aegean Sea was  NOT black. I thought the letters on the stickers worked for the water color though.

     Here's a couple photos of the jellyfish my page was inspired by.

     I am linking my page up to Valerie's Geometric Forms challenge at Art Journal Journey. Besides the jellyfish form, you can see the  black circles on acetate that I glued down onto my page.

     The other day I shared some yellow photos from my Greece trip, so today let me share some blue with you.  I'll start with this one and the deep blue of the morning sky. I snapped this from the window during our last morning in Greece. We had a late morning flight that day and needed to be at the airport fairly early. This is the view from where we stayed.

Blue mountains, blue sky, and a hazy morning landscape.

 Looking up at a bridge (top) through the sky light from the backseat of the car.

Here's a full on view of that bridge with the blue Ionian Sea, blue mountains and blue sky.

Now the view of the bridge is from when we were driving over that bridge in the other direction.  I was sitting in the front seat for this photo.

Blue water, blue on the boat, and does anyone see something resembling the evil eye?

More landscapes with blue

I took this photo for my husband.

And it was a gorgeous day in this next photo. I would love to have been on that boat.

This cool evil eye was hanging in one of the places we stayed. 

A couple of views from the balcony of where we stayed in Corfu.

A sign with some blue,

and finally for today's post, the blues boxes for this octopus (I believe) in tomato sauce I saw in a grocery store we used as well as a pretty scene on some bottles of a new alcohol for me called Tsipouro. And no, I didn't try the Tsipouro. 

I hope you're having a lovely day. 

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.