Summer

I'm celebrating summer with this project, prompted by two blog challenges: Simon's Midsummer Blues and Frilly Funkie Junkie's Let's Do It Again. The blue part is self-explanatory and doing it again meant revisiting an old project and creating a remake.

You may know that I do love fussy-cutting and especially the flowers from the Tim Holtz Wallflower paper stash. So that, along with a Baseboard Doll and Lace Baseboard Frame, was what I used to assemble this project.

It was mounted inside the back of a wooden panel that I covered with paper. The doll's left arm was originally bent up high and was altered by slicing and dicing and piecing together some baseboard from another doll.

Here's the original project that inspired the "do-over." It is a Configurations Box I made for CHA 2015. Paper dolls hadn't been invented yet so I cut the girls from a Found Relative photo. It was the year the Wallflower paper stash came out and I assembled a garden for them to sit in.

So, it is still mid-summer here in the desert and we'll have at least two and a half more months of high temps. There hasn't been any monsoons that bring rain so the dry spell weather-wise coincides with my own personal artistic dry spell and lack of posts. I'm thankful for the prompts this week and it feels so good to be working again!

Update: So proud this post became a Top Pick on the TFJB blog--thank you!

Moon Landing

I can't let this day pass without sharing my thoughts about the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

I remember the day vividly--family and friends gathered in the kitchen, watching a tiny, black and white television perched atop the refrigerator so everyone could see.

I was too young to really appreciate the significance of this event as much as I could have.

But today, I am reminded that this was one of those rare times in history when the world came together, if only for a day, to marvel at the tremendous accomplishments the human race is capable of.

The photo is of a patch I saved from that era and the symbolism seemed appropriate for today.

Ghost Crab

Remember me? I've never gone this long before without posting to my blog. I created multiple journal pages and tags during this absence but couldn't pull anything together that seemed "blog-worthy." I guess my heart just wasn't in it.

But now I have a journal page to share, inspired by:

• a lifelong desire to live by the sea in spite of my land-locked status
• a birthday month, my astrological sign is Cancer the Crab
• a prompt from Simon's Monday challenge called "Life on the Ocean Waves"
• a beautiful photo by Sican123 of a crab with a name that describes my absence
• and, last but not least, Sara and Patti Dee who recently reminded me of why I blog in the first place. Thank you, ladies ♥.

I worked on one side of a page in a large Ranger Dylusions journal with a plan to experiment with stamped tissue paper.

I rubbed graphite on the back of my printed photo to trace an outline, used acrylic paint to lay down some color and establish values, stamped on tissue paper (packing material from a shoe box) then pasted it over the painting.

The title was made with text stickers (they appear curved because my page wasn't flat when photographed) and some stamp embossed letters on more tissue paper.

So here's what I know now:

• The tissue paper that new shoes come wrapped in works just fine for stamping and pasting. But even with plenty of glue it will be somewhat opaque and doesn't disappear completely though not as bad on a lighter background. This is true of every tissue paper I've ever used so I'm not surprised or disappointed.

• Painting tumbling waves is seriously scary and a realistic portrayal would require a ton of patience!! I have new respect for this skill and the artists who can do this.

It's good to be back--I do hope my next post will come more quickly than the last and, as always, I thank you very much for stopping by!