A ride through the country

I spent a few days at the cottage and really enjoyed the beautiful autumn palette of colors. Isn't Mother Nature glorious?

Fall Color

I was up at the cottage last week and the leaves had started to do their magic and turn the most beautiful colors. I took these photos with my phone so they aren't the best. (Someone was bad and left their camera at home.) But this gives you the general idea of what it looked like up there.

And when I took these the trees weren't even at their peak yet. They probably are at about their best this weekend. (When I am NOT up there of course!) I just love living in the midwest where we can experience all four seasons. One is more glorious than the next, but I must admit that autumn is probably my most favorite. Until spring comes again, that is!

Color Inspiration

I made myself a pot roast the other day (Mmmm...) and decided to have some fun and do a color story with the photo for some Saturday Color Inspiration. This is what I came up with.

It's going to be a gorgeous weekend here in the midwest - sunny with temperatures in the mid 60's. I think (and hope) that Spring is right around the corner. I'd love to be able to put the shovel away and start thinking about flowers and green grass and birdies again.

Hope you have a beautiful weekend!

Autumn Splendor

I just returned from a wonderful week at the cottage surrounded by these glorious colors!

Flowers, Flowers, Everywhere!

We've received such beautiful flowers at the house since my DH came home from the hospital. The arrangement shown above is one example - a huge basket filled with exotic flowers in a gorgeous rich color palette. It's so wonderful to be surrounded by all the beauty of nature when you are recuperating. Thanks to all for your wonderful gifts of love and caring.

Addendum

I just made a fabulous discovery! I was "chatting" with Donna Layton a little while ago after she left a comment my previous post about the Copic Marker class I am taking. I was telling her a little more about them and the fact that they work on the same kind of surfaces as Alcohol Inks. And that is when the "light bulb" went off in my head! (Can you guess where I am going with this?) Donna did a tutorial on the Joli Paquet blog last fall on how to tint silver pipe cleaners using alcohol inks. (You can see that tutorial here.) Well, I wondered if the alcohol-based Copics would work on the pipe cleaners too. . .and Guess what? . . .THEY DO!

Currently I only have light pastel colors of the Copic Markers, so the results don't show up the best in this photo. But if you use darker tones, I imagine your results will be deeper. On the example above I used "Ice Ocean - #BG72" on the left tail, "Mallow - #V15" on the right tail, and "Coral - #R35" on the loop at the top.

Now if you are tinting a whole batch of pipe cleaners, then I certainly would use Donna's technique. But in a pinch, if you only need to color one or maybe two, this method will work just fine!

NOTE: I think Prismacolor Markers are alcohol based too, so those might work on the pipe cleaners as well. Give it a try and let me know.

Favorite Things - Just a Few

It's funny how things evolve. This journal page started out as a plain sheet of watercolor paper painted with some lavender acrylic paint which happened to be sitting on my desk leftover from another project. I had bought some Glimmer Mist Spray in Patina a while ago and decided to try it for the first time over the lavendar. I gingerly sprayed a few spritzes and the result was a very fine, hardly noticable mist with a fine sparkle to it. Nice! I found some metal mesh paper in my paper scrap drawers and used it as a stencil to add a little more texture to the background. The blank tag I had purchased earlier in the week with the intent of writing some sort of jounaling on it. It seemed to coordinate well with the colors, so I decided I would probably use it on this page. Then the page just sat there for a few days, empty and blank. Yesterday I was going through my basket,of catalogs, purging some old ones and replacing them with the newest issues that had arrived. I began cutting out images that caught my eye and started randomly placing them on top of the journal page. I moved the cut outs around on the page until I was pleased with the composition and then attached them with a glue stick. I added the blue paper lace, which I purchased from Andrea's One Hundred Wishes Shop. (This paper lace is actually at least twice as wide as what I have used on this page. I trimmed it and saved the other half to use on another project.)
I looked for text in the catalogs that described things I like and then glued them onto the tag. The images on the rest of the page also indicate some my favorites ~ a brightly colored comfy chair, polka dots, pink, lime green and aqua colors, birds, flowers, swirly shapes, black & white checks, hearts, all things French, scented candles, and lots of doodling.
As a result, I ended up with a fun and brightly colored journal page which recorded just a few of my current favorite things as well as my present mood. Now that you've seen what I like, I'd love to hear what YOUR favorite things are.