Freebies - Collage Sheet - Woman in Red

Do you ever get a tune stuck in your head that you just can't get rid of? Well, I awoke to the sound of thunder, rain and the lyrics...."woman in red....." I figured it must be some sort of sign after about six hours and I should just go with it. I went through my various folders of images and decided to make a new folder of "Women in Red". Then, I decided to make some collage sheets. So, here is the first of three. Enjoy and make something fun.

Theme Thursday - Quote - Digital Collage

I worked on some challenges yesterday and came up with this for the Theme Thursday's Challenge. This week it is Quotes. We are to make a piece of art and use a quote on it. I went to their site after we had had a huge discussion at dinner about quotes, writers, literature, etc. Dinner was filled with everyone's favorites, the inane, and the life's lessons. I decided to go with Shakespeare. He had such a way with words. The house is from the mountains, the girls are cabinet cards, the negative is just an old negative scanned and resized.

Things that Smell in the Night

Mama Skunk with young

Daddy Skunk

I hope you all have a friend you have known a long time and can call anytime. They are the best. These prints are for her, you might want to use them to remind someone of their own personal hygiene issues or not.

The other day I got a call from a friend and she said - "I have a problem - a couple of times this week I have been woken up in the dead of night by the smell from a skunk." She has several acres that her house is snuggled into. There are woods and a beautiful pond. I asked for more information. Then she said - we have a solar bug zapper - "Do you think that when the zapper goes off that the skunk is spraying?" Yes. "So any ideas to stop it. " Turn off the zapper for a couple of nights. Isn't it nice to have a friend to figure out life's little wonders with and just let you Hoot out loud?

My other thought when this conversation was going on was how long it had been since I had smelled that smell. I can remember when we lived on the farm smelling the smell almost every night driving home. I wonder if they don't do well in the heat or sand here. So, how many of ya'll smell skunks? Is this another thing that is slowly dying off? A friend in Alabama had a Mama and five babies under her deck that the wildlife people came and relocated. In probably ten years those are the only two skunk stories I have heard.

Digital Collage - Remember Me

I am starting to think about Halloween - one of my favorite holidays. I did this small digital collage today. These two sisters remind me of some haunted by what they have seen kids. The older one in particular. I am wondering if she has a cast on her arm. She looks so sad. I want to thank Viola for the little girls image.

Quote - Inner Child

Banner Art

I am still doing the Tip in Monthly Swap in one of my groups. This month I had the lovely Tamara's banner to do. What fun. I have not done a lot of banners. I did a swap just last month but mine were lost in the large vacuum called the Postal Service not to be heard from again. So getting to do a larger banner and one for such a wonderful artist was challenging.

Tamara loves orange and pink, Zetti, and winged things. This of course made it very fun for me. I used several shades of orange paint, some yellow and pink oil pastels to do the backgrounds. The zetti girl is from Teesha Moore and the young princess is from Paper Whimsey. The castle is from an antique tea card. Add a little ribbon, some glitter and some jewels and we have a banner.

Front of the banner

Back of the banner

ATC and Tag from Scraps

ATC

My goal this year has been to recycle my scraps and buy less. So far I have been doing really good at sticking to my mantra. I took the scraps from the sheet of paper I made Tamara's banner with and was able to get one tag, one ATC, 5 moo cards and 5 inchies. I haven't done anything with the moo's or inchies but, I thought I thought I would share these with you. Click on the tag to see it larger.

When I copied and printed my castle I did several different sizes. I was not sure what size would look the best on the banner. This also gave me several different sizes to play with for something else. The tag is actually quite large - larger than the ATC, but in scanning it and including the ribbon it does not appear that way. I used a large castle with the tag and a much smaller on for the ATC. Both of the girls are from Paper Whimsey. The wings are from Collage Visions. I needed something that would show up well with all I had going on.

The ribbon on the tag is leftovers from the banner. I have been in a real lime sherbet green mood lately. I love the combination of the green, orange and pink, with some yellow. I feel like I am in a container of rainbow sherbet. Yummm.

Four Letter Words - Wave

Watch Your Step

This is a little something - about the size of my whole hand - that I found right at the shore line on Friday morning. It is the second one of these I have found. What caught my eye was the fishing line glimmering in the sun. I went over and looked and saw something brown sticking up with some of the fishing line. I gave the fishing line a pull and found this hook. Amazing, isn't it?
Can you imagine stepping on this with out shoes on? This could really do some damage. It is for catching flounder off of a pier. As the closest pier is over a mile away and up stream you do have to wonder. It is going into my bowl of odd things I have found on the shore. Please be careful.

Weather Channel in Town

Path to the beach

Tide is coming in

Beach strewn with shells from all the wave action

Waves are beginning to grow

Surfers leaving to go to designated surf area with life guards.

It is never a good thing to wake up to the weather channel in your town. Both Friday and Saturday mornings I awoke to the live telecast from our beach. Of course we had to run down to the beach and see what was going on. Friday morning - early - it was beautiful. The beach was strewn with shells, no one but surfers and one lone fisherman. The surf was agitated. It tore one of my flip flops off and the toe thingy right out of the shoe. I was only up to my calves, too.

As the tide began to come in the waves began to pick up, turning sort of greenish. In my experience green in the weather is not good - the sky having a green tinge - tornado - water green tinge - undertow and riptides - hurricanes and tropical storms. The surfers began to come in and move down the beach where the life guards were. No swimming on Friday and Saturday.

Found Beach Treasures

Here are a few of the treasures I found Saturday morning. I love the glass with "coc...a" on it. The marble was unexpected. I wonder if it was someone's "lucky marble". I usually don't pick up too many shells any more. I have large bowl and vases filled with scallop shells, olives, arks, etc... Now I pick them up to five to people or to use in a journal or as an embellishment for something I am working on. I often find a whole bunch of cool shells and will leave them above the tide line for someone to find.

Shell Offering

Back Home, Laundry and Such...

It seems like forever since I have posted. Lots of things going on. I love August but it is long. It is like you have to fit in everything you thought you were going to do in the beginning of summer into one month. I am home! yeah! doing loads of wash. Towels, sheets, blankets, clothes.... In between loads and folding I am going through a week of emails, answering emails, and trying to get some new things up on my blog. Plus waiting for coats of paint to dry for some backgrounds I am doing. Whew...

I had unexpected company this week. A friend going through some hard times who just wanted to play. She helped me get ready for the storm, then we played some more. Took a couple of day trips and took a lot of walks on the beach. Unfortunately, it is hard to post with all of that going on. I have lots of pictures though and I did get a couple of arty things done. So, today is my blog day and lets see what all I can get up for you. I missed you all.

Digital Collage - Back to School 1905 by Miss Kelly

Isn't this just wonderful? Kelly from Artsy Visions and Collage Visions emailed me that she had used the freebie I posted. I immediately went to her blog and found this awesome digital collage. Everything Kelly does is wonderful. Seriously, she is just one of those artists that has the knack of design and color. Plus, she is varied and not afraid to try something new. There is always growth in her work. I hope you will take some time and visit her. p.s. in the south we call everyone "Miss".

Freebies - Back to School

This is the one I want to go to. I love ring around the rosy.

This is a miner school in Colorado. Note the hats on almost all the kids. Brr.

I love the bell on this school.

There are really a lot of kids in this school!

This is a southern mill school. This is actually quite a lot of kids for the time.

This is the big week here. School is starting. Most of the colleges have already begun and the high schools, middle schools, an elementary schools begin on Tuesday. Our year round schools started the new year about two weeks ago.

I always loved the promise of a new year. New art supplies, paper, notebooks and of course new shoes and clothes. The perfect first day of school outfit. I went to school with the same kids over and over again so that was no big deal. It was all about whose reading class you were in and what French class you had. Each grade only had two classes so we had recess, ate and did the library all together. Not till high school did the big changes happen.

I hope you will enjoy these pictures. We have come a long way. Please support your schools and most importantly your teachers. They are shaping the future.

Tag Fever Two...

Tags are great things to have in your stash pile. I like to keep a few down in my kitchen all made up. They are great to add to a "little something" for someone, to write a quick note on, etc. I use to send them in to my kids teachers with a "thank you" or "I will be picking him up early" type of thing. Sometimes I keep a few in my car and if I stop by someone's house and they are not home I will leave one tied to the doorknob with a note. You get the idea.

I make the tags with leftover paper from projects. I keep a variety of tag sizes on my work table and put the scraps in a scrap box. When I have accumulated a few I will spend an hour or two just making tags. I also keep already made manila tags on my work table and when I paint and have left overs, I smear it on the tags. It gives me interesting tags that I might not have made. You can use the hole strengtheners to make them look official. [the orange tags are 120 lb. watercolor paper with hole strengtheners] It is a great way to recycle scraps and leftover paint.
Feel free to copy and use these if you like.

Tags made from a leftover project.

Tags painted with leftover paint.

Tags made from leftover scrap paper, scraps, and paint.

Tags painted with left over paint.

Tag Fever

Around Father's Day I realized so little of my collages use men or boys. Which is so odd because I have been the only female human in my household for almost thirty years. I made a small promise to myself to find some "male" images that I liked and start using them. So here is a couple of tags using this lovely image from Paperwhimsey, an old dictionary, the US Postal Service and some miscellaneous trim.

Doors - Yellow with Age, Pink with Memories

Four Letter Words - Jump

Altered Blocks

In one of the yahoo groups - in this house and garden - Susie La Fond is having a round robin with blocks. [each person will alter one side of the block] I decided to start early and got out some of the blocks that the boys played with when they were younger. I have several sets, one from Ikea that is nice, another nicer set that an old friend made for my oldest, out of maple, then another that has a lot of pine pieces in it.

The idea is that you are to alter the face of the block, then the sides, each block, depending on shape has 5 to 6 sides. I grabbed my scrap box and went to town. Don't think to much just sort of let things flow. Before I knew it I had 25 to 30 blocks with at least the first side finished. I think it is best to do one side on a bunch of the blocks and then start on the second side. Then, the third etc. After that you can go back and add details, embellishments etc. These are my first round.

I think these will look very cool as adult blocks to play with on a coffee table. You could just sneak a block here or there, a window sill or shelf. It will be fun to have as an ongoing project. Susie says she has done well over a hundred. I can see that. Beware. It is very addicting.

Magician Collage Sheet

A Treasure Found in the Mountains

Seeing the skull in the magician poster reminded me of a skull my son gave me when I was up in the mountains. I wanted to share this really cool deer skull with you today. I am always asking him to be on the look out for cool things - nests, bones, feathers, rocks, etc... when he is out hiking or on his daily runs. He lives in a "no kill" mountain community that is full of deer, turkeys, bobcats, bear, etc. so he is always seeing cool things. [On one hike we found these incredible vulture eggs. They were speckled in several shades of purple. We left them undisturbed.]

The deer in his neighborhood have become quite prolific and have actually split into two groups - the healthy and the sickly more interbred. For the first time they are letting hunters in this year to weed out some of the sick deer. My son found this deer skull on one of his runs. It is so cool.

I was so thrilled to get this skull. We think it is from one of the sick deer. A doe. He said he watched the skull for several months before it was ready to come home. It is really quite fascinating and will sit on my "nature"table with turtle shells, wasp nests, fossils, etc. we have found. I hope you enjoy the photos.

Full facial view. The nose area is a bit degraded.

This is the back of the skull. You can see where it attached to the spine.

The skull turned upside down. The teeth are incredible. You can see where they use them to grind and chew their food. Those are some molars!

Side view. The eye socket is so large. I do not have the lower jaw. Apparently small mammals find that one of the easier parts to abscond with. It is a great source of calcium for them.

Freebies - Seers, Crystal Balls and Magic

Late this month and next month the county and state fairs will begin. Rides, games of skill, cotton candy, fried pickles, ice cream, and other assorted goodies are to be had. Hand crafts, quilts, home made pies, and of course the animal judging. At night the different shows. My mouth is watering already. State Fair is one of my favorite old movies.

One of the first fairs I can remember had a magic show for kids. I sat through it three times that week. I loved it. So in honor of those memories I thought I would share these posters with you. I have also made a magic collage sheet which I will post tomorrow for you.

Some of these images would be great to use in your Halloween art work, also. I really like the Thurston posters. He was Kellar's successor in the magic world.

Who Steals Turtles?

I came home to find out that one of the turtle nests on the beach had been robbed. 83 empty and cracked egg shells were found. Deep indentations in the sand appeared to have been made by someone's knees. There were no signs that any of the turtles made it to the sea. You have no idea how terrible this is.

These nests are watched everyday once the mother has come ashore in the night to lay her eggs. There are organized groups of volunteers who take this job to heart. Up an island or two is one of the largest turtle rehabilitation facilities on the east coast. We take our turtles seriously here.

Apparently the Feds do too. They are now helping in the investigation. I ask you "Who steals turtles?" How could you possibly take care of 83 baby turtles?

The nest are fenced off and these signs are posted on the fence. Nest watchers walk every morning and afternoon to check on the nest. Then when the time gets close the watcher calls everyone and the hatchlings are counted and helped to the sea.

Loggerhead sea turtle. This is the most prominent visitor we have here. However, for the first time in years we had a Leatherback turtle come and lay her eggs. The tracks were enormous. They are the fourth largest living reptiles.

Laying eggs in the sand. Many of the nests have over a hundred eggs. When I was a kid we would go out at night and walk the beach to watch the turtles come in to lay their eggs. They were so big and determined. Not till I was an adult did I get to see them hatch and flee for the sea.

BabyLoggerhead hatchlings getting help to the sea. Aren't they cute?