{Nancy's Texture Challenge}...

My photo using 2 of Nancy Donaldson's textures.

You can check out the rest of the photo entries here on Nancy's blog.

These are some of the same fall branches I used for

my fall Pumpkin Festival garland wreath.

I really did have a lot of fun playing with these leaves.

When I was a child we lived in Michigan, so unlike

here in Arizona, we had tons of leaves.  And my sisters and neighborhood friends

would rake up mountains of leaves and spend many afternoons jumping in them.

Leaves are given freely

for everyone to enjoy.

Today I still enjoy (and always do) kicking up the piles of leaves that gather at the curbs.

And I love, just love seeing them fall from the blowing tress as I drive under them.

So how do you enjoy them?

{Erosion Bundle Art Journal final part}...

I think it's been about a year since I first created the fabric bundle and buried it.

And after many additional dye attempts and processes

the project is complete.

The cover

 New pages,  This includes the lace pocket.

The lace was also dyed in blueberries.

  I found this specimen jar on a road trip this past summer.

The label really does read 

"Specimen of Painting on Linen"

 Page with hair embellishment

 Page including stitched "sunflower"

And the back cover

{11-11-11}...

11-11-11 -

quite a powerful number

And on this day, its Veteran's Day in the US, I find I need to say Thank You

Thank You for

the freedom I enjoy

for helping keep my family saver and free

to your families for their sacrifices

{"Captivating" - a book review}...

Captivating 

by John & Stasi Eldredge

 I  was just wandering, just looking through the bookstore for nothing in particular when I came

across the title -

Captivating

It caught my attention.  I didn't buy it right then, though

 I kept thinking about it.  So after a week I went back and bought it.  The only problem was I grabbed the wrong Captivating by "accident".  After getting it home and looking though it I realized I'd bought the Captivating Workbook.  And after skimming though it and thinking about some of the questions it posed I went and got the book and read it with these questions in mind.  And I am glad I did.

In my first "Book Review" on one thousand gifts - by Ann Voskamp.

 I said that that book

could change your life and indeed it has changed my way of thinking about my life.  (I'm on 365)

Now

In Captivating

I will tell you

that this book can help HEAL your life.

Possibly in ways you don't even know

need healing.

It will also show you a beauty, Your beauty, the beauty

of all women in a greater and more profoundly real way.  Possible in ways

you may ever have believed true.

These are things every female (and perhaps even as importantly every male) should have been shown and taught about herself. 

You will also begin to see why your beauty is so important to this world.

It will help you remember things about yourself. 

Things you already knew deep inside.

After read Captivating

you will never again look at yourself in the same way.

Anyway -

I think I might go back and re-read it and do the workbook along with it.  After all

I do have it.

{Erosion Bundle Art Journal part 6?}...

3D butterflies attached to the page.

And how it looks as part of the center spread in the book.

 Two more pages in the process.  I did add the shadow photo to

the journal.  The colors were so perfect I couldn't pass it up. 

A close up of the "lace" I made. It was an idea

I thought I would try out. I like it for a first try.

Hopefully you can see the flowers in it.

And it's facing page quote.

These last two pages include the beautiful dress

photo I featured on the cover of a recent art journal a few posts back.

 Again the color was a good match.

Well that's another 6 pages assembled.  I think I have approximately

4ish more to assemble before I focus a bit more on the embellishments

{Playing with the Falling Leaves}...

Enjoying autumn leaves by making a pumpkin festival garland.

A photo op with the leftover leaves scattered on my front steps

that I used for Nancy's Texture Challenge which you can see here on Tuesday night.

We don't get a lot of falling leaves here in Arizona so I had to go hunt some down and

brought them home where I thought they looked so quaint on my front porch.

{Erosion Bundle Project part 5?}...

While I still have a lot of pages to create I thought I would give

you a bit of a peek into the creation of this art journal.

One of the page spreads so far. 

In order to allow the Erosion Bundle fabric to be a dominate feature in this journal I'm going to keeping the layering limited.

The sheerish layered fabric on the right was dyed in blueberries to blend with the

original bundled fabrics coloring. 

 Currently this page will become the cover.

Again I took the commercial printed fabric and dyed it in blueberries.

This spread has been embellished with embroidery stitches representing

the fields and roadside niches of tiny yellow flowers that are everywhere here this time of year.  They

are so spectacular.  I spent the day just walking barefoot in them.  And as you can

read from the poem on the left I was not the only one enjoying it. 

It reads

Forget not that the earth delights

to feel your bare feet,

 and the winds long

to play with your hair.

                                              ~Khalil Gibran

{Nancy Donaldson's Texture Challenge}...

I know I've been gone awhile so busy, busy, busy.

But I got this texture challenge from Nancy Donaldson using her texture.

You can see her post on her blog here

Nancy's Texture

I used a shadow photo of myself which I took a couple of

months ago.  I caught the photo "op" by chance when I walked in my front

door early one morning.  The sun was shining directly behind me

where it created a shadow image of myself standing in my front doorway.   I have an old metal calendar hanging on the wall just inside the front door which created an interesting background.

I wasn't sure how I would use it but I really liked it and didn't dare miss this photo op.

So I took the photo and waited to see what would come up for it.

I added a boken photo layer and several blending modes and duplicate layers later I created this

It's the perfect color for my Erosion Bundle art journal

I'm in the process of putting together. 

I hope to be able to post that art journal soon.