Busy Weekend

Had a wild weekend of art and fun. Saturday: Meetup Art journaling group, Native American Powwow in Bedford, MA, home town fair called Yankee Doodle Homecoming which included the MOST AMAZING FIREWORKS I've ever seen.

Sunday: Back to the Powwow, spiritual and beautiful dancing attire and drums and singing, then into the Charlestown Navy Yard for a salute to veterans from a Army Navy hospital (I think) for wounded vets. We lined up along the pier as their boat passed by. What an honor. A friend and I stood on either end of the Navy volunteers, she (also a volunteer) holding the Navy flag and I holding the American flag. The men saluted and we raised the flags. There were cheers and return salutes from those on the boat. How awesome!!!

Then we stopped off at a woodcraft store for stuff and then off to pick apples. whew! It was sad to see so many apple orchards closed. There use to be lots of signs for 'pick your own apples'. It took us a long while but we finally found Phil's Apples, http://www.philsapples.com/ It was late by then so we just bought our apples but will go back in October for Phil's favorite pie apple, the Enterprise. Sounds like Star Wars, hehehe. I never heard of the apple and he said it was his favorite for pie. Anyway, baked two pies and they were yummy!!! Hope you get to pick your own soon and enjoy this fall fruit from some local growers.

Here's my spread for the meetup art journaling.

The prompt was to do a spread only using masks and stencils. Hmm...that's not my usual way to work and a great challenge. It was also frustrating as much of my art stuff is packed away (trying to sell house) now the living room looks like disaster struck but alas couldn't find stencils. So I resorted to a large paper doily and used gesso, acrylics and painted a wash of sepia ink using masks of post it notes (the squares in blue resulted). Saw this idea on Journal Artista video (see below...thanks Paula). I blotted the ink and I love the result with the surprise pattern showing through. I used my tip-in journal so there are pockets and I've made some tags out of cardstock. I discovered just using the sepia ink on the cardstock gave me a beautiful sienna leather look while the back has a coat of gesso and the ink has a faded gray brown look. Exciting discovery. I'm not sure what I'll do from here. Still lots of playing to do.