Vacation Art Journal Pages

Now that I have finished re-capping our travels (mostly!) I wanted to share my art journal pages from those travels with you!  So, here they are:

I really enjoyed this close to home vacation.  It was nice to relax and spend time with mom!!  Now, as I alluded to at the beginning of this post, we did make one more "trip," so come back tomorrow and you can "hear" all about out.

New AJ Cover

After our spring semester journal swap (more like a round robin, but that is semantics) the class asked me to continue with these swaps for the remainder of our time in school!  So, some of us are currently taking Human Sexuality and it is a 6 week class.  I decided that we would do a mini-swap during that class and then a big one for the rest of summer semester!  Anyways - my spring semester journal was almost full so I decided that I needed a new journal.  I decided to use a re-purposed book that I had only made a few pages in.

I felt like I needed to decorate the cover before I handed it off to the person that was going to work in ... so, here it is:

The book was titled "spiritual voyages" but I changed it to "art journal voyages!"  Inside I painted some pages and gessoed a lot and removed quite a few since it was a very skinny book (small spine) to start with.

I am really looking forward to seeing the art that my classmates create inside of this book!

Day 6 & 7 of Vacation

So, again, we did a lot on day 6 but I did not do the best job taking photos.  We went to Apalachicola for the day.  We went to all the cute little antique and souvenir shops.  I took a picture with a rather large Indian:

We had lunch at a local restaurant where I got to try a fish I had never tried before:

It was good - especially the Plantains!  They had optional table art:

We also got some locally made soap w/ natural sponge:

Mine still smells super awesome.  We did go to the beach that evening too.

The next day was our day to check out of the hotel.  We stopped at the local Estuary though so we could learn about the native animals!!  We got to see this whale spine:

Isn't that awesome?  And a Turtle skeleton:

Kinda creepy.  And a scary alligator:

After this little museum we headed back home to Tallahassee.  

I finished up my travel art journal entries that evening....but I'm going to wait until tomorrow to show the pages to you!  Thanks for stopping by.  "See" ya soon.  

Day 5

On the 5th day of vacation we had to make a trip to Panama City, FL so that I could take my ACE Group Fitness Instructor Exam!  My test was scheduled at 9am so we had to leave St. George at about 640 to make sure that we had enough time to get there.  Anyways... I passed:

Then we drove a bit father to Panama City Beach!  We had lunch at Margaritaville.  Then we walked around the shops, but not for long.  Then headed to the beautiful beach:

After the beach we changed clothes and found a beach bird whose owner let us take a photo!

Please ignore my extra crazy post-beach hair.

The bird gave mom a kiss on the cheek!

After this, we got back in the car for the long drive "home" to our hotel.  We of course had to stop in St. Joe for dinner.  I had pecan crusted Mahi:

It was really good - but VERY expensive.  Later on our dive we saw this:

By the time we made it back to the hotel it was late and we were quite tired so we showered and went to sleep!

That is all for today, friends.  Thanks for stopping by.  "See" you soon.

Day 4 of my Vacation with Mom!

To start off our 4th day of vacation we rented a surrey!!!

It is much harder than you imagine.  We made it about 15 minutes and then we had to admit defeat and call it quits.

That afternoon we went to the beach again (of course!!) - we got to see some artists painting on the beach and around the light house since there was a plein air paint out (which just means painting outside!)

It was pretty cool since its not something you get to see every day.

Later that evening we had dinner at The Beach Pit which is a local restaurant.  We tried Brunswick Stew for the first time and we both thought it was pretty tasty.  After dinner we walked around a bit and took pictures in the big beach chair:

It was quite amusing because when you sit in it you slide back unexpectedly.  We also saw another artist painting in the parking lot where this chair is located.

We had to get up early the next day so that wrapped up our day!!  Come back tomorrow to hear about Day 5 adventures!!

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day!  I hope you spend your time doing something fun or relaxing and that you have a chance to reflect on all the wonderful things in life!

"See" ya tomorrow.

Vacation Day 2 & 3

Hello friends!!  On our second day of vacation we drove to St. George Island and checked into our hotel, the St. George Inn.  We then went to the beach and later to dinner.  I did not take any pictures, so I decided to combine day 2 & 3 in the same post!!

Day 3 started with us going to the St. George Lighthouse and Museum.  We did the museum first - its basically a small cabin with 2 rooms, but it was interesting.  Then we climbed the light house!

Here are some pictures looking out from the top:

 I got a picture of mom as she was coming up the ladder:

 and here I am with the beach behind me:

 After the light house we walked around a little and went to the beach that afternoon.  Again, I did not take any pictures, but you will see the beach in tomorrows re-cap.

The island pretty much closes down at 6pm - other than dinning.  So we did a lot of relaxing in our room, taking advantage of the cable TV and we did some evening walks too.

Well friends that is all for now, come back soon and see my recap of day 4!

Vacation Day 1

My mom came to FL to spend a week with me for our vacation this year.  She arrived on Friday evening and we started the fun stuff on Saturday.  We left Tallahassee and headed out to Wakulla Springs.  We made a quick stop at the flea market but the only that was purchased was a bracelet.  We went to Wakulla Springs to visit the Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park.  Florida has a free lifetime state park pass for all disabled veterans!!  So, I got one of those and we got into the park for free.

We walked around a bit and explored and then we went on the river boat tour.  The tour is about 45 minutes long and the guide points out all of the wildlife in that area.  Sadly, a large majority of my pictures did not come out too well.  I did however get some good ones of the manatees - which is why we went to that park!!

I also got this show of mom under an arbor:

After the park, a picnic in the car (because it started to rain) we headed to a small town nearby and went into all the antique shops.  One of the stores we went into had this huge butterfly just hanging out next to the door:

After the antiques we came back home and rested for a while before we headed to Cracker Barrel for dinner and then we saw The Big Wedding!  It was a nice day!

Postcard Making Craziness

Making postcards for swaps always happens in spurts, and then my kitchen table get completely covered in art journaling stuff - even though I have an "art room" - and it stays that way for days until the mess stressed me out and I clean it up.  But, good cards come from this craziness.  Here are the last few cards I made for the swap I am currently working on:

Hope you enjoyed the pictures!  Next up - vacation re-cap!  Come back soon.

3 Lovely Cards

As promised I am going to show you 3 lovely mail art cards!!  Here they are:

 I am trying to "pick differently" too!  I am trying to not always do the same art things and to try a few new thing - keeping it new keeps it fun too!

This is so true, right?  Art really helps me when I am stressed!!

Tomorrow I am going to show you some more cards!!  

Getting Ready for Another Swap

I am sure you all know by now that I absolutely LOVE doing postcard swaps!  I am prepping for another one!  I make them by keeping all the cardboard packaging that my food comes in.

 Then I cut them down to size.

You end up with TONS of postcards if you do this.  Next you paint them!  Of course the designs might show through a bit but I think that is part of the awesomeness.  If you don't want that to happen you can gesso them.  I actually usually do a very thin coat of gesso just to make the colors show up brighter.

Here is one of the cards I made from this stack:

I love that her hands are covered in paint!! Perfect for an art card!

Come back tomorrow to see a few more cards that emerged from the above stack!  Have a great day.

Little Sin

Ok this is a journal page that just kinda came together all of a sudden.  I had the card catalogue card for a book (in french?) on prostitution.  Then I had this image of the lady looking all sex related... so I knew I wanted to use them, but inspiration took a long time to come to me.  The other day I was listening to music and making art and an older song came on.  I say older, but really its from like 1998ish - does that make the song old? or me?  Anyways, The song was Little Sin by the toadies.. and the following page happened:

I like how it came out!!  I had to used red... because that is the sex color right?  Have you guys seen that History Channel show "How Sex Changed The World"?  Its very interesting.  Also, I am taking Human Sexuality during this summer mini-semester.  The class is interesting so far - our instructor seems quite knowledgeable and you can tell that she is excited about teaching and about the material.  Its likely that I will be sharing more about that class in future posts!

Thanks for stopping by today.  Have a nice weekend!

Update and Postcards

Hi everyone!  I went on vacation last week so that is why I have been absent from posting for so long!  Did you guys experience issues with the loss of google reader?  By the time I figured out a new reader and got it set up (about 2 days ago) I had over 300 posts that I had missed.  I am really glad I have it where I can read my favorite blogs again!

A few important things have happened in the past few weeks!  I graduated from GFIT at our school gym - it stands for Group Fitness Instructor Training.  Also I auditioned to teach for the school and I got hired!  Then I passed my national certification test which I was very nervous about.  This week I started teaching.  I teach step, double impact (2 types of cardio in the same class), and body tone (weight lifting).  It was certainly a learning experience but I can tell this is going to be a job that I love.

Other news on the job front - I am now working at the Vet Center for VA Work Study.  Its pretty awesome.  Yesterday I got paid to make a visitor log and decorate the clip board that it was on!  I feel so lucky to be at this school and to have awesome jobs!!

Ok, enough with the words, right?  I wanted to show you the last of the postcards I received from the previous swap!  (I am pretty sure you have not seen these, but if so, oops!!)   First, this one came from Janetta:

She is also doing another swap that I am participating in - the Friendship Journal Swap.  So, if you want to look her up, she is Texanntx on instagram and her blog is lavidajanetta.blogspot.com.  The journal swap pics can be found by searching for #FJSWAP.

My other card came from Sandra in England:

She even included some scrap pieces for me to use in my art!

My Classmate's Journal Art - Part 2

Hi!  Welcome to part 2 of my journal reveal... the pictures that follow are of pages created by my classmates when they had my art journal during our spring art journal swap.  They did some great stuff, so I wanted to share it with you.

 I absolutely LOVE that one of them put their hand print in my journal.

 The one above was done by my classmate Hillary.  She was very supportive and helped me to practice my step aerobics instructor audition.  I don't think I would have gotten it without her help!  About a week later she drew this in my journal -  a picture of me leading the best class ever!!

Well, I hope you all enjoyed the pictures.   Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!