Delight in Nature and Color

 

 Hi peeps! How have things been in your parts? Our weather continues to fluctuate- cold and windy, then a warmer day, then cold again...but this week we will finally have truly warm (up to 80 F-YES!) days to look forward to. And my hummingbird feeders are going out 😀

 We also have a finch nest that made its home in one of my hanging baskets not a week after I brought baskets home for hanging! That was fast work. I only caught it when I brought it down to water it:

Each day thereafter a new egg was deposited:

  As of today- 6 eggs! Notice that larger brown speckled one? Well, that is a Cowbird egg. I just learned that a female cowbird never makes her own nest but will look for another bird's nest (most often a finch's nest) to deposit one egg in. The finch will incubate that egg along with hers. From there we can only hope the larger cowbird baby doesn't kill the finch hatchlings. I was very tempted to remove the cowbird egg but then decided to just let nature take its course.

 For T Stands For Tuesday I will share with you the dinner I made on Saturday:

 Salmon Bruschetta on the grill with a side of stewed green beans and garlic and olive oil couscous. We chose a Bordeaux wine  to accompany it. Absolutely delicious all together. Hubby even deemed it restaurant worthy😉!  Cheers!

 The theme at Tag Tuesday is "Anything Goes" so here is the tag I made for it:

 and a close up of the flower to which I added glitter glue:

  I had received the beautiful painted tag from Valerie  and that pretty flower (which I LOVE) from Erika. I tinted the Tim Holtz Paper Doll with some of the new Distress Kitsch Flamingo ink. I also used a Tim Holtz Chit Chat Word Sticker. The silver star is a sticker. I scribbled lines around the edges of the tag with a Pitt Pen.

 In this post I shared the package of Iridescent Gelatos and painted papers I was gifted. I wanted to have a play with them so I made this "rainbow" page with Try It On Tuesday in mind - unless I'm too late. It started like this:

 The page was gessoed first. I then scribbled blocks of colors using a bunch of colors then activated them by going over them with a wet sea sponge being careful to rinse and squeeze excess water from the sponge after going over some areas so as not to create mud. While the page was still damp I used Dina Wakley's Mantras stencil and a baby wipe to remove color through the stencil. The finished page:

 I love this quote I found. The leaf is from the Curly Fronds Dina Wakley stencil. I painted through it then fussy cut it to glue on the page. It's really a shame the shimmer of these iridescent gelatos doesn't show in the photos. I will also link to Art Journal Journey one last time this month for the theme of "Inspired By" ( I was inspired to use the gelatos) which was to be hosted by Eileen who sadly is no longer with us. Erika and Chris graciously kept her theme and stepped in as co-hosts.

 One final journal page meant for Paint Party Friday and the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge with the theme "Add A Quote":

 I started with a mop up page from a stencil (Paper Artsy) used with Dina Wakley Gloss sprays. The leaves were outlined with a black Posca pen. I then painted a white circle, added the Dina Wakley Collage Collective image, then stamped the Circle Collage stamp (Stampers Anonymous) over it using Jet Black Archival ink. I scribbled more circles around it with a fine tipped black Posca Pen and added a bit of Dina Wakley Fuschia Scribble Stick to blend out the sides of the image and add a bit of color to the circle. I finished the page with a quote stamp from Inky Antics Muse News clear stamp set by cutting it apart after stamping it and outlining each line with  the black Posca pen.

  And that's this week's post. My next post will be in May! See you soon. Be well everyone.

 "There is no right path. Only the one that allows you to sleep soundly and wake up excited."     Jennifer Louden