Happy November!

 

 Halloween is over and now it's on to thoughts about Thanksgiving and yes, Christmas too. I'm just pondering holiday card ideas right now, what about you? 

 Our son Todd and his wife Kyra just celebrated their 1st anniversary on Oct. 30th. Hard to believe it's already been a year since the wedding! Here's a selfie they took on their way to a nice dinner to celebrate:

 Kyra wanted me to see that she chose to wear the earrings I bought her for her wedding day💓

In honor of their anniversary I made this card which I will link to the Wednesday Simon Says Challenge (anything goes): 

 I chose their wedding colors for this card- cream for her dress, navy stamped sentiment (the groomsmen color), burgundy (the bridesmaid dresses) and orange autumn colored leaves (the colors in the flowers and table decor). The sentiment is a Hero Arts rubber stamp. I used Midnight Blue Memories die ink to stamp the image. Silk leaves, ribbon, flower, and cream notecard and envie set -all from Michael's.

 For T Stands For Tuesday it's a ticket to Paris!:

 The Paris Library by Janet Skeslien Charles was recommended by fellow T party goer Lisca. I rarely read fiction but of course both the Paris and library theme really peeked my interest. Also it does blend in some history. It took me a few months to get this book as it was quite popular at our local library- and even with 6 of them in the library, there were holds put on each of them for many weeks! I guess that tells you something 😉. I am more than halfway and enjoying every bit of it so thank you Lisca for your description and recommendation! On this day I was reading with my cup of lemon ginger tea in my Paris mug of course. Cheers!

 There was a 6 Day Creative Challenge on Instagram recently so I decided to join in. I have done these each time the host had them and found them quite fun to use the prompts and follow- or not follow the guest artists video inspirations

 For my first project I combined day 1 and day 4 and made a journal page. A close up of the background:

Tim Holtz Collage paper was glued to areas of a watercolor paper before swirling a mix of Paynes Grey acrylic paint, Dina Wakley Night paint and white acrylic paint. Black and white paint spatters were added as well.

 I used collage papers and hand dyed fabric from my stash as well as another dimensional glitter sticker cat. After the stitching I glued it to my kraft journal. 

 

 For the owl prompt on day 5 I made a coordinating page:

Here I used torn tape to mask the outer edges of the kraft page and painted using the same colors as above. Vintage images are from ARTchix Studio.

 And here is my painting for  Day 2 with the prompt of gourd:

 I loved the inspiration video by Kristin Peterson for her quirky, loose gourd so I pretty much followed her guidance. I painted it on Dina Wakley watercolor paper using acrylic paints. The spatters and light wash around the gourd are Dina Wakley Gloss Sprays. I also used watercolor crayons and a graphite pencil.

 Just finishing up my page for the silhouette prompt so I'll share that next week. Not sure if I'll do the jack o lantern prompt or not...

 and to end this post I have another project from the free Lifebook 2022 Taster Session lessons from some weeks ago (sorry, the lessons are no longer available):

 For this lesson (sorry, I can't remember who to give credit for this lesson) the entire page was covered with scraps of papers, colored tissues etc. Bright colored paints were applied. Then after the heart outline and corner outlines were drawn, black gesso was painted around the shapes. It was all finished by creating lots of doodles with Posca pens.

 Joining in at Paint Party Friday with this post. 

There are some new themes up and coming on the blogs I like to participate with so I hope to get to them next week😄 Until then...

“Fear not November’s challenge bold—

We’ve books and friends, 

and hearths that never can grow cold:

                                       These make amends!”         Alexander Louis Fraser