The Documented Life Project: Week 39

Week 39-1

Welcome to Week 39 of the Documented Life Project!  Week 39's challenge was to add splatters and drips.  I used a combination of india inks and spray inks. 

Week 39-2

The inside spread features two cards from artist Chet Phillips. I used them to cover up a mess I had made trying something else. I got mud!  I have two sets of Chet's cards, one for Artistic Pets and one for Literary Pets. They are so fun.  The white cut out across the top is actually the backing from a sticker that I ran through my Xyron. :-)

Week 39-3

The flowers near the bottom half of the tip-in are from some happy mail I received.  Wish I could remember who it was from!  

Week 39-4

The highlights this week were my getting the phone call for an interview for a job I had applied for (yes, I got the job...more on than with the next DLP post!) and our Campus Awareness Day.  Campus Awareness Day includes Club Day, a Volunteer Fair, and a tradition I brought with me from my own college days, our Student/Admin Ice Cream Social.  The administration scoops the ice cream and the students get to enjoy it! It's really a fun afternoon for all. We also had our first TEDxFSCJ that Saturday.

Week 39-5

To see more of my Documented Life Project pages, click here.  To check out the whole DLP project and everything else the Art to the 5th gals have to offer, click here!


Best Shot Monday: Look, It's Not a Dog!

Just in case you were starting to think the only animals I photographed were dogs and cats at the shelter, I bring you ...

Goat

A goat ... quite the poser in the goat petting area at the Jacksonville Zoo.  Don't you love his grin!?

Bird

... And a bird ... peeking around some brush ...

Liv with bird

... And a beautiful little redhead feeding the birds.  Have a wonderful week!

The Documented Life Project: Week 38

Week 38-1

Week 38's challenge for The Documented Life Project was "Draw, paint, doodle, or sketch a feather onto your page.  Don't draw, paint, doodle or sketch?  Incorporate a real feather onto your page!"  Living on the water so close to the beach, we always have a collection of various seabird feathers around so I went the real feather route.

Week 38-2

These first two photos are scans. This book is becoming incredibly difficult to photograph!  The large feather is an osprey feather we found in the yard. The smaller one is a dove feather we found in the parking lot walking to the Sun's game!  Since I've been taking Liv Lane's Choosing Beauty course, I've been finding feathers everywhere. Just this morning, I found nearly half a dozen in our driveway.

Week 38-3

Week 38-4

The background for these pages are old ledgers and things my friend Cindy Woods sent me. I thought with feathers, I'd add some egg shapes, cut from pieces of my leftover sidekicks, below.  The highlight of the week this week was Sarah joining me for the FSU/Clemson game.  She's quite the trooper and tends to be able to handle the late games better than Livvie can.   But as that game went into overtime, well well well past her bedtime, she just prayed for SOMEONE to win so she could go to bed! :-) Thankfully our Seminoles bagged the win.

Week 38-5

The Art to the 5th gals will be revealing their plans for DLP 2015 November 1. Looking forward to seeing what they have up their sleeves! See all the challenges for the 2014 Documented Life Project here. See more of my DLP pages here.

Tuesday Treasury Shout Out: Lisa Lavender

Oct 14 treasury

Our Florida Etsy Street Team is pretty active in the Treasury business, and I must give many, many thanks to Lisa Lavender of the BumbleBeadCompany for including me in so many gorgeous treasuries.  This is just one of many Lisa has created featuring me and fellow FEST artists, but this one hit the triple crown since she included items from all three of my shops.  Earrings from my artisan jewelry shop are second row first spot; beads from my supply destash shop are second row second spot; and my Bliss photo from my fine art photography shop is fourth row second spot.

Thanks so much Lisa!  Be sure to check out Lisa's lovely shop here.  See this treasury is all its clickable glory here

Best Shot Monday Times Two

Happy Monday!  I thought I'd share a little behind the scenes of the Happy Shack for Best Shot Monday this week.  My girls are in 6th grade this year, so they've started getting electives.  Neither of them were scheduled for any of the electives they asked for, but they seem to be enjoying them just the same.
First Chorus Concert

One of the electives Olivia got was Chorus. When I saw this on her schedule, I was sure she was going to hate it as she is definitely not the singer of the two. At any given moment in the car, you can hear Sarah singing along to whomever is on the radio, be it Taylor Swift's latest pop or AC/DC's Back in Black.  But Livvie?  Only if she's making fun of the song.  But surprisingly, Chorus is now one of her favorite classes (along with PE...are you seeing a theme here?...both easy A's?)  Last week, she had her first Chorus concert, and I dare say she looked like she was actually enjoying herself!  Here she is between her friends Adrianna and Emily. It's a blurry cell phone pic, but I still love the smiles. 

Extra Credit for French Class

One of the electives Sarah got was French.  We are all actually enjoying this, as Sarah is speaking little dabs of French to us at all times. I'm quite certain we'll be ready to go to Paris by the summer.  We came across this Eiffel Tower lamp in World Market over the weekend and she asked me to take a picture of it and text it to her so she could show it to "Monsieur" for extra credit.

I hope you have a great week!   Want more Best Shot Monday?  Click here

The Documented Life Project: Week 37

Week 37-2 
Welcome to Week 37 for the Documented Life Project!  This week's challenge was to doodle with a white paint pen.  For my tip in, I used a gelli print I created in Albie's class at An Artful Journey and added some white paint pen doodles.  And Good Lord, I just realized I never shared my books and gelli prints from Albie's class with you!  And it was in late February/early March!  I'll try to get those photographed this weekend and share them next week.

Week 37-1

Week 37-4

On the inside spread I added a receipt from August 1941 as a background and then added scraps and doodles on top. The hearts are cut from soap wrappers and the same gelli print.

Week 37-5


Week 37-6

The highlight of the week was the Open House at the girls' middle school.

Week 37-7

And I couldn't help but add my challenges trying to doodle with our foster kitten Zoey (who's now become a foster failure and new permanent resident) on my shoulders!

Week 37-3

Click here for all the details on the Documented Life Project. Can't wait to hear what the girls have planned for 2015! Click here for my other Documented Life posts.

Best Shot Monday: Florida National Cemetery

Florida National Cemetary-3

I had a meeting down in Tampa on October 1.  Since the meeting ended by noon, I had some time to leisurely make my way back home. One of my favorite things to do is a leisurely drive home, stopping wherever a sign may take me!  I've lived in Florida my entire life, have traveled up and down I-75 literally hundreds of times and never before noticed the sign that noted the Florida National Cemetery.

Florida National Cemetary-4

Intrigued, I took the exit and followed the signs to a beautiful place of peace and reverence.  It's in Bushnell at the 309 Webster exit about an hour north of Tampa within the Withlacoochee State Forest. The Withlacoochee State Forest was acquired by the federal government from private landowners from 1936-1939 and is the second largest state forest in Florida. The cemetery itself was established in 1983, and the first internment was in 1988.

Florida National Cemetary-2

As I was walking through the markers, I truly felt such an overwhelming feeling of peace and awe.  I read name after name and wondered about their lives and their service in the wars.  I was struck by the female names, nurses who served in WWII (listen to the awesome music on this site). I also noticed that on the backs of many of the soldiers' and sailors' markers were the markers of their wives.  On one was a sweet message: "Until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand." 

Florida National Cemetary-1

I'm so glad I took that little detour.  I thought of my relatives who fought in WWII, my grandfather in the Navy and my Uncle Wilbur in the Army, and imagined what their names would look like on the beautiful markers here. If you are ever in this area, I highly encourage you to take this little detour. 

The Documented Life Project: Week 36

Week 36-2-72

It's getting harder and harder to photograph this book because it's so thick!  I may have to go back to scanning!  Week 36's challenge for the Documented Life Project was black and white.  What immediately came to mind was that old kid's riddle: "What's black and white and red all over?"  "The newspaper!"  Ba da boom.  The last time we went to the Irish pub up in Fernandina Beach, they had the coolest serving basket liners.  They were this newspaper printed deli paper.  So of course, I asked our waiter if I could have a few sheets, and he gave me about 50!

Week 36-1-72

I've stuck notes from the week inside the envelope. It was initially red, so I covered it with various pieces of scrapbook paper that included black and white.  On the calendar spread, I started by gluing in the deli paper and then gave it a light smattering of white gesso. The large black dots are black paint on which I used some punchinella to add smaller white dots. I added a few smaller white circles with some scribbles and called it done!  See more of my Documented Life posts here; follow along with the whole project (free!) on the Art to the 5th blog here

Best Shot Monday: Wiggles and Tweetle Dum

Wiggles_A824709
Most often I photograph dogs at the shelter, but during my last shoot, I had already photographed all the available dogs so I headed in to try some cats.  They don't cooperate with me nearly as well as the dogs do, but every now and then I'm still able to capture a little magic.

Meet Wiggles (above) and Tweetle Dum (below).  These two are a bonded pair that came in together as owner surrenders.  Next to abuse cases, owner surrenders break my heart the most.  Put yourself in their furry little paws. They've been in a home, these two together for many years, and then all the sudden their owner takes them into the shelter and leaves them there.  How would you feel?  Scared and abandoned, right?  These two are struggling for those very reasons.  Their best shot to regain a happy life is with someone who will adopt them as a pair.  Wiggles is a six-year-old male seal point Siamese, and Tweetle Dum is an eight-year-old male brown tabby.

Here's what Priscilla, one of our shelter volunteers, has to say about these two handsome boys: "I love these 2 babies !! They love attention and are so sweet together. Wiggles was very shy at first but now loves to be petted, and so does Tweetle Dum. I put some toys in their cage, and they both started playing with them. I pray they go to the same home because they really need each other."

Our next Mega Adoption Event at the Jacksonville Fairgrounds is this weekend, October 10-12, 10am-6pm, but I sure would like to see these two find a home before Friday.  They've been at the shelter since August 21.  Wiggles ID number is A824709; Tweetle Dum is A824708.  They are waiting for you at Animal Care and Protective Services, 2020 Forest Street, in the Riverside area of Jacksonville.
 
Tweetle Dum_A824708

The Documented Life: Week 35

Week 35-3-72

Week 35's challenge for The Documented Life project was to draw, sketch, paint, or doodle a face or cut and alter one from a book or magazine.  If you've spent any time following or even just poking around this blog, you've probably picked up on the fact that, other than my children's faces, my favorite faces are furry!  So given the opportunity, those are the faces I chose to highlight. (If you are hopping over from the Documented Life Facebook group and want to see my shelter photography, check out this Flickr set for the more than 1,000 furry faces I've photographed for our city shelter.) 

Week 35-2-72

I pulled these images from a great little magazine called Rescue Me. You can visit them on Facebook here.  If I remember correctly, the kitten was part of a food advertisement.  The dog is from a great campaign from the Shelter Pet Project.  I love these ads that speak from the animal's perspective. 

Week 35-1-72

These spreads actually came together rather quickly since I used the magazine photos as the focus (I'm terrified of drawing, particularly faces, so this was my best option this week...I really need to take Dina Wakley's drawing faces class!).  I embellished the images with paint pens, rub ons and a few random stickers.  The "Together Forever" sticker brought the message home.

Week 35-5-72

If you are looking to add a four-legged friend to your family, please consider shelter animals!  Adopt, don't shop!  There are amazing animals waiting there for you, and believe me, they know that you are rescuing them.  Rescued pets make the very best pets.  See what's up at our shelter here.  Check out my other Documented Life posts here, and catch up on the whole project on the Art to the 5th blog here!

Week 35-4-72