Junk Journal January - Magazine Prompt

I've been working through the Junk Journal January prompts, led by @megjournals on Instragram. The prompt for this spread was "magazine." I love good old-fashioned paper magazines that arrive in my real mailbox. Something other than bills and junk mail! I'm always tearing things out of the magazines to use in my art journals.  

I created this junk journal I'm working in from a vintage children's book. It's a fun little book because it started with one story on one side, "Toby Tyler," and another story from the opposite side, "Rip Van Winkle." I took out the book block and sewed in three new signatures created from random papers, thus a "junk journal." I really enjoy working in these because it 100% takes the pressure off! 

How about you? Have you ever tried junk journaling? Interested in learning more? Let me know what you think!

February 2025 Free Bling Friday!

Happy Friday, ya'll, and Happy Valentine's Day to those of you who love to celebrate Valentine's Day! Normally I do Free Bling Friday on the first Friday of the month, but I was out of town traveling for much of the first half of February, so here we are on the second Friday. Congratulations to Kristin from North Carolina, who will been receiving January's Free Bling Friday in her mailbox soon!

Whenever I'm out and about at little vintage shops and such, I love to stumble upon vintage cloisonne beads. If you've ever wondered just exactly what cloisonne is, it is "the technique of creating designs on metal vessels with colored-glass paste placed within enclosures made of copper or bronze wires, which have been bent or hammered into the desired pattern." How's that for a description? I just find them very pretty. Here I've accented pretty blue cloisonne with sparkly green crystals, all wrapped up with 14K gold-filled findings. For a size reference, the cloisonne beads themselves are just a tad smaller than a dime. Want them to head your way? Leave me a comment below with your location and what brought you to my blog today. Due to shipping charges, the giveaway is open to US residents only; my apologies to my out of country readers. I'll draw February's winner on February 28, so you have a couple weeks to get your entry in! Subscribe to my monthly newsletter here to get a reminder of Free Bling Friday and other updates, including newsletter only discounts. Want another entry? If you are on Instagram, you can comment on my February Free Bling Friday post! Just look for these earrings! (Note: If you comment anonymously, be sure to leave your name so I know how to reach you if you win! Best to log in with you Google or Gmail account.)

Books - Flight of the Wild Swan

 

I read a TON. And I needed to get better at tracking what I read on a regular basis - other than marking something read on Goodreads! - so I've decided to start sharing my reads here on my blog. I'm part of an online book club called Chapter Night with a group of sorority sisters. Seems like a really basic name, right? But we actually came up with that name because when we were in college, our weekly sorority business meetings, required attendance!, were called "Chapter." Since chapters are also what most often make up a book, it turned into the best name for our book club. We started during covid as a way to connect, and we've just continued! We actually just had a Chapter Night Book Club weekend in Savannah for the Savannah Book Festival, so I'll share photos from that soon! 

So back to this book. Flight of the Wild Swan by Melissa Pritchard was our book for January 2025. I was pretty excited to read this because I really gravitate toward historical fiction, and this book was based on the life of Florence Nightingale. I've always heard of Florence Nightingale, but honestly I've never really known much about her. Well, this book didn't tell me as much about her as I'd hoped. I did learn her "growing up" story; I did not know she grew up quite privileged, and her family was part of the wealthy class in her time. While she had a burning desire to help others, her family quite preferred that she would have just stayed home and done the things that girls of her status and time were supposed to be doing ... like sitting around working on her needlework. No, that was not for Florence. After often sneaking away into the nearby town to help those less fortunate with her inate medical talents, much to her family's chagrin, she slowly earned the support of her father (though never her mother or sister), and through various opportunities finally turned her full focus to nursing and training other nurses where needed to assist soldiers in war. I'd say the most interesting part of the book was her time in northern Africa working in a very small hospital with very few supplies and funds. She was quite inventive in making ends meet.

All that said, while some of the book was interesting, I truly put it down and gave up on it twice before I finally forced myself to finish it for the sake of the book club. I think it was the writing style that turned me off. It was written very much like a diary, with very short entries as chapters. If I'm remembering correctly, there were very few chapters longer than three or four pages, and most of them were actually only one or two pages. If you like diary-type books and you like historical fiction, you would probably enjoy this, but that format just didn't work for me. I gave this one three stars but I'd be interested in learning more about Florence through a more engaging book. 

Best Shot Monday: Spotted - Shadows

 

Happy Monday! Doesn't this photo make you want to loosen up your shoulders and deep breathe out all your cares? Something much needed these days! I took this photo a few weeks back from our dock in Jacksonville and decided to use it for my blog friend Hanna's Spotted Photo Theme Challenge. I'm a bit late (nothing new around here!), so January's theme was shadows. See how you can see the shadows of the clouds reflected on the water below? 

Being able to take this photo again was a momentous occasion for us as our dock has been inaccessible since Hurricane Nicole in November of 2022. The dock was damaged during Hurricane Irma in 2017 when high flood waters destroyed quite a few docks along our part of the river, and 12 of them, yes 12!, ended up in our backyard due to the flow of the tides and winds. Those docks took out our dock as well (and the water left us a foot of water in the ground floor of our house, but that's a story for another day). We were able to repair the dock after Irma, but storm after storm every year since really took a toll on her and Nicole finally did her in. It took us two years just to secure a dock builder - if you are in the Jacksonville area, that's clearly the line of work to go into as all the ones here can't keep up with the work - and another 8 months before he finally showed up and did the work. But at least she's finally usable again. I've missed hanging my feet over the side and watching the sun rise (as in this photo) or set (opposite side of the dock!). 

We've been here in our little spot on the river since 2000, but we bought the lot in 1994, way back before this side of town was "discovered" (let's just say we could definitely not afford to purchase here now). The dock was the first thing we built. One night shortly after the dock was done, my husband and I were sitting out there watching the world go by when a mama and baby dolphin spy-hopped up to take a peek at us literally less than 8 feet from the dock. It was truly a magical moment. We both set there in silence hoping they'd come back, and then finally I said, "Well, that was worth the cost of the mortgage right there." And we're blessed with dolphins swimming by pretty much every day now. #countingmyblessings

Paint Pours and Long Stitches

 

I created this book with the help of a friend ... well, two friends actually! I learned the book structure from Ali Manning as part of my Handbook Book Club membership. It's a variation on a long stitch that I added to a bit to sew the spine covering to the book a bit more. 

But let's talk about that beautiful cover!  It's made from a paint pour that a sweet family friend created. She was looking to find a home for several she did and I told her I'd be happy to purchase them from her as long as she was happy with them possibly becoming books! And she loved the way this came out!  I've made two of these so far with Hannah's paint pours and I plan to create a few more with this stitch as I feel it fits perfectly! The finished size is 5 x 7" and it's filled with Canson Mixed Media paper for a variety of uses. It'll be on my website next time I get around to an update!

 

For me, this is an example of thinking outside the box, and it's made me look at other "old paintings looking for new homes" in a different light. I LOVE wandering through antique stores and thrift stores, and I often look for old books needing a new life in those places. Now I'll be looking at old paintings a little differently as well! So many things in thrift stores end up in the landfill, so why not rescue what I can to give it new life. Of course, I can spend hours going down the rabbit hole of watching furniture flips, so ... who knows! That could be in my future when I retire!