2017 Documented Life Project: October

Hello! Thanks for stopping in today! Getting close to wrapping up sharing my 2017 Documented Life Project. Let's take a look at October. I started off the month with meetings in Daytona, our Fall board meeting and the October Council of Presidents (COP) meeting. Our statewide Student Government president this year is an incredibly sharp fella from Santa Fe College named Jacobi Bedenfield. He's definitely been one of the most impressive SGA presidents I've seen in my 25 years in this field. He had the opportunity to address the COP this week and did a fabulous job. This month I continued sharing pages I created in Pam Carriker's workshop.

The second week of October brought more work travel, this time down to Orlando for our annual Florida College System Press Association conference. This is a gathering of students who work on their colleges' newpaper or literary magazine. And this journal page is my favorite from Pam's workshop. Those boots started out as a stencil for the base and then I just added to it with it more paint and some black and white pen work. I love them!

The third week brought a rest day! Yay for a Monday day off! With no travel this week, I was able to relax a little more. Lunch with friends, an afternoon at the shelter, and our annual Chi Omega New Member/Alumnae dinner. And another page from my Pam Carriker journal. This egg stencil was really cool. It came in different parts to layer on top of each other.

The last week of October brought more travel, but this was not work related! I was selected to participate in Chi Omega's Nancy Walton Laurie Leadership Institute in Memphis! I really enjoyed the workshop, meeting new sisters, young and not so young, and had an opportunity to visit our national headquarters. I'm really grateful for the opportunities Chi Omega has given me. I feel like I'm getting even more out of my sisterhood as an alumnae than I even did as a collegiate! For the journal page side this week, I love the way Pam taught us how to work color wheels into our pages.

For the month's closing art journal page, this was another page from my Pam Carriker journal. This page actually started out with me just using up extra paint on my pallet. Then I saw this face stencil of Donna's and added her to the mix.  Thanks again for stopping in today!  To see more of my 2017 Documented Life Project journal, click here. For 2016, click here; for 2015, click here; and for 2014, click here. Thanks to the ladies at Art to the 5th for originally creating the project!

Best Shot Monday and 365 Somethings Project: 31-36

Abigail, three-year-old mixed breed

More sweet faces for Best Shot Monday! I photographed these pups at the City of Tallahassee Animal Service Center this past week. This first gal, above, is Abigail. She was my favorite of the week! This photo was neither zoomed nor cropped. She was just that in my face! I shoot with a 35mm prime lens, so yep, she was that close. Super sweet mama girl with so much love to give!

Tallulah, two-year-old chocolate Lab mix

Moss Boss, two-year-old American Staff, 75 pound sweet gentle beast!

Juniper, two-year-old cute little hippo

Denzel, two-year-old super suave ladies man

Baxter, four-year-old Lab mix

Thanks for stopping in today!

2017 Documented Life Project: September

Hello, there! Thanks for stopping in today! Continuing in sharing my 2017 Documented Life Project, September started out with a beautiful Labor Day weekend--this photo above is from our dock looking upriver...

...and then Hurricane Irma hit...while last year Hurricane Matthew left us a tree in our roof, this year Irma gave us nearly a foot of water on our ground floor, about six or seven docks in our backyard, our dock in shambles and damage once again to our roof. While we got the flood mess cleaned up within a week or so, the rest has taken a bit longer. The roofers actually just finished the roof this past week! And we've not even begun to work on the dock. We're hoping to be able to just repair what we have instead of completely rebuilding. We're lucky that we have any dock left! Most of our neighbors' docks were completely destroyed.

I love the ways the greens played off each other in this spread. On the right, that's just one magazine page that I tore apart and popped in there. Making things as easy as possible!  You can click on the photo to see it larger in Flickr.

I started incorporating some of the pages I created in Pam Carriker's workshop this month. This "window" started out as transparency. Pam was using them to teach image transfers, but I actually liked using the transparency itself!

Clearly I struggle with faces. :-)

And these last two were actually one spread that I pulled out and used as two here. We were creating in a Strathmore mixed media journal, but I ended up pulling each page out and using them here in this journal, finding ways to incorporate both the front and back of each page. You'll see more in October's pages!  The faces here were printed on tissue paper, so they just basically dissolve into the page. Very cool technique. Now if I can just get my printer to print on tissue paper correctly...

Thanks for stopping in again today! To see more of my 2017 Documented Life Project journal, click here. For 2016, click here; for 2015, click here; and for 2014, click here. Thanks to the ladies at Art to the 5th for originally creating the project!

Best Shot Monday!

Many people think that open-admission, municipal shelters have nothing to offer but Pit mixes (...and, of course, I would argue that Pit mixes are awesome anyway), so this week I decided to share some of the variety of dog types I photographed this past week! Above is sweet Bobby. He's a Beagle/Treeing Walking Hound mix. The reason you see nothing but his sweet little mug is that he wanted to do nothing but sit in my lap. For this shot, I was sitting down on my knees with Bobby basically hugging me, and then I reached my arm back and clicked, having no idea what I'd capture, and I captured this!

This fella above is a yellow Lab mix named Bam. Fetcher extraordinaire! He's got that game down and will play as long as you want to toss, bring it back, and is ready for you to throw it again. If you happen to take a moment to review your notes, thinking you've finally worn him out, he will try to push the ball into your leg to get you to throw it again. Yes, I know this from experience.

This little beauty above is Cecilia, a Welsh Corgi/Cardigan mix. She was a little shy at first, but once I gave her a little time to warm up to me, she turned into a super love bug.

And this incredibly handsome fella is Chato, an Alaskan Husky mix. This fella had some super separation anxiety issues and thankfully was adopted by someone who could spend all day with him! All four of these dogs were at an open-admission, municipal shelter, the City of Tallahassee Animal Service Center! And go adopt a shelter pet! They will bless your life immeasurably!

February Free Bling Friday!

Welcome to February Free Bling Friday! Congratulations to Summer from Jacksonville for winning January's Free Bling! You may have seen this sweet little pair in this post, where I shared seven pairs of earrings I created in January. They are petite handmade lamp work beads topped with Swarovski crystals and highlighted with sterling silver wire work and findings.   

To get your name in the hat, leave me your first name, city and state, and a way to contact you in the comments below no later than midnight ET Thursday, February 22.  To avoid spam, write your email like happyshackdesigns at yahoo, etc., if you'd like me to contact you via email; if we are connected on Facebook or Instagram, just let me know your name or handle there and we're good!  Share this post on Facebook or Twitter and post a separate comment with the link to the share for two entries.  And if you haven't already subscribed to my monthly newsletter, click here to subscribe and you'll receive a reminder each month for Free Bling and one more way to enter.

New to commenting on Blogger? At the very bottom of this post, you'll see a date (2/2/2018) and comments in hot pink. Click on the "comments" and a comment box will open. Open to U.S residents only.  Please help me spread the word and share this post!  Thanks for stopping in!