April Projects for Smeared and Smudged.

Now that it's May, I'm finally getting around to posting the projects that went along with the April Guest Designer spot on Smeared and Smudged. I seem to revel in posting on the loneliest spots on the WWW and my blog gets high marks in that regard. There's not much to say about these other than that most of the work was done in Photoshop. Some of the five projects feature S n S's Goth Fairies digital stamp and I enjoyed using those very much.

Thanks for taking a look!

Junk Journals or Why just do it like everyone else when you can learn from every mistake in the book?

I rejoined Pam's Facebook group Art Journaling. One of the members, Patti Tolly Parrish, had shown some journals she was making out of her amazing GelliArts monoprints. She mentioned videos by Shannon Green about binding the journals so I watched those and Shannon mentioned some videos by Teesha Moore on her fantastic 16 page journal made from a 22" x 30" sheet of hot pressed watercolor paper so I watched those. All of which just sounded like FUN! In the very few minutes I've had on garden days and on those blessed rainy days when I couldn't possibly be expected to get wet since I might melt, I've been playing.
My first mistake was making too many signatures in too large a torn up hard bound book. Three signatures x seven sheets each x two pages per sheets x two sides per page makes for 84 sides of pages to get ready to journal on. I could have done the math first!!
The second mistake was using a shiny calendar for some of the pages. Not much sticks to it unless I rough up the surface.
And Shannon did say what glue to use but of course I had to try what I had which sort of made the pages curl.
But the great part is that it is so much fun and I have been able to relinquish control and just let things happen. Which is a major accomplishment for me! Here are a few shots of the sewn in signatures and some of the spreads I like a lot that won't require a whole lot more. Decorating the covers and the pages will come later.

This last one is the 16 page journal made from a sheet of watercolor paper. It's a nice break from the other journal as the pages are painted and need to dry. I'm going to follow Teesha Moore's instructions as closely as I can but I'm not all that good at following instructions. Always have to add something to make it my own!!

Garden 2013 - Episode 001

Even though I'm going to make this short and even though the photos are not top notch, who has time to take and edit photos anyway. We wanted to get some shots before April was over and the best light was long gone.

This is the long shot and shows the eight rows of four boxes each. There are four more to be built but we're not prioritizing that. All of the boxes have been weeded. Five or six of them were a bleeping 5 inch high carpet of some nasty little thing that detaches from its' roots and then has to be dug. The others responded pretty well to the hula-hoe and an occasional shovel for the errand dandelion or pigweed (that's a guess). We're trying something new this year: mowing rather than weeding the paths. The beds have about a 3 foot drop from the south side, where Ken is standing to take the photo and we have been flummoxed by the erosion during hard rains. This should help that!

The rhubarb bed. Some of the bigger plants need to be split but that's Ken's job.

We think this is the fourth year for the asparagus. It's completely wonderful! We've had three servings due to freezing weather and having to cover the bed. Last year we discovered it doesn't much like being covered so now we just eat whatever is up. Hopefully no more freezes but who knows??

One of our herb beds. The garlic seems very far along for so early. And last but not least, if Blogger will let me add another picture, are the peas. Two boxes of shelling peas, one of snow peas and one of sugar snaps. Two of the boxes needed the chicken wire and we just did that this week.