Toad in a Boat

Happy Monday! I spent the weekend with my parents and Grandma and brought this little ceramic figurine home with me. It is Felix the Cat. He’s lived in Grandma’s kitchen window for as long as I can remember. He’s faded and worn and a lot of his paint has rubbed off, but I think he is utterly charming. We found some old Felix cartoons on video when my son was young and he loved them. He used to draw pictures of Felix for me. Felix has always been welcome at our house.

Let’s just forget about the fact that I was supposed to be participating in Sketch every day in May, since I’d already forgotten and haven’t been sketching, and focus on what I’ve been stitching, instead. I’ve been hand stitching these little owls in the evenings. I’ve done 4 so far but gave one to a special friend to keep her company. I drew up a pattern, which I’ll share here when I’ve had time to add some instructions to it. I’m thinking I may make a few more and hang them from a ribbon, as a banner. These little guys inspired a journal page today, too. It’s been too quiet around here. What have all of you been working on? I want to see!

And I’m showing today’s sloppy little journal page, just to prove it! I don’t like the finished page all that much but it served as stress relief at the end of the day and I felt much better after doing it. I’m not sure why it seems like I have no spare time lately. Someone just keeps filling it all up with stuff that needs doing! I got my nest charms from the Charmsters swap this weekend and they really are wonderful. I’ll try to get a photo of them all together soon, so I can show them off. What have all of you been up to?

Why yes, I did spend my morning painting faces on eggplant. And one eggplant bum, too, because there’s always at least one in any crowd who has to act up. When I originally tore this photo of eggplant out of the magazine or junk mail it came it, it was because I loved the deep purples and plums. But when I came across it again today, it immediately looked like a crowd of little people in funny hats. What could I do but give them faces and let them be what they were meant to be? Then I dug through the little box of clipped text I keep on my desk and found what seemed like appropriate words for them. I hope you spend your day doing something equally enjoyable.

“everything was so very unusual on this day”

A bit of doodling, a smudge of pencil, a splash of paint and a line or two of ink. Just what I needed today.

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Don’t you love my snazzy, thought provoking blog titles? I never seem to get any better at them, LOL. Here’s yesterday’s journal spread, featuring my face from Tuesday. The flying fish is a stamp I carved ages ago and still love. The black and white paper on that side is the scrap paper I used as a cover sheet when making some crayon batik paper recently. The cover sheets came out as interesting as the actual batik paper, so I kept it. Not that I ever throw anything away. The black tag under the face is from my winter coat and I just ran some white out tape over it so I could write on it with black. I liked it because it is thick with a nice satin finish. The patterned paper under it is from a security envelope from the junk mail pile. The little black birds were a bit of cardboard that I cut out and stuck to the end of a pen so I could stamp it a few times. So, more than you really wanted to know, huh?

Hubby made me a homemade cheesecake with yummy local strawberries on top. The real kind that you have to bake and it takes hours and the whole house smells like cheesecake. Mmm! There is blue sky outside my window. My son is home and will probably whoop me at a few games of Agricola or Settlers of Catan. It’s going to be a good day.

Yesterday’s face was more realistic so today’s is more abstract. Inspired by Satina’s one line face that she posted yesterday, I did a one liner for my journal. Only 20 more faces to go for the 29 Face Challenge. Eek, that sounds like a lot!