Fall Colours

My art journal page today is inspired by our recent holiday/vacation to America where we stayed with friends at their lake house in Maine. We had the most amazing time and as you can imagine I have returned from my holiday with new crafting goodies and lots and lots of inspiration, so here’s my first page – I hope you like it.

For the background I applied a thin wash of Salty Ocean Distress Ink by stamping the ink pad directly onto an acrylic block, spritzing the ink with water and using a paint brush to apply it onto the page. Next I layered a beautiful Tree Poem stamp from Stampendous over the page using different colours of Distress Ink to depict the fall colours that we saw on our vacation; the Inks I used were Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Seedless Preserves and Vintage Photo. The “who”, “what”, “where” cards are created from a 3.25 x 5.25 inch card from a Tim Holtz idea-ology Pocket Cards set that I bought whilst on vacation; I cut it into three individual cards and rounded the corners with scissors so they all looked alike. I added the words to each of the cards using a Zig glue pen and the cards are stuck in place using double-sided tape. For “who” card, I added our friends and our first initials and the date we visited them; these are cut from a card from the same Tim Holtz card set and coloured using a Burgundy Spectrum Aqua Marker. For the other two cards I chose words from a tourist magazine that related to our visit, this included “Lakes” as we actually stayed at our friend’s Lake House, “Crafty Creations” to relate to crafting and craft beers, “Lobster Love” as Maine lobster is amazing, “In Nature” as we did lots of walking and hiking, “Go Coastal” as we visited some local beaches, “Mountains” where we went to see the magnificent fall colours and “After Dark” as we had fun in the evenings going out, meeting people or watching Baseball or American Football in the evening. For the “where”, as we stayed in Maine and their slogan is “The way life should be” I thought it would be fun to include this wording on the card as we so enjoyed living the lake life with our friends so much. These cards are arranged on the page with some dried and pressed leaves from our friends local area and also an American flag and red heart that Erika kindly gifted me when I met up with her on our visit. The small red and yellow maple leaf is very special as my friend picked it out and gave it to me; all the leaves are stuck in place using wood glue giving them a lovely shine and suppleness.

We stayed in Maine at our friends lake house, isn’t it spectacular!

We woke up to this spectacular view every morning …

… and watched the fall colours develop and change while we were there, which was amazing (grin!).

Here are the trees that inspired the background for my page – the fall colours on the lake looked so stunning, especially with those beautiful reflections!

I’m sure I’ll be creating more art journal pages of our trip as we made so many happy memories with our friends and that means I’ll also be sharing more photos from our holiday too (grin!).

Challenges

I’m glad I found out about Challenge Blogs as I enjoy taking part, they provide me with inspiration for my pages and are a wonderful way to meet like-minded arty people. So here are the challenges I’m joining today:

I’m pleased to join the lovely Linda from heARTfullyinspiredby Linda, who is hosting the Creature Comforts challenge over at Art Journal Journey with the warm autumnal colours and the comfort of spending time and creating such happy memories with our dear friends.

Over at Moo Mania and More the theme is Autumn so I’m pleased to join their challenge with my Fall Colours page.

Inspired by my vacation, I’m also joining the Autumn Splendour challenge over at A Vintage Journey with my Art Journalling Style page.

I’m pleased to be able to join the Plant-tastic challenge over at Country View Challenges with the autumnal trees and leaves on my page.

With my inky autumnal stamped page, I’m also joining the Inktober challenge over at The Artistic Stamper.

I’m joining in the fun over at Stamps and Stencils and their Spooky Fun with an Autumnal Twist challenge with my mixed media autumnal page.

As the challenge over at Paperbabe Stamps is Anything Goes challenge, I’m pleased to be able to join this challenge too with my vacation inspired page.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Mustard Seed, Spiced Marmalade, Fired Brick, Seedless Preserves, Vintage Photo)
• Spectrum Aqua Artist Marker (Burgundy)
• Stampendous Cling Rubber Stamp (Tree Poem CRR164)
• Tim Holtz idea-ology (Pocket Cards #TH93208)
• Tourist Magazine
• American flag and red heart button from Erika – thank you!
• Zig Memory System Dual Action Glue Pen
• Evo-Stik Wood Adhesive
• Stix2 double-sided tape