Family Time

I Need Your Input! (or getting to the heart of the issue)

~ Patty Radish ~ 17 Comments

So, this morning I had a yen to write a blog post, just like many other mornings in the past. The problem is/was that I had already shared these photos on Instagram and Facebook, and I didn’t necessarily want to “saturate” social media with the same material, I guess that’s kind of a taboo.

But, I find that I have more to say on a subject than what I can say in IG or FB, which finally brings me to my questions: Does it really matter, or actually bother anyone if I share the same photos on my blog as I do on other social media? Do any of you really see my photos any where else? (IG is a bit fickle) Lastly, should I continue to “share” photos from IG to FB? We’ll get back to this.

Now, on to some journal sharing…

This is a journal I put together with some lovely happy mail from an IG friend, @misbabsybarnes, her style is to die for! She quilts in the most awesome way, her decorating is Kitschy McFab, she’s a great art journaler, and her thrifty finds are over the top! I kinda like her!

Anyway, we shared some art journaling bits, and I came up with the idea of making twin art journals for the two of us. She’s been working on hers for a while, and I finally broke mine out recently.

That cover decor was a complete screw up of another project, but I couldn’t throw it away, I’m glad I didn’t!

A case in point of not having enough room/time/patience to write about in my IG sharing. This is an envelope that I included in the middle of our journals. I filled mine with the ephemera Miss Babsy sent me that would fit. It’s like my favorite detail in this journal!

I have a box filled with crappity-crap from around my art room that I pull from to do my pages, but I rely on this little envelope for a lot of the cute stuff.

A little mini page I made from a piece of painted background I use in my shoppe journals. I want the little gifts I receive in happy mail to be somewhere I can enjoy them once in a while, like that camera. That sticker is from a shop that’s no longer in business, which makes me sad, so I’m using them a lot in here to.

I did this page before we took off to see our daughter in eastern Washington. It’s kind of a Fall road trip theme.

The trip was very short, and this is my happy being home again page spread. My daughter is buying a new house, and the moving in day was moved back, so we came home the same day. It was a rough day of driving, so home sure looked good!

I can’t resist images like this of tall mid century buildings, especially with all that color, love! That background page is from what the “Art to the 5th” girls call “underpaper”, so I will too. It’s the paper I use to protect my work surface, and as you know, I don’t throw much away.

I love creating scenes! No, not in public, but with things I find and put together. All three of these images are from different sources.

Apparently, this girl is spouting off about something, and the little guy says, “Ya, talk to the butterfly, I’m outta here!”

…and so am I for now.

Please give me your opinion on those questions above, I really need your input.

I have a lot of lovely people in my life, but they don’t really take as much of an interest in my art adventures as my online friends (you) do, if you know what I mean.

So, let me know what you think,

Until next time,

Have a great day,

Thanks for the visit,

~Patty

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Hello-o-o-o…

~ Patty Radish ~ 14 Comments

Well, that was weird! It seems that taking a break was a good thing, but now I have some “Splaining to do Lucy!”

Hmmm…where do I start?

First a huge THANK YOU for all the beautiful comments when I said my sad farewell! THANK YOU!!!

Now to explain:

Simply put, things were just a little too crazy when I made that decision, family stuff you know. I had recently gone through some family stuff and tried to keep this all together, and it wasn’t fun. Next time I’ll just take a break.

 I do want to apologize though, I hate being wishy washy, but I’m over the stress hump now, and I’ve realized how large a hole was in my life without all this!

Now to the fun stuff…

I’ve been staying busy in the garden, but have managed to put a little time aside for art journaling. I pulled this one out of the shop because I loves him! So Cute!

I’ve been playing around with some “Back 2 School” ephemera I put together (there are some ephemera packs in my shoppe). So, I thought I would share something I worked on this morning.

A process post, Yay!

Because most people don’t have a Zutter binding machine, and I suck at lining things like this up, I used a regular old hole punch and a pair of scissors to pop this card into my journal. You just punch the holes accordingly, then snip along the edge, and pop it into your journal.

As you can see I prepared it with a few swipes of gesso.

Next, I added some color. I’m keeping the other side of this card intact, I love the retro look of it.

I added a white doily as a background. One thing I like to do is hit the edges with sand paper while it’s still a little damp, it helps seal the edge so that it doesn’t pull up or peal.

Here’s the finished page. I used a #8B pencil to go around the edges of the images.

So, there you have it. That wasn’t too difficult…in other words…next time, just a break!!!

I’m having a few technical difficulties with my blog right now, I’m in the process of working them out. So, I would really appreciate it if I got a few comments letting me know that this actually got to a reader or two.

So PLEASE give me a shout if this makes it to your door!!!

Once again,

Thank you for the visit,

Much Love,

~Patty

(p.s. I’ve filled my shoppe with lots of newness if you want to check it out. Get 20% off your entire purchase with the coupon code CUSTOMERLOVE20 at checkout)

 

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Hearth and Home

~ Patty Radish ~ 5 Comments

Hello, I thought I would pop in quickly to let you know I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth 🙂 I have been keeping super busy with personal life stuff and not much art journaling, so I didn’t quite know what to share. Lately, I’ve been enjoying diving into working around the house, visiting with family, taking time to talk on the phone, all the things that I used to think  “I had to make time for” because I was trying to “Run a shoppe”. I’ve not been this happy since my kids were little!

It’s the small things that make me smile, like finally getting to some decorating done in my laundry room. I will be painting that chest of drawers when I make up my mind about color. I have a long list of projects I want to do around the house, and I am finally ticking them off.

At the end of the day I work on this, it’s coming along quite nicely.

It’s that time of year again. This was two days of hard labor to pull up some unsightly ground cover that looked ratty and made a nice home for weeds to grow. We still have a few more things to move and remove here, but progress is happening.

On the news front, one of my journals was chosen to for the next issue of Art Journaling magazine, it should be out this summer. I didn’t write my article on this little beauty of course, this was just a nice excuse to share a recent gift.

This has been my latest obsession, Ali Edwards “Week In The Life” project. I had joined up last spring when my son was visiting from Korea, and I took loads of photos, but it didn’t get any farther than that. So, I decided to do a trial run with the photos from his visit before my niece arrives for her annual visit. I can’t tell you how much fun it was to look through all the photos and remember and our little adventures together. But, I’ll have to put this on hold until after my niece flies home. She and I will be filling in a couple of these albums documenting her visit, I can’t wait!

That’s it for now. I’ve signed up for the iHanna Post Card Swap again, so hopefully I will share about that this week some time.

Until then,

Have a wonderful weekend,

~Patty

My End of Year Catch Up…

~ Patty Radish ~ 7 Comments

My original plan was to write an “End of Year Round Up”, but frankly, I just don’t have it in me to re-cap an entire year. This year has had many highs and lows!

Highs: Becoming a Grandmother, an awesome year for my shoppe, starting this here new blog, and all you wonderful people that follow me! Thank you!

Lows: Losing both my parents within 6 months, most notably my mom just two weeks ago.

That being said, (and out of the way thank you very much), I’m really looking forward to the New Year! So, here’s a bit of the latest doings:IMG_1242

From top left clockwise: A Kiwidori all gussied up and ready for the New Year, an honest-to-goodness Midori (love!), and my mini dori journal. Dori heaven!

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The plan for my Kiwidori is to be a Vision Board for 2016. I’ve filled it with inspirational quotes and have already worked on a few pages. I’ll share it in more detail sometime soon.

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I’m still working on my Holiday Journal, I usually keep one going until Jan. 1st.

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I get to add these awesome goodies to it too! These were sent to me by my sweet friend Jenny P.! Thank you Jenny!IMG_1145Then there is this. The Stitchery journal that I found poked onto a shelf last week. Sewing is on the top of my list of things I must get back to, that and crochet, not to mention gardening…

…which brings to a subject I have pondering a lot about over the last couple of months, I miss my olde blog!

There, I said it!

So, I have decided that I will be working on and talking about many of the projects I used to write about on ye olde blog. For instance decorating, sometimes cooking, definitely sewing, crochet and gardening. I’ll be backing down a bit from my planning adventure, not completely though, it’s still a tool I rely on quite a bit. The decor got to be too time consuming to be realistic.

So, if you haven’t already noticed, I switched up my blog list on the side bar to some old favorites. People I have been following for years, that change really makes this blog seem more homey to me.

I’m hoping that 2016 will be the year of catching up on old projects, making more time for my family, focusing more on art journaling, and sharing a bit more of my personal side on this here blog. Hope you want to tag along!

Until next year,

Thank you stopping by,

Happy New Year!

~Patty

(p.s. I will be taking off over the pass to visit my daughter, so if I don’t get to the comments, please forgive, thanks)

Girls + 1 Weekend..

~ Patty Radish ~ 3 Comments

It has been quite a while since I’ve checked in to this little blog, along with all my other social medias. We experienced a family loss that kind of took the wind out of my sails, but there is more to it than that, I’ll expand on this a little more in an end of the year blog post.

In the meantime, I wanted to share this rather long blog post about my “Girls Weekend” with my daughter + 1, and the subsequent mini art journal process and pages.

This post is pretty photo heavy, so hang on to your hats and grab a cup of tea!

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I’ll start out with the gathering of supplies. Some awesome little office goodies I found at The Container Store.

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Various ephemera to work with, menu, hotel receipt, comment card, and my daughters train ticket .

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Brochures and maps of the town, our valet parking ticket and a mini folder from our room keys.IMG_1063

Lastly, a couple of sweet photos taken on our trip.

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Supplies gathered, along with a few items from around my art room, and I’m ready to start pulling my pages together. I start by laying down a foundation of the ephemera for that page. I tried to keep things in somewhat of a chronological order knowing I would be going back and journaling about it. Those little slips of paper at the top left are my journaling notes. I have since put together a small book for the same purpose.

Then, I start embellishing the page, after that it’s ready to journal on.

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I didn’t leave room to journal on this page spread, I’ll be using a journaling card, then putting it into that little folder.

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Open it up and there you have it. How cute is that illustration from the hotel brochure! If I had worked on this in the room, I might have not taken the time to find these little touches.

IMG_1085The front cover and first page. Dec. 11th Our Lady of Guadelupe Day, I thought this was a good place to start…

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…along with a postage stamp of a train (my daughter took the train over because of snow on the passes) and one of Saint Augustine, the patron saint of party! Dude!

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Our second day there. With a day of shopping under our belts, we slept in, then got ready for brunch and another day’s shopping.

While I was getting ready, my daughter grabbed my phone and took some awesome selfies of her and + 1. All of them came out great, but this one was my favorite!

IMG_1096So many great restaurants within walking distance. We only had a couple of days, but we put a dent in as many as we could!

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I love cityscapes, especially if I’ve been to that city! I love my little town, but it’s nice to get back to the city once in a while!

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We topped off our weekend with meeting my son and his girlfriend for brunch. It was such a cute little place, packed, but super tasty food!

I hope this gave you an idea of how I pull together my travel pages. I usually try to work on my journals while traveling, but if it doesn’t work out, taking notes to refer to later works just as well.

If I don’t get back here before Christmas…

Happy Holidays,

Thanks for stopping by,

~Patty