Some journal pages and yard sale finds

A friend was having a yard sale so I dropped by.  Was able to get a few great deals.  I've been looking for small odd tables to use outside on the deck.  This cute little stool or workbench is just the kind of thing!  I will probably paint it since it has a half spray of silver on one side of the top.

Got it to use on the deck, but right now it has found a home holding my beautiful petunias that I got for Mother's Day in the treasured painted flowerpot with my grandson's pictures on my front porch. This pot has to stay out of direct contact with the weather since the pictures would be damaged.

In additon I scored some ephemera and a nice partitioned cigar box.  Not sure why it would be divided up like this, but it will make a good assemblage box one day or for now maybe storage for jewelry or junk bits and pieces. First pic shows all of it together and then below inside the box and a shot of just the paper stuff.  Looks like someone had saved a lot of stamps, then there are old letters and postcards.

I pulled out some of my composition journals that were started some time back and have gotten a few spreads done over the last couple of weeks. In these, I glue a couple of pages together for more stability, usually add some gesso to the pages, glue some collage elements, and then layer different paints, stickers, and use markers or pens here and there, kind of playing back and forth.  I feel a good bit rusty and am not totally satisfied with them but at least it is a start in the right direction and fun, which is most important. Right below, this set of pages started out with watercolor flowers done on a page when Thomas and I were playing last time he was here.  I did very basic elementary flowers, so to preserve some of the memory of this day, I tore out the purple and yellow flowers and glued one to each page, then went on playing from there.

The last spread I've done is below. I had spent some time one day painting vintage book pages, beginning this project to make some striped papers to use in decorating candles after buying an Anna Corba book.  I painted several pages with different images before I was through that day, saved them in a folder with other painted papers, like the papers I put on my work table when I'm working with paints or stamping. Actually scraps of these are on the flower spread above, too.  So the hearts came from that collection and then, on the left page below, used pieces that I had leftover from a marbling paint paper experiment.  The medieval picture came from an onlive archive, maybe the NYPL one, which is free and full of great images. Other papers are different scrapbook papers and again, used markers and pens to highlight and add dots, etc.

This last spread I did almost 2 years ago,when I turned 50, but don't think I've ever shared.  Here again you see the painted vintage book pages. On the left the orange and brown striped and on the right the squiggles.  There are scraps from old letters and then this and that as usual. Sometimes I will go back and journal over or around pages like these and others I find I like just as they are.