Art Journal Monday - Siblings Stick Together

Yesterday was a very interesting day! They were calling for rain until 1:00 p.m. so we decided not to head out to the park with bicycles. I, of course, headed down to the studio for a little art time. At 11:30 Joe comes down and says, "Lets have a sandwich and go to Rondeau. All the forecasters say it's going to clear up by just after noon and be sunny the rest of the day!" Sounds good right? Wrong.

As we were putting the bikes on the bike rack I kept looking at the sky and shaking my head. It was suppose to rain all morning but it hadn't even started to rain yet let alone quit any minute. Sure enough, half way to the park it starts to rain, then pour, and then pour some more. I would have turned around but Joe decided we should continue on because "The sky is a little brighter up ahead." Yup, it was but the rain was beating it out. We drove around the park and it had almost quit so we stopped in at the restaurant and had a bowl of ice cream while we waited.(bad I know, but once in awhile...)  Surprise, surprise the sun came out and we managed to get a 25km bike ride in. Cool!

As we were putting the bikes back on the bike rack to go home a vehicle with Texas plates pulled up beside us. I had seen this vehicle in the park earlier with a lady and the cutest little boy with the friendliest smile ever! She asked if we were frequent visitors to the park and when I said yes, we just live about 30 minutes drive away, she went on to tell me how much she loved our country. She was a young widow with a son about 4 years old and had always wanted to come to Canada and last week she just packed up and set off. Just the two of them. We had a great chat and assured her that St. Thomas (her next stop) had lots of motels to choose from and yes, Niagara Falls was very safe and she absolutely had to stop there. I invited her for supper but she was heading in the opposite direction. She did take my email address and I hope I hear from her. Sometimes you meet people and you just click. We clicked!

The only blight on the day was the fact that the London Knights hockey team lost the Memorial Cup in over-time. Sorry boys. Maybe next year.

Now, on to the art journal post. This week's challenge was to make a border on your page and then fill in the middle any way we wanted.

I used black acrylic paint to paint the checkerboard border but thought it was way to stark so I added some swirls with black Stazon Ink. The little birds were cut from a magazine and the branch is just painted on. The background is spritzed on ink, and flower stencilled on with Distress ink. I printed out the sentiments with my Brother label maker which I usually forget I own! If it hadn't been calling for rain, I wouldn't have had this one done either!