Coffee should come in a MUG - Art Journal Monday

Nothing newsworthy to report yet today. Groceries are bought and put away and we had a walk to the library and back - almost 11,000 steps already taken today. Very, very windy (and cool wind) today so more like a May day then end of June day really. Not complaining mind you, just stating fact, and the weather network says its going to be up in the 90s come Wednesday.

So, with nothing to report, on with the post. The challenge from Stampin' Bella this week was to use stripes on our page. I have always preferred coffee in a mug and when I looked into my cupboard the thought came to me "Coffee should always come in a mug" - the title and subject of my page was born! They're right, inspiration can come from anywhere.

We lived on a farm and my parents, especially my dad, loved coffee and it was always served in mugs. China tea cups were for tea. I prefer tea in china mugs....probably because its one less dish to wash?? Anyway, here's a story for you. My parents always made perked coffee the old-fashioned way (long before electric coffee makers were popular) with a coffee pot that you poured water in, inserted ground coffee beans in top of metal inserted thingy, and let it come to a boil on the stove until you heard it "perk". Well one day my dad said he read an article that said coffee tasted better if you removed the insert, added the ground coffee beans right in with the water and let it boil - and don't throw out the coffee beans, just add new ones on top. He was the only one who liked it! We didn't dare drink the last mouthful of coffee or you would end up with a mouthful of coffee grind..yuck! He would just add coffee grounds until a) it was so full of grounds that he couldn't make enough coffee or b) the grounds would eat thru the coffee pot - yes, it happened. When he wouldn't stop making it that way Mom bought instant coffee and we all switched to it too...but still drank it in a mug.

I dug into the scrapbook paper stash and found some left-over striped paper and cut out free-hand some coffee mug shapes and handles. I've been watching videos over at Christy Tomlinson's blog so I had to add little hearts and squiggles to the coffee cups with a black Sharpie pen. Once I was satisfied with them I set them aside.

The background paper was sprayed with some coloured ink. The top right corner is from using a new stencil that just came in at the Paper Pickle. Love it. I sprayed over it with some Smooch ink. I wanted something to look like coffee rings on a table so I used the bottom of an empty spool of serger thread that I painted some brown paint on and then used it as a stamp. That definitely worked! The left side looked bare and I looked down and saw some pieces of wall paper samples sticking out of the old wall paper book and decided to use them for a border. The word coffee was made using some left over stickers. So, then I positioned the mugs and wrote out the saying. I decided the word COFFEE should be bold and colourful but the rest plain. After the mugs were glued down I used a swirl stamp to stamp the steam coming from the coffee. And, because of Christy Tomlinson's influence, I added some black rub-on's here and there. Not my favorite page, but its OK.