Five Senses In the Sun

Lately, I have focused my creative energies on organizing my supplies and creating some stitched postcards--candidates for The Great Big Stitched Postcard Swap.  My art journal has felt a bit abandoned, I'm afraid, and I'm a few days behind on Natty's In the Sun prompts.  I anticipate a full catch-up within a week or so, though!

In the meantime, I wanted to share some pages I created for a week-long focus on the five senses--prompts created by Natty to get us thinking about the sights, sounds, smells, feelings, and tastes of summer.

First, the sights of summer:   What do I see that reminds me specifically of summer?

I had just seen this catalog image the day before reading the prompt, and I thought the little girl with her toilet-paper binoculars was a perfect fit!  I realized that a lot of my "sights of summer" were drawn more from the things I saw when I lived in the city, before moving out to the suburbs:  people sitting on their front stoops and steam rising up off the pavement, particularly.  Road construction, on the other hand, seems to be fairly universal!

On to the "feel" of summer:  Natty suggested we re-create some interesting textures on our page.  The first texture that came to mind for the summertime was terry cloth.  I don't know why! I don't think I've worn anything made of terry cloth in at least three decades!  And with no terry cloth on hand, I came up with this:

I used a scrap from one of my daughter's outgrown summer tank tops because the colors call to mind the extreme heat of the summertime.  Then I had some fun with messy, free-form stitches on the sewing machine, because...why not?!  I added some yarn-wrapped wire I found in the clearance bin at JoAnn's (33 feet for $1), and voila--a page with more texture than I've tackled on a journal page before!

On the next day, we were challenged to think about the sounds of summer:

Kind of a "loud" page, in itself, don't you think?  Summertime sounds include the music of the ice cream truck, lapping ocean waves, and the voices of kids traveling in packs in the evening now that school is out.

For the tastes/flavors of summer, I immediately thought about all the fresh fruit we have been eating around here:

Natty challenged to use a crafting tool or supply we don't usually use, so I pulled out a swirl punch that I like but seldom use, and added some citrus-y designs on the page.

Finally, we considered the scents/smells of summer.  I had a harder time with this one.  When I smell something, it can bring to mind all kinds of memories, but I seldom think of a time or event and recall any sort of smells associated with it.  But then it occurred to me that coconut is a definite summer smell:

I thought it was fun to work through the five senses for this set of journal pages.  I'm shocked to see that I have used almost all of the pages in the book I chose for my In the Sun journal!  I am going to have to start a new book just to finish the course. 

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I will be "off the grid" for the weekend, attending my 20-year high school reunion back in Texas.  Wish me luck for my travels, but even more so, wish my husband luck as he takes care of the girls on his own until I return!  I look forward to getting back to my regular blog visits next week.

Have a creative, happy weekend!