Summer, jam and a bespectacled owl

Hi everybody!

This morning started out cool and cloudy, with a very fresh wind, but by this afternoon it was hot and humid again.

Here you can see the view from my balcony, the sun was trying to struggle through the clouds. It was very windy along the Rhine, but I enjoyed my windy walk.

At Soartful challenges the theme is eyeglasses/spectacles.

I used a large owl stencil on a page painted with paint left over from another project, adding in some colour round the edges with oil pastels to fill in the gaps. I used a foam brush to stencil the owl with black acrylic paint, and outlined it all with a white gel-pen when it was dry. The glasses were cut out of a magazine ad, glued to cardboard, fussy cut and varnished. This was fun to make!

And this was fun to make and will be even more fun to eat! Plums were on offer this week, so I made a batch of my special jam, adding cinnamon, vanilla, ginger, and vodka (to kill off germs!). Jam making is for me a much loved summer activity - buying the ripe fruit when it is plentiful and cheap, cooking the jam, labeling it, and watching the shelves in my store cupboard fill up. Eating it is also a great pleasure, which I have for a whole year.

At Manus Mifoc the challenge this week is 'summer'. For me the jam is part of summer, and in addition  I have collaged some photos of summer around here - the hay harvest, wild flowers on the meadows, the plantation of sun flowers, and  the Rhine with the sun sparkling on the water. The text is the first verse from a hymn we used to sing when I went to school.

Here's wishing you all a great weekend.

Take care, have fun,

and thanks a lot for coming by!