To Market, To Market...

It only seems natural that the next step in our vintage journey is to enter a vintage market show. I am excited to announce that we will be participating in the Funky Junk in the Country Vintage Market on July 23 in Monclova, which is just outside of Toledo.

My sister and I have spent the past few months on "the thrill of the vintage hunt" acquiring all kinds of vintage finds. My hubby and I have been refreshing and repurposing a variety of these findings. The vintage items are stacking up as we get ready for the market!

My hubby refinished and distressed these barrel back library chairs made by Heywood & Wakefield Co, in Chicago between 1933-1966. He has a few other pieces he's been working on including the coat rack in the picture below the chairs.

Lots of altered book journals

Vintage industrial office items.

Lots of options for using vintage office supplies for art display

In addition to vintage and repurposed items, my niece Lizzie will be there with her hand lettered signs and home decor. You can see more of her items on her Face book page The Chevron Rose.

And my sister is working on her watercolor and mixed media art in prints and note cards. She just started a blog where she will soon display some of her art. Visit her at A Simply Blissful Existence. I'm so glad she finally took the step to start a blog and is sharing her creativity!

While "busy" seems to be a word that is too frequent in my vocabulary, this little bit of busy we've added is actually energizing. We're doing something we all enjoy and we're doing it together!

So, if you are in the area on July 23rd stop by and visit us at the vintage market. In the meantime you can see some of the things we are working on in my Etsy shop or in our Found on Brighton Vintage Facebook group.

Sister's Road Trip ~ The Journal

The past week has been a miserable one around here. I was down for six days with the flu. I really hated losing a week of my life. The only things I felt up to, besides sleep, for most of that time was reading. Sunday my fever finally broke and with it there was finally a decrease in the body aches. So, I took advantage of that little bit of energy and finished up my travel journal from my recent vacation.

I really enjoy doing travel journals for my trips. While on the trip, thinking about how you want to capture memories helps you slow down and be more present to what you are experiencing. After the trip, it's like experiencing it all over again as you go through pictures and create your pages. Enjoy!

Advent 2015

The past two weeks have been very busy for me with outreach events for my job and preparing for the upcoming TMD Advent project for the His Kingdom Come community. I have been busy prepping, writing and editing devotions for a daily blog post and challenge beginning on November 29. We will be featuring the Advent devotions on the HKC blog so people can participate whether they are TMD members or not. I will also be linking to the Advent posts daily from my blog.

I am going to continue to use the Advent journal I made a few years ago for this year's Advent pages. I only make a handful of Advent art pages each year so there's room in this journal to cover multiple years.

Here are a few sneak peeks of the art that will accompany the Advent devotions I wrote.

We have a variety of people from the HKC community writing the devotions. Each day's devotion is based on a song of the season or on Scripture that the song is based on with a piece of the author's art accompanying it.

In my busyness I got off-track on the 30 Day Blogging Challenge, but I determined to finish it and will continue on now that I have slowed down some.

30 Day Blogging Challenge day 11.

{found on Brighton} Anniversary and A Giveaway

My Etsy shop, {found on brighton}, 

is celebrating its first anniversary today! 

The little shop I started a year ago as a way to use up the books and vintage papers I collect for my art journaling hobby has managed to stand on her own feet. I have enjoyed all the wonderful people I have connected with through the shop and it has opened up another avenue of creativity for me. As well it has fed my enjoyment (addiction?) of digging through library book sales and giving a new life to old and falling apart books.

Some recent additions to the shop:

So to celebrate our first anniversary I am going to give away an altered book journal. Simply visit my Etsy Shop, then comeback to my blog and tell me which journal is your favorite in the comment section on this post. Tomorrow I will randomly draw one winner from the comments and that person will win their favorite journal from my shop. Comments must be made today only.

I appreciate all of you who follow my blog and join my journey in art, faith and Etsy ventures!

July Art Journaling

In July I have been playing catch-up in my Documented Life Project journal.

Week 19 challenge: A random act of kindness

Once my June pages were finished my DLP journal could hold no more! With July's pages I began a DLP volume 2 journal for the second half of the year.

And in my everyday art journal this month:

Stencil Girl Products hosted a blog hop last week for the Documented Life Project and I won one of their stencils! It was fun opening the mail yesterday to see which stencil was inside. So, today, I'd like to share that anticipation and excitement with one of my blog followers. Simply leave a comment on this blog post by next Friday (7.26.14) and then on Saturday 7.27 I will draw a name from the comments and that person will receive a lovely package of vintage papers and ephemera. Enjoy your weekend!