A bit of Spookiness, a Vintage Art Journal Page, and a Good Book

 Hello friends,

Another fun Halloween card to share - all images are from DRS Designs (all 5 of them) - you can read a bit more about the card on the DRS Designs Blog. 

I also have an Art Journal page to share - it was inspired by Wendy's Vintage theme at Art Journal Journey.  

The bottom layer is a page about the world's tallest mountain out of an old vintage World Atlas book.  The main panel is old tea advertisement that my brother-in-law gave me.  He bought an old scrapbook full of old soap and tea advertisements - they were all glued in and most were damaged. I did some crackle medium  through a stencil on the top and bottom and added a few flowers from Stamping Up! that I dipped in some ink.  The words are Tim Holtz: "forever is composed of nows" - so true.  The other little faint stamping on the base page is done with Stamping Up! images as well.  Thanks for the inspiration Wendy!

After mentioning it earlier this week here an on Facebook, I have had several people ask me a bit more about the book Anxious People by Fredrik Backman.   

It is a fictional book.  What is it about? It is about so many things it is really hard to say - a bank robbery, a love story (or two), loneliness, despair, hope - I could go on.  What I really think it is about is how we all struggle to overcome something and to try and figure out life.  Sometimes we are sucessful and sometimes the stuggle is really, really hard.  The best part is he weaves in statements that just make you feel better about the struggle.   Here is an example from the first page:

"Because there's such an unbelievable amount that we're all supposed to be able to cope with these days. You're supposed to have a job, and somewhere to live, and a family, and you're supposed to pay taxes and have clean underwear and remember the password to your (cuss word omitted) Wi-Fi. Some of us never manage to get the chaos under control, so our lives simply carry on, the world spinning through space at two million miles an hour while we bounce about on its surface like so many lost socks. Our hearts are bars of soap that we keep losing hold of; the moment we relax, they drift off and fall in love and get broken, all in the wink of an eye. We're not in control. So we learn to pretend, all the time, about our jobs and our marriages and our children and everything else. We pretend we're normal, that we're reaonably well educated, that we understand "amortization levels" and "inflation rates." ....."Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn't feel like it's ours. Sometimes we panic, because the bills need paying and we have to be grown-up and we don't know how, because it's so horribly, despreately easy to fail at being grown-up. "

This book has several story lines and is very funny, but the nuggets like this one are invaluable. Life is hard. The Prattville Library near my home has 3 copies of this book so you know it is good!

Hoping your week is going well and thanks for stopping by!

Hugz,

Nancy