Aqua andTeal

The ocean,  icebergs, Robin's eggs, Aurora Borealis, lichen, peacock feathers, and Tiffany & Co. boxes....just some of the things that are aqua and teal.  

Did I mention the ocean?

   

Oh yes....and this fabulous beach find!

Paul and I visited one of the rocky beaches again...I didn't even mind the fog.

The shoreline was covered with these smooth chunky round rocks....I was smitten.

This one is going home with me.

I have enjoyed time to play with watercolor while on Cranberry Island....I don't take much time at home to just sit and paint. I was using up the watery paint on palette....and used my finger to make the splotches on the left.  Then made a few polka dots further apart...and cut them out...and they remind me of the round rocks on the beach.  I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with them...but at this point it's just play. They'll appear somewhere....sometime.

 

We just finished round 5 of our Rainbow Connection art trade...and

this time the colors were aqua and teal. This is the card I sent to Becky....

and she just got it in the mail yesterday.

I started with a collage of mixed of papers....

mostly gelli prints...some with doodles.

I added a couple papercuts and more white spots....

and a few swirls that I had done on deli paper.

Finally I added the little fabric "Joy" and mounted it on card stock edged with black and white tissue paper.  I used some teal polka dotted scrapbook paper for the envelope liner....and embellished the dots a bit with some swirls and spot of white....giving the commercial scrapbook paper a bit of whimsy.  

I'm not sure I love the back....but it's what I did.

So there you go....Ocean Love....in aqua and teal for Becky!  

Cranberry Island Congregational Church

There are only a few public buildings on the island....and I was wrong about the cars. There are no car ferries...so they have to come over on a barge...so many of the locals have cars but they just leave them here.  There are lots of golf carts and other interesting little vehicles.

This is the parsonage...which has been home sweet home for this trip. It's centrally located on Cranberry Road...the main road across the island.......so it's easy to get just about anywhere.  

On the other side of us is the cafe...and connected to that is the museum, 

a thrift shop, and a very little gift shop. There also is a store down by the dock that is being rebuilt after a fire last year. Down the street a bit is the library and the school.  There are currently 8 students and every two years they trade off with Little Cranberry Island.  Two years on one island...two years on the other. 

This is the Cranberry Island Congregational Church....

Paul will be conducting the service here tomorrow.

It's a pretty little church....classic New England style.

The church has bright blue welcoming doors.....

...with simple stained glass panels.

And there are lovely stained glass windows  inside too

 that cast beautiful colors on the pews and inside the sanctuary.

The stained glass windows remind me of the color swatching I've been doing with some new watercolors.  I'm using the Essential Yasutomo Niji Set of 12 recommended by Wendy Solganik who I took the Love Your Imperfect Lettering Class with. She highly recommended them for color mixing and uses them in a lot of her own art.  I wanted to see how many different colors I could make...and I don't think I even scratched the surface. I had forgotten how helpful it is to add a little mud...a brown mixture of several colors helps give the colors some depth.

Lupine

Day Two.....the lupine.

Cranberry Island is 2 miles long and 1 mile wide. It feels like rural Maine...with quiet coastal charm. People are sitting on their porches....and everyone waves. It's not flashy or fancy...it's more rustic and folksy....the kind of place I could picture Miss Rumphius spreading her lupin seeds. 

The lupine must have been beautiful in their prime....and they're everywhere! Now they're mostly wabi-sabi wonderful. What I have seen so far...the whole island is a little wabi-sabi...fabulous in its weathered imperfection.

Paul and I took a long walk this morning along the main road

Every once in a while you get a beautiful view of mountains of Acadia and a glimpse of the water. The morning haze made it feel magical.

Another walk....a later in the day....remnants of lupine fields at every turn!

We checked out one of the trails that would have led to the water...but there was a muddy impasse so we turned around. The woods was lush and lovely.

And what church parsonage isn't complete without 

a artist's rendering of Jesus in a lupine field.