Sao Luis and Natal in my 7 Continents Altered Book

I'm really enamored with the architecture of Brazilian cities, so I'm once again joining Art Journal Journey and Sheila, this month's host.

For Side 1, I focused on the only image I found of Sao Luis.

It seems the Portuguese were constantly running the French out of South America in general, and Brazil in particular.  No wonder Portuguese is the official language of Brazil.

The decorative scissors were from a kit my friend Julie gave me for Christmas years ago.  They have no name and no brand, but they remind me of pinking shears.  Thankfully, I'll never confuse them with my real pinking shears.  As an aside, I counted my decorative scissors and I own 27!  How in the world does anyone accumulate 27 different decorative scissor designs?

First I found the picture (in a travel magazine), then I found the quote.   I don't have a die cutter that makes that shape I matted the picture on, but have a template I used to cut it by hand.  I spritzed the mat with my handmade shimmering mists before I centered the photo on it.

I think you can see why I decided to create this spread in my 7 Continents AB so I could include it in this month's Art Journal Journey.

For side 2, I "visited" Natal.  Although I found two pictures from there,

only one showed the gorgeous architecture.   I matted this and the second picture with index cards left over from this summer.  I had already spritzed one with my handmade shimmering mists, but I started from scratch on this one.

Seems we can't get away from the beaches which is why I can now believe there are over 300 miles of coastline in Brazil.

One final look at side1

and side 2, where my substrate was a gelli printed used file folder, three pictures from various travel brochures, one hand cut mat, two index cards, handmade shimmering mists, black sharpie used as an outline, and information from various internet sites I edited, printed, and cut using decorative scissors.

Thanks for joining me once again on this imaginary journey to Brazil and Art Journal Journey (which is NOT imaginary because there are some fabulous artists who post their art and journal pages there).