My house is a very fine house

This is the first day this month I've had time to create something for Art Journal Journey where this month's challenge is Maps and the host is Mary C. Nasser.  It stands to reason because reading her bio, Mary loves making mixed media art using maps.

I thought I would start this monthly journey with a map of my home town, showing the actual location of my home.  Those of you who follow along and often visit my blog may remember I used the other half of this square in a spread I made for my friend Annette in our International Players swap.  Originally, I had planned to show my house location on the map, but I realized after I had the other half in place, it didn't show where my house was, but the east side of town, instead.  Yes, I live in the northwest side of town, less than two miles north of downtown.

As I was trying to come up with a clever way to use this map, the Crosby, Stills, and Nash song "Our House" kept playing in my head.  The back story is that Graham Nash wrote the song when he was living with Joni Mitchell and her two cats.  I admit my two cats don't go outside,

but this is an approximation of where I (along with Bleubeard and Squiggles) live in my city.

My garden may not be filled with lots of flowers like in the song, but my house is filled with love.

Materials used include a portion of a map of my city, a paint chip sample sewed to part of the map, and stickers.  The "jouraling" was created on a square using a Micron ink pen.  I created this in my Coll-AH-ge 2 altered book.

Thanks for visiting today.  It means the world to me.  Be sure to check out Art Journal Journey for even more incredible map inspired journal or altered book pages.