Friday, October 14, 2016

Play Day!

Hello there!

I had a day off yesterday that I told no one about, just so I wouldn't get told...since you have the day off, can you...You know what I mean, right? I had such high hopes of getting all these cards made and wouldn't you know it, that didn't happen. but I did get one completed, so that's good. 

But first up...in my last post I mentioned that my daughter was working on a rollercoaster project and I was asked to share the completed project. Here you go! I did take video of the marble running through it, but there were some false starts and I don't know how to edit that out, so trust me when I say, the marble does go through the track with out jumping it...most of the time. Thankfully for the girls, it worked perfectly the first time the teacher tried it. Yay! :) They also shared a write up of what they learned about different kinds of energy (potential, kinetic and also friction). I think I said they were learning about Newton's Laws of Motion. Oops, I was wrong (not a surprise). That's the unit they have just started this week. I jumped the gun.
Anyway, the theme of their rollercoaster was Steampunk, which is why you see that fancy base. I think they did a great job on it. They had high hopes of making this even more intricate, but they realized it would take much more time than they had available to do that. They were very happy with the completed project. All the projects the class did looked amazing. I never did anything like this when I was in middle school (well, junior high is what it was called way back when...you know in the Stone Age).

I shared this on my Instagram account a bit ago, but never did get this up on the blog. I follow different colorists on You Tube and now on Instagram. As I think I've shared before, these colorists create tutorials or show what they are doing as they color. One colorist always attacts my eye because I just love the color combinations she uses. Her name is Julie and you can find her channel here. Recently she did a three part video series on the butterfly in Magical Jungle. It helps that she uses Prismacolor pencils. I absolutely fell in love with the colors she used on the butterfly and I simply felt compelled to color the butterfly. My hand is a little lighter than hers, but what really sets off the coloring is the use of the white pencil to fully blend the colors. I just bought another white pencil last week because I am using it so much. :)
I am so happy with how this looks!
Gosh, I wish I had more time to color.

And finally, here is the single card I was able to create yesterday. Oh my, I totally copied the one that inspired this. Karin, of Peppermint Patty's Papercraft, is mega talented. She creates and shares the most beautiful watercolors! And she makes fantastic cards, too. Oh, to have such talent to come up with these fantastic projects. You should check out her blog, if you have never been. Anyway, last month she shared this card and I was completely and utterly smitten. 
Here's my version of the card. 
Yep, a complete CASE, but colored with pencils and not Copics. I was also intrigued by the paper shaker bits. That die is also from Mama Elephant. I like the idea of picking the colors you want in cardstock.  Thank you so much for the inspiration, Karin! (if you ever stop by and read this) 

I have to say though, I didn't anticipate how long it would take to create the card when I sat down. There's inlaid die cutting. I colored a bunch of images thinking I'd make a couple of cards (snort) and then there's the frame. Oh, the frame about did me in. LOL I don't have frame die cuts so I was trying to finagle it with dies I do own and...well, it wasn't pretty. I was getting a bit frustrated. So, I ended up just cutting strips and using them. It worked. I should have added some interest to the strips, but at that point I wanted to be done. LOL If you could have heard me talking to myself throughout the making of the card, you'd be laughing your head off!

Okay, so my leaves are a bit different than hers. Well, I picked up some Spectrum Noir glitter pens at Hobby Lobby recently. (I went on a bit of a shopping spree with my first paycheck of the school year, if you can't tell). I thought the fall colors were so pretty. I tested them on some Lawn Fawn die cut leaves. I just had them laying out, so I added them to the card. They are pretty sparkly!  The sentiment is also from Lawn Fawn, as is the banner.  The cardstock is all Close To My Heart...Goldrush, Honey, Ocean and Cranberry. Some (or all) of them could be retired colors, but I don't keep track of that now. I saw on another card the use of a lighter teal with fall colors and I thought that was so neat. So that's why you see a bit of the dark teal color in with the others in the shaker bits. That's for you, Michele. (smile)

The girls and I have the day off today. Teacher inservice day. Yesterday was conferences, which are scheduled for all day in elementary, but after school only in middle and high school. If I can squeak in some crafty time you might see me back.
Promises, promises.

Thanks ever so much for stopping by! 
Hope you have an awesome weekend!
Hugs,
Jeanne

Monday, September 19, 2016

Sharing a card and a bit of an update!

Hi There!
Long time no see. Oh my gosh, I'm sorry I've been absent for so long. My life has been a real whirlwind since mid-August. School started and we were short staffed in the kitchen. My assistant manager got a new job outside the school district. Yay for her, but not so much for us. My other co-worker was out for the first couple of weeks as she needed more time to recover from foot surgery she had right after school got out last May. We've had a couple of different people come in to fill spots temporarily until a new assistant manager could come in. I was going in early to help with breakfast, too. Busy times! We have our new assistant manager now and while she's a trainee, she's doing a good job. I think she'll be a good fit for our kitchen. Whew.
My dad arrived for a two week visit a couple of weeks after school started. Yay! That was fun and a bit hectic as well. He did get to attend Amy's first football game of the season and enjoyed listening to her band play. 

Back to school means back to Bingo and this next weekend competition season starts.

Amy's had more homework so far this year and a lot of it requires her to use the computer, so I've been bumped off quite a bit, too. No biggie, but it eats into posting time. 

Jessica has had a quieter start to the year, but is, as I type this, she's working on a 3-D rollercoaster project that demonstrates Newton's Laws of Motion. She has a classmate partner working with her. They are using tubing and dowels and other supplies to create a roller coaster that will hopefully allow a silver marble run the entire track. There's a loop involved! Fingers crossed it works the way it's supposed to when they get done. 

On Friday our family went to Elitch Gardens (our amusement park) for Employee Day through my husband's job. We had a good time. However, the evening was cut a little short due to a thunderstorm that passed over us. (The forecast was isolated showers...guess we know where they were isolated to). I got pinged on the top of my head with a pea sized (well a little larger than pea sized) hail stone. Those puppies hurt!
I thought I'd share a few photos

The girls on the gondola ferris wheel. 


The sunset was really pretty when we were at the top of the ferris wheel. 
Here we are waiting in line for the Twister roller coaster. We never did get on the ride as the storm was approaching with lightning and thunder causing the ride to be stopped until it passed. Being it was close to the end of the night, we just left. 

And finally...I have a card to share! Believe it or not, I started this card early last month and only got the critters stamped and colored, as well as the heat embossing. Then it sat until last weekend when I snuck in a few minutes to try to finish this past weekend. The design is a case from Tara Sell's card, but darn it, I cannot find it on her blog. I also looked on her You Tube channel and no luck. Sorry! Anyway, I pretty much cased it completely. I think the changes are that I colored with pencils and I added the thanks to a banner. I also used different Doodlebug paper. 


Whew, that's it from me for now. 
Hopefully I will be able to craft again sometime soon.
Thanks for stopping by. I do so appreciate the visit.
Hope your week is off to a good start.
Hugs,
Jeanne



Sunday, August 14, 2016

Distress Ink Panels Made into Cards :)


Hi There!

I sat down yesterday to make some cards from the Distress Ink panels I created the other day. 

This first one is a gatefold card inspired by cards made by Jennifer McGuire here. The idea of gatefold cards is inspired, but my execution of it leaves a little to be desired. 

I got the idea to add the distress ink panel after I cut the gate-fold with an MFT Dienamics border die. Of course, when I cut it, I was off just slightly. I probably should have been a wee bit more careful. So I cut the sides trying to make the edges line up. It definitely took some doing and trimming to get it right. 
I thought the black butterflies looked really pretty against those ink colors(Paper Smooches Graceful Beauties and Hero Arts Butterflies Stamp and Cuts). The hello is a die set from Penny Black called Doodles. I cut part of the doodly part off and glued it with my Quickie Glue pen. Thought about adding some black Wink of Stella on the butterflies, but decided against it. What do you think?

Here's what I did with one of the striped panels I created with the Post It tape. 
 The colors reminded me of an ice-cream parlor, so that's where I went with it. I stamped the images from Lawn Fawn's Here's the Scoop stamp set onto watercolor paper with black pigment ink and heat embossed with clear embossing powder. Then I watercolored with the same color Distress Inks and fussy cut them out. I added some Clear Wink of Stella to the topping and CTMH Liquid Glass(same type of product as Glossy Accents) to the cherries on top.  I cut the journal card and the banner from Lawn Fawn's Journaling Die Set. The banner has again, the same ink colors as the rest of the card.

My friend Becky gave me an early birthday present in the dotted stamp. It's called Charming Cascades and is from Close To My Heart. She has made a few cards with that set and I really liked the look. My birthday isn't until the end of the month, but she wasn't sure when we'd get together again and she wanted to give me a chance to play it with before school/work got in the way. 
Thanks so much, Becky. :) I stamped the cascading circles stamp in each of the colors of Distress Inks I used on the stripes, too. I inked the stamp more toward the middle and bottom of the stamp so the dots wouldn't overwhelm my background.  For Picked Raspberries, I stamped off once to get a lighter version of the color. In the end I covered just those circles with some Stickles to add a little sparkle because the stamping didn't look that great. Sparkles fix a  lot of boo-boos. :)

That's it from me for now. 
Thanks so very much for stopping by.
I appreciate the visit.
Hope you have a wonderful day.
Hugs,
Jeanne 



Friday, August 12, 2016

Secret Garden Treehouse Finished :)

 Hi There!

I'm back again today to share my completed Secret Garden treehouse picture. 
I'm really happy with how it came out.
The only bummer is the pencil mark that was accidentally added and won't be erased.

Hope you like it, too. :) 
I decided not to add a background. Mainly because I don't know what to add and I want to move on to other pages. :)

I so appreciate your very kind comments on my coloring. Thank you very much for leaving such encouraging words. Makes me feel good, that is for sure and helps me feel good about continuing to color.

That's it for now.
Thanks so much for stopping by. 
I hope you have an amazing day.

Hugs,
Jeanne

Thursday, August 11, 2016

Distress Ink Stripes with Post It Tape

Hi There!

The Post It Tape I ordered came in today. Right on schedule. I ordered it because I saw a pin on Pinterest that led me to a video on You Tube and the artist on Instagram.Here's a blurry photo of what the package looks like. Well, a tad bit crumpled. I didn't care about that. The tape was fine. It's model 652 and is 1/3 inch wide. I ended up taking out of the plastic housing. Bianca messaged me to let me know she orders a 2 inch wide roll of Post It Tape and cuts it down to the size she wants. She gets hers at Simon Says Stamps. Not knowing if I was going to be good at this technique, I think a couple of dollars spent on the tape was sufficient. 

Here's my first attempt at stripes following her tutorial on You Tube. 

Here's how it turned out.
Now I have to apologize for slightly blurry photos. I was taking them with my smart phone in my craft space and I don't think the camera liked that much. 

I used the same colors as Bianca here, Barn Red, Spices Marmalade, Mustard Seed, Twisted Citron and Mermaid Lagoon.

She uses watercolor paper, but I tried it with Georgia Pacific cardstock that I got from Walmart. It works well for me when I want to blend Distress Inks. 

Here's my version of another color combo on her Instagram. I don't have Evergreen Bough, so I used Peacock Feathers. The other colors are Picked Raspberry, Spun Sugar and Cracked Pistachio.

Before I pulled the tape off, I decided to spritz the page with my spritzer that has water and Perfect Pearls for a little shimmer. I think I like it. :)


Finally, I wondered if Washi Tape would work for this technique. 

The ink blending went well!

But pulling the tape off did not go so well. :(

Oh well. Now I know. 

I haven't used the panels yet. But I wanted to share my results with the Post It Tape I found. 
I got mine online from Walmart and had it shipped to my local store, which is just a couple of minutes from my house.

So there you have it. Hope this helps!
Thanks again to Bianca from The Colours of Magic for the inspiration. 

Thanks so much for stopping by!
I hope you are having a wonderful day.

Hugs,
Jeanne


Monday, August 8, 2016

Ink Blending and Treehouse Coloring Page Update

Hi There!

I fiddled and futzed around today. I couldn't seem to settle down on one project for whatever reason. 
I finally decided to try some Distress Ink blending. One day last week, I came across a pin that captivated me. That led me to The Colours of Magic on Instagram. I can't remember which pin it was that lead me to Bianca's account, but I ended up watching thisYou Tube video. I've been on the hunt for that narrow Post It tape that she uses. Apparently it isn't sold locally, so I ordered this from Walmart. I hope it's the right stuff. In the mean time, if you check out this talented gal's Instagram account, you will see she shows many lovely blended color combinations. Since I have to wait for my order to come in to make the neat looking stripes, I tried my hand at some ink blending. 
Here's how Peacock Feathers, Scattered Straw and Worn Lipstick turned out for me. 
At first I wasn't too sure, but the combination is growing on me. Some of the other combinations she uses, include colors I don't own...yet. :)

I also worked on the Treehouse coloring page for the first time in what seems like weeks. I finished the trunk of the tree and added some color to the accessories around the tree house. 

I thought I messed up the trunk. I was definitely feeling a bit rusty when I first sat down, but hopefully it doesn't look too bad. 

Boy, looking at this picture, that base for the treehouse sure stands out. Hmmmm...maybe it won't so much after I'm done coloring. Otherwise I might need to add something to tone it down a little. 

That's it from me today! 
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Hope you've had a great day!

Hugs,
Jeanne

Sunday, August 7, 2016

Hello~Watercolor

Hi There!

Yesterday I started a case of a card by Suzy Plantamura as seen in this blog post. I was feeling brave enough to watercolor, actually. I painted the background panel and dried it with my heat gun. Then I added some more color and dried it. Then I set it aside. I stamped and watercolored the images. I used the Artist Loft watercolors from Michaels. I really like the blues and greens in that set. Hey, you can't be $4.99, either!
I'm making an effort to tweak my cases a bit more. Here you can see I added the journaling panel (from Lawn Fawn). I did die cut these images, but had stamped first and then die cut. Um, it's hard to line them up as the dies are solid and I can't quite tell where I should tape them. As it was, each cut was offset, meaning I ended fussy cutting to get the images to look good. Guess with these dies, you do the die cutting first and line up the stamps, huh? Now I know. 

Here's a close up. You can see I also watercolored the journaling card. All of the images are adhered flat with no pop dots this time. Being the messy watercolor-er that I am, I went over the images with a Micron pen, too, so you can see the eyes and the wings. :)

I'm also making more of an effort to decorate the inside of the card, too. I had a piece of leftover watercolor background that I die cut and added the images with SSS Fog ink. 
I so wanted to add some sparkle, but figured with it being a watercolored piece, I'd just mess it up. Sequins didn't look right, either. Ah well. Some white dots are all the embellishments this card got. 

That's it from me today.
Thanks so much for stopping by. 
I hope you have a great start to your week!
Hugs,
Jeanne

Saturday, August 6, 2016

Sparkly Butterflies

Hi There!

On Wednesday, I came across a beautiful butterfly card created by Michelle Lupton for A Blog Named Hero. Okay, she had me at butterfly as many of you know I love butterflies. :) I was also struck by the rainbow of color on the single butterfly against the rest being white. I thought the butterfly looked familiar, but I didn't own the set she used. Well, I discovered I DO own the same butterfly stamp. I have a different set called Stamp and Cuts Butterfly sold at Joann's. Yay!

I cased her card and added a few twists to make it my own.


I colored the butterfly using my Koh-i-noor colored pencils. I blended with odorless mineral spirits. 
A twist I added was to not only sparkle up the colored butterfly, but also the rest of the butterflies I stamped. I really like the look. I also added some little butterflies instead of the hearts Michelle used. 

I used MFT's Make a Wish set for the sentiment and went over the Wish (as well as those little butterflies) with my black Wink of Stella. The sentiment is all on one line. I inked just the Wish first. Then I cleaned the stamp really well and inked Make a and covered the Wish with some post it note to make sure no stray stamping showed up. 


I even stamped decorated the inside just a bit.
The sentiment is from a Penny Black set called Sprinkles and Smiles
I always forget to do that. :)


I'm very happy with the final card. 

Thanks so much for the visit. I hope you are having a happy day!
Edited to add: Carol encouraged me to enter this card in a challenge at Happy Little Stampers, here. :)
Hugs,
Jeanne

Friday, August 5, 2016

Needed Some Cards...

Hi there!

Well, I wish I made some cards just for fun, but unfortunately, I found myself in need of sympathy cards. My lifelong friend's father passed away. He and his wife had been married for 54 years! What a remarkable achievement. He had a good life, but is gone too soon. 

I was inspired to make this card from one made by Kay Miller

The following card might be a little bright, but I feel it still fits. I cased this one on Clips-n-Cuts 


I actually made a third one, but I neglected to take a picture of it! Darn. 

It looked a lot like this one. :)

I also made this birthday card. I saw this design somewhere, but cannot find it right now. 


My girls and I actually went to California to attend the funeral. It was the very first time my girls had been there and the first time I'd been back "home" in fifteen years. We spent a long weekend. My dad was thrilled (well, except for the reason we went). The service was lovely and a wonderful tribute to a wonderful man. 
The highlight of the trip was going to the beach. There was no way we were going to be in CA and not go to the beach. My mom took us kids every Wednesday during summer break when I was growing up. She would drive us through Topanga Canyon, for those of you who might know that route. We used to go to Santa Monica beach, but it's gotten to be such a tourist area, my brother thought it'd be more fun(less crowded) to head to Zuma beach. He was right. We did drive home on Topanga Canyon, though. :) 

And look! We saw dolphins! (I asked the lifeguard to be absolutely certain). I've never seen dolphins when at the beach. There were about 6 of them swimming along the shoreline. They'd move out of our sight line and then they came back. I was thrilled to capture them in photos. So cool!

Thanks so much for stopping by.
I truly appreciate the visit. 
I hope you are having a good day.
The Opening Ceremonies for the Olympics are tonight. Are you going to watch?
Hugs,
Jeanne



Monday, July 18, 2016

Colored Today~Works in Progress~Double Rainbow!

Hi There!

Thank you for the lovely comments on my posts recently. You all are making me feel pretty darn good about my coloring attempts. I'm tickled you like what I have been sharing. 

I've got some works in progress to share today in honor of that 30 Day Coloring Challenge. I am struggling to work on cards because I mainly just feel like coloring in my books. 

A while ago I saw this card  and I loved all the elements as well as the colors and how she fit them into the circle. I hemmed and hawed about getting the set and finally went ahead and ordered it. Here's my copy of what the creator did. I colored with my pencils instead of Copics. 
I like it for the most part. I'm not sure if I like where I stamped the sentiment. That might change. Setting the stamps up on my MISTI made short work of the stamping. I got the little circles from some other stamp sets I own, they don't come with the Beach set from Hero Arts. Those are stamped randomly. I really like the fun, summery feel of the images. 

And I've taken some pictures of the page I started the other day. 
I colored the leaves that day. Yep, it has a lot of leaves! I came across this video by The Art Spirits and was completely smitten by the colorful leaves. 

Yesterday I got the house basically done. Today I added the shadows to the house and the trim. I also started on the trunk and branches. 

This can be enlarged to see the work close up.
I am enjoying the color choices I am making this time. :)
And finally,
we had some thunderstorms roll through during the afternoon. After we finished dinner and as I sat down to work on this post I noticed the sun was coming out while it was still raining. I hoped we might be able to see a rainbow. 
Here's what we saw from our driveway!
So pretty!


Well, that's it from me today.
Thanks so very much for stopping by. 
I hope you've had a marvelous Monday!
Hugs,
Jeanne

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Colored Fish Card


Hi There!

I colored again today! Yay, me! I completely cased this card by Sandy Allnock. Man, is she a great colorist. I probably would never have wanted this stamp set if not for her card. I was mesmerized as I watched her You Tube tutorial on how she colored the Avery Elle Fish. I did my best to follow what she did and recommended. 
Overall, I think it came out pretty well for a first time effort of trying to get these highlights. She said she barely put the pencil on the paper with any pressure. I kept trying to do the same thing. Her coloring looked darker than mine, though. If I kept practicing, I might get better at it. I'm not as happy with my background. My bubbles looked pretty bad, so I covered them with Stickles. Sparkles solve a lot of issues. :)

Anyway, I adore these fish in fun colors. They look pretty silly and the sentiment does it's job...it makes me smile. :)

I also started a new page in The Secret Garden coloring book. Actually, it's the first page I have even colored in the book.  I didn't get very far after I finished this card, though. I haven't taken a picture yet. Maybe tomorrow. 

Thanks ever so much for stopping by. I appreciate the visit.
Hope you are having a great weekend.
Hugs,
Jeanne


Friday, July 15, 2016

Fox is Finished!

Hi There!

Just thought I'd pop in to share the fox that I just finished today. 
While I was initially disappointed that I couldn't get the same soft and smooth look as the colorist who inspired me to color the picture, I decided to not let that bother me too much any more. I just enjoyed the coloring. 
In The Enchanted Forest the squirrel page is on the left page and this fox is on the right. It's like the fox is looking at the squirrel. Maybe a bit hungrily?? I hope not!!

Hope you like. Thanks for all the encouraging comments on my coloring. They mean so much to me and make me smile really big! :)

Thanks so much for stopping by.
I hope you have a fantastic weekend!
Hugs,
Jeanne

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Finished Spring Flowers Card, Best Day Coloring Page and Started a Fox

 Hi There!

How are you doing this week? Hopefully, you are keeping cool and happy. 
My girls and I saw The Secret Life of Pets today with our friends (Hi Becky). Outside of the ads on tv, I had no idea what all was involved in the movie. I can tell you there were many places where I laughed and loudly. It's a good one. :)  Fun way to spend a summer's day. 

I was able to finish the card with the panel I watercolored the other day. I kept it pretty similar to Suzy's version. I thought about adding white dots with my gel pen, but in the end, didn't want to risk messing up the card, so I only added it to the petals on the one flower. I also carefully added some Spectrum Noir Sparkling Clear glitter pen to the centers of the flowers and on the leaves. I pulled out my Crystal Stickles and added that to the circles. The hugs die is from Lawn Fawn and I cut that from some glitter fun foam. The twine is Doodlebug. I used two colors. 

I also finished coloring the page from the Good Vibes coloring book. I even colored in the background! Eeep. I think it came out okay. I started to add some white gel pen dots to the scallops around the edge, but didn't really like that they barely show up, so that's all I did. I was kind of following the sample provided in the book but I also tried some shading and some different color combinations. I'm happy with it overall. 


And I started a new page in The Enchanted Forest. This is the fox. The same You Tuber that colored the squirrel colored the fox and I got the idea to try using my Koh-I-Noor pencils to see if I could get the soft smooth look that Maggie's Colours does. Um, I'm not being very successful. She uses 
Bruynzeel pencils and I don't own that brand. If you watch her videos, her coloring almost looks chalk-like and very, very smooth. My pencils show the tooth of the paper. I think that is the wax in them. I am liking the colors in the fox, but not really liking my coloring. It looks pretty rough to me. Oh well. I definitely have lots of pages on which to practice. This is as far as I got today. 


That's it from me!
Thanks so much for stopping by. 
I hope you have a great rest of the week. 
Hugs,
Jeanne

Sunday, July 10, 2016

Vacation Pictures & Coloring Challenge


Hi There!

Hope you are having a great day. Last weekend we loaded up the family van and headed out for a road trip to Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Steve's family lives there. While I had computer access, I didn't keep up with emails and blogs and stuff, so I am a bit behind on commenting. Just in case you were wondering where I was. 

Hope you don't mind a few vacation pictures. 
On July 4th we headed into downtown Sioux Falls to check out their sculpture walk. On the main street in downtown there are many sculptures to take in and buy, if you had the inclination and the money. We did this a couple of years ago and had a great time. They change the sculptures each year. I thought this one was really neat. Those are cat faces made from boat motor cases! Jessica is partial to kitties and she was enamored with this display. If you check out the link above, the picture on the main page is a bunch of books. Jessica really liked that one, too. :) You can scroll through the photos if you like to see sculptures. They were pretty cool. 

On the 5th, we drove to Walnut Grove, Minnesota. For those of you who may wonder why in the world we would do that,Walnut Grove is one of the places where Laura Ingalls Wilder (of Little House fame) lived. My girls are standing on the bank of Plum Creek! We also saw the indentation where the dugout  they lived in was. The roof has long since caved in. We toured the museum, which had a couple of rooms dedicated to the television series. While fun, any resemblance to her life in the series was purely coincidental. The center area outside the museum is planted with plants that would have grown back when she lived there. So pretty. There were several buildings to tour, although not all of them had items directly related to her. There were a few other locations in town we could have gone to, but we were running out of time and it was really hot and humid.  I can now state that I have visited three of the towns where Laura lived. I've also toured De Smet, South Dakota and Rocky Ridge Farm in Mansfield, Missouri. Happy Sigh!

We also visited the Sertoma Butterfly House and Marine Cove. Steve is the only one who got a hitchhiker this time. I just love how active the butterflies are in this place. Much more so than the butterflies in the Butterfly Pavilion here. 

And here I am. They had these "selfie stations" set up. Only, if you did a selfie with one of these signs the saying would show up backwards. Hrm...so one of the girls took this one of me. 

And that concludes the vacation picture portion of this post. Hopefully I didn't bore you. 

 We had a good time, but it's always good to be home. 

There is a 30 Day Coloring Challenge going on thanks to Kathy R of The Daily Marker blog. I love the idea of the challenge, but haven't really participated before. Today I made sure to sit down and do some coloring. 

Here's the first thing I worked on. It's not finished, but this is as far as I got. I just got this stamp set from Simon Says Stamp. I was inspired to make this from Suzy Plantamura. If you've not checked her blog, Living My Dream out, you should. She does a series of using one stamp set at least five ways. She also creates great coloring card fronts and sells them at Simon Says stamps. Anyway, I loved the series she did with this stamp set. I used Artist Loft watercolors. Artist Loft is the house brand Michaels sells. 

The goal of this coloring challenge is to do some coloring every day, it doesn't matter if you finish a project. I like that no pressure approach. 

I also started this page in a coloring book I've had for months. I bought it at Hobby Lobby, but I'm sure you can find it at other craft stores or online. Here's a link to the artist who drew the images. 

That's it from me today. I'm sure that this is quite enough. :)

Thanks so much for stopping by. I hope you have a great start to your week!
Hugs,
Jeanne