A Couple of Cards to Celebrate and a New Colored Page to Share

How is it the end of June already? Yikes! Before I know it, it'll be back to school time and my days of relaxing will be gone! I'm relaxing so well, I've barely made any cards! Ruh-roh. I've got a few things to share today though. :)

First up is a card I made after being inspired by this one by Nichol Spohr Magouirk. I thought it was adorable. I don't own any of those fancy schmancy watercolor pens, but I do own some watercolor pencils and that is what I used on this card. I also just used Lawn Fawn's Here's the Scoop set. I don't own the other one she used. Can you see the sparkle on the thanks? I added the new Spectrum Noir sparkle pens to my stash and am really impressed with how shimmery it looks.

Next up is a card that my daughter Jessica made for her sister, Amy, who just turned...gulp, 15 last weekend. Oh my word, now we have to think about all new kinds of milestones...like driving. Nope, not gonna do that just yet. I'm not ready. Even if she's chomping at the bit. LOL

Anyway, not that I am biased or anything, but I think Jessica did a fabulous job on the card. I showed her this one made by the fabulous Kay Miller and she was eager to get started. She modified it to have purple stripes as purple is Amy's favorite color. :)

Awww...sisterly love. 

I have been struggling to sit down in my crafty corner to work on cards because I've totally been bitten by the coloring bug. Thanks, in large part, to You Tube. I am awed by the coloring talent that is out there. I am also so thankful that they film and share how they are coloring the pages for all of us newbies to watch and learn. 

I want to thank you so much for the very kind and encouraging comments that you've left for me in regards to my coloring. They mean a lot to me and I am truly touched that you like what I color. I am not trained in art in any way. I struggle mightily to come up with ideas on my own. Give me a blank page, or an uncolored image, and I really don't know what to do. I have spent lots of time trying to come up with something appealing on my own from scratch and it is extremely frustrating for me. I just cannot do it. So, I copy. I see something I like and I try to recreate it and put my own spin on a part of it. It may not be a huge change, but I will do something a bit different that makes it more my own. But the inspiration is always from a source that is not me. That's why I never call myself an artist. I don't feel like I am one. I'm a copier for sure. And I always credit the project that inspired me. 

That being said, I saw this video on You Tube and fell in love with the colors. And I had to color the page using those same colors. You saw one of the combos on my bee page.

Aren't the colors so pretty? This dragonfly is in The Enchanted Forest by Johanna Basford. 

The video is in three parts and I have to admit, the quality of the video isn't that great. She said in the comments that this was the only video that she has made that was of the poor quality. But I didn't really care. I set up my tablet at my table and colored along with her, stopping when needed. There is a third video on how she did the background and I didn't really like how it looked, so I opted not to add color to the background. I am very happy with how this turned out. 

I've already started another page. 

Hooked, I tell you. I am hooked!

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

I hope you have a happy day!

Hugs,

Jeanne

All Kinds of Coloring Fun!

Hi There!

On my last post, I shared a picture of seahorses that I had finished coloring in the Lost Ocean coloring book. I was deciding what I wanted to color next. Welll, Jessica and I had gone to the book store to see if they had a book she wanted and I can no longer resist looking at coloring books. Jessica tried to get me away from the table, but I just have to pick them up and flip through the pages. It's become a bit of a joke between us, actually. I spotted one that captivated me. And when I flipped through it, I came across a page that made me gasp. Then and there I decided the book had to come home with me. 

This is the cover of the book. 

Joyous Blooms to Color by Eleri Fowler. 

Look at the flowers and the butterflies. I am smitten. 

I chose to wait on coloring the page that made me gasp. I'm too afraid I'm gonna mess it up. The page I decided to color has a nice big bee front and center. It made me think of my sweet and talented friend Barb. She loves bees. :)

Here is the finished bee. Oh my goodness, I had so much fun coloring this. The paper of this book is like a smooth cardstock and my pencils blend SO nicely. I wanted to make the wings look iridescent. I wasn't quite getting the look I wanted until I added a bit of green. Swoon. Then I added some Wink of Stella. Oh my gosh. It's very pretty in real life. 

Here's the bee with the flowers around it colored in. Photo taken on a different day, hence the difference in lighting. 

And here's the finished page. 

I'm very happy with how it turned out. Jessica loves the peach looking flowers. I got that color combination from watching a colorist on You Tube. It's Henna, Peach and Light Peach in the Prismacolor pencils. I also thought about coloring in the center behind the bee, but that's a big space and I'm not that confident that I would do a decent job in that big of a space. Maybe someday. 

And here's some "coloring" of a different sort. My Jessica loves nail polish and nail art. She watches many tutorials on how to do different things with nail polish. She became smitten with an idea using glitter polish and liquid highlighter pens of all things. They look like regular highlighter pens, but the barrel says liquid highlighter. Anyway, take a look at the end result of her efforts.

Isn't that neat? 

I'm so impressed that she has the patience to do this. 

We've sure been having fun coloring these days. 

Gotta love summer break inspiration. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

I hope you have a great day.

Hugs!

Channeling My "Inner Kay" :) Hey Gillfriend!

Hi There!

I've got a card to share with you today that was completely cased from my good friend Kay Miller. Here's the one she made and below is my version. I can't ever hope to blend as well as she does, but I did try to channel my "inner Kay" as I created this. I got a huge assist from my stamping buddy, Jessica. :) She did all the coloring of the critters.   I think she did an awesome job. 

I did the fussy cutting.

I thought I'd share that I listened to people who say if you watercolor something, don't immediately trash it if it doesn't work for the project you are working on. I had a background done for months that'd I'd keep seeing and thinking, should I trash this? Well, I never did and when I was working on this card, I wondered if I cut that piece up, would it look good as the sea water? I think it worked pretty well and it's finally used up. ;) And, while you can't tell in the photo, unless maybe it you enlarge it, the white piece is glittered cardstock. Adding the purple fish is my last attempt at doing something a bit different-even if it might be a fish that doesn't belong in the sea. It's my fantasy world and I think it'd be just fine. Ha, ha! The rest of the design is all her creative genius. 

I also finished coloring the seahorse picture. Go me! 

Now the tricky part is trying to decide what to work on next. 

I have many books to choose from!

Thanks so much for stopping by!

I hope you are having a wonderful day. 

Hugs!

Fairy Friends Magical Day and Colored Seahorses!

Hi there!

We sure enjoyed our first week of summer break. It really had a low key feel. But next week, Amy will be volunteering at a STEM camp at the high school. It's the same event she participated in last summer, only this time she will be helping out. She's looking forward to that and also the start of marching band practice.  So, we'll be a tad busier. 

I have been working on doing some cleaning up around the house. The kind of projects I kept putting off because I didn't have time, or more likely, the energy to tackle during the school year. That's felt good. The weather was nice, not to cool and not too warm. I think this next week we are supposed to have a good dose of heat, though. The swamp cooler is up and running, so we should be able to stay cool. 

I've been checking out You Tube a bit more than I have in the past. My girls watch it constantly and while I've watched videos, they are usually the ones that I have been made aware of via blogs. I have never sought out a particular You Tuber and subscribed. Well, somehow, last week, I came across a video by Johanna Basford, the artist who has drawn The Secret Garden, The Lost Ocean and The Enchanted Forest coloring books(I own all three, but haven't colored in them much). I was captivated. She has a lovely accent and her studio looks amazing. She has done a tutorial on coloring the seahorses in The Lost Ocean and I love, love, loved the color combination. That inspired me to follow along and color the seahorses. I did the one on the left first last week and then colored the one on the right yesterday. I did it mostly the same, but changed a few things as well. I'm itching to color the rest of the page. Most likely after I publish this post. :) Anyway, I've been having fun subscribing to  and watching different You Tube channels.

This morning I watched a video on coloring a dragonfly...so pretty! 

This You Tube stuff could become quite the rabbit hole for me...much like Pinterest or Instagram, I'm sure. 

I also came across a card on a Lawn Fawn Flickr Friday post here and I fell hard. So much so that I had to recreate it for myself. I put a couple of different elements in it to make it more my own, but I stayed as true as I could to the color scheme. As close as I could using my pencils. 

I'm only sad that you can't really see the sparkle on this card. I've used Wink of Stella and the Stardust Gelly Roll pen  and it didn't get picked up on the camera. I tried it standing up above and laying down, below. 

Oh well.

Guess you'll just have to trust me that it's sparkly in real life. ;)

That's it from me for now. I truly appreciate you stopping by. 

I hope you have a great day!