So Thankful For You card

  Hello! 

Whoosh! And it's November! This year is just racing by. Our last week of October was a cold and snowy one. We went something like 109 hours below freezing and broke records. School/work was kind of crazy, too, because of the cold and snow. Monday we had a late start. Tuesday was an early release and on Wednesday we had a snow day! On Halloween we were in the upper 30s, low 40s. We only had two small groups come to our house for trick-or-treating. Not sure if it was due to the weather or if trick or treating is no longer a thing in our neighborhood. 

I had some time on Saturday to work on cards and it ended up that I spent all my crafty time on one card. But, I don't mind. I really like how it came out. I was smitten with this card by Candice Fisher that I saw on the Butterfly Reflections Ink blog. She was promoting Hello Bluebird in her card. I don't own those stamps, but I couldn't get the lovely colors out of my mind. So, I set out to mimic the card using my Lawn Fawn stamps.  I didn't have dies to go with all the sets, so I fussy cut the images out. I also don't own the Distress Oxide Inks in the colors she used, so I used regular Distress Inks in Squeezed Lemonade, Carved Pumpkin and Ripe Persimmon. I added some Brushed Corduroy to the trees. All the images were colored with Copics. This is what is called a slim line card. 3 1/2 by 8 1/2. I do have envelopes to fit it. You can find them at Hobby Lobby. *Ü*

And just for fun, here is a picture I snapped last week when the girls were going to go with their dad to take the dog for a walk. He is part American Eskimo (really!) and LOVES the cold and snow. 

Thanks so much for stopping by. 

I hope you have a great start to the new week.

Crafty hugs,

Halloween Shaker Tags

 Oh my goodness! I had not realized my last post was at the end of January! Way to drop off the face of Blogland. Well, if you are reading this, you know that I am still here. I am still creating from time to time, although I do post more frequently on my Instagram account (@crafterjeanne if you are on that platform). I know many of you choose not to add another element of social media and I respect that. I've gotten a few questions recently asking if I was still posting. It's always my intention to post, but I have let life get in the way. I do have a couple of projects to share, but I thought I'd give a brief life update. If you'd rather scroll past to the pictures, feel free.

My older daughter graduated high school in May and turned 18 in June! Crazy how fast that time flew. It's like the line in the song by Luke Bryan called Most People are Good,... the days go slow, but the years go fast. She got her first job (working as a cashier, or rather, Guest Advocate) at Target. She started college at a local community college where she wants to get into their Nursing program. This college has an excellent nursing school that is very well respected. They are starting a baccalaureate program. So far she is enjoying her prerequisite classes.

My younger daughter is a junior in high school this year and is continuing in the marching band and all of the clubs she enjoys. I am still volunteering quite a bit. She is a section leader for the Pit members (the instruments like marimba, xylophone, etc). She is also enjoying her classes so far.

As for me, I am still working in the elementary school kitchen, where they keep me hopping! It's been a roller coaster of a beginning to the school year due to some personnel issues, but I am hoping things will settle down. I've been hoping for things to settle down in the kitchen for a long time now. It's a big part of the reason I've neglected this blog. I come home pretty tired.

I have made some personal goals to try to pick up on things I've been neglecting and posting here is one of the goals. I am really going to strive to post more regularly.

So, onto what I chose to share today. First up is a counted cross stitch project I made for Amy. She is my giraffe lover. In fact, just last night we were at the Denver Zoo for my husband's company employee appreciation day. Amy couldn't wait to stop by the giraffe enclosure. She was so happy to see Dobby and the three other giraffes they have in house. Anyway, I found this pattern on Etsy from Awesome Pattern Studio.

I'm currently working on a stitching project that I started way back when, even before the girls were born or not long after Amy was born! I think I put it away worrying that Amy would find the needle and poke herself. But over the summer I decided to update my wall decor in my kitchen area and this project felt like it would fit well with the new decor, so I'm trying to finish it. It's kind of slow going, but I'll get there. 

And now to a more seasonal project. I recently made these shaker tags after seeing them online on D Kirby Stamps blog here. Lawn Fawn just released these absolutely adorable mini village houses in a Halloween theme and I could not resist even though my girls are past the trick or treating age. 

I followed the inspiration project for the most part, but I did a little something different for the background, although you can't really tell here. I used some Nuvo Shimmer Powders to get the night sky. I think I covered up too much of it. I also used some wonderful iridescent embossing powder from Love From Lizi (a UK company) on the tags, but again, the area is a tad too small to get the full effect. Oh well.  I also used iridescent stars from Martha Stewart (they've been in my stash for years). The images are colored with Copic markers. 

That's it from me for now. Thanks so much for stopping by. I get so much inspiration from all of you crafters out there. Thank you so much for all the sharing. I hope you don't mind my CASE of your ideas. 

Til next time, crafty hugs!

Happy New Year! I've Got Projects to Share...

Hello!!

Happy New Year! 

I hope 2019 will be filled with lots of crafty things for you. 

I also hope I am able to finagle a way to create and share more this year. 

I'm going to start out with a bang, I think.

I've got a few things to show you. 

I was talking with a friend yesterday about knitting and crafts. I realized I go through phases in my crafty life. There are years when I crochet a lot, or knit a lot. Lately, I've been doing lots of counted cross stitch. I learned how to do it with my mom when we were on vacation at friend's house here in Colorado back in the late 80s? I don't quite remember.  I've enjoyed it ever since, though. :)

I have a friend who loves foxes and I found a really unique fox pattern that I stitched as a gift for her. 

I found the pattern on Etsy. It was fun to stitch. 

My friend's daughter is a huge fan of wolves. I've looked for years for a good wolf project to make for her. Finally, I found one that I thought she would like. 

My friend and her daughter seemed to be very happy with their gifts. 

I know I really enjoyed creating them. 

I do handwork in the evenings when it is too dark to make cards. 

Unfortunately, I had need of a sympathy card this past week. 

I had a sketch setting out and I used it along with paper from an older DCWV paper pad called Linen Closet. Remember when those were available at Joann's? Love this paper. Thought it was pretty for this card and I do hope it offers some comfort. 

And to end on a bit more of happy note, here's a card I created recently using MFT's Cool Christmas stamp set. Oh gosh, I bought so many stamp sets for Christmas cards this year and I didn't get to use them! But I used this one for a non Christmas card. 

I had fun coloring it with Copic markers and sort of futzing with the design. My friend Kay makes really fun scene cards in this vein and that's what inspired me. I used MFT's Petite Plaid pattern paper for the background. I also used Lawn Fawn's Mountain borders for the mountains. Those snowmen just make me smile. 

Here's a bit of a close up.

 These pictures were taken with my phone, so if they are slightly blurry, that is why. 

Thank you so much for stopping by. 

I appreciate the visit. 

Hope you have an awesome start to your new year. 

Crafty hugs,

Quick Life Update and a Snowmanpalooza!

Hello there!

It's been a minute, hasn't it? Life sure has a way of getting in the way of doing some of the things we enjoy in favor of other priorities. I've missed you all though, and sharing. I'll give you a quick update and then get to the cards I want to share. 

It's been a busy fall season with school being back in session. The girls had their marching season, which is always very hectic. This is Amy's Senior year and I am trying to savor all the "lasts."

This is from Senior Night where the seniors who are in the band, on the football team or are cheerleaders and poms honor their parents. It's a nice tradition. 

Here's her Senior poster. I thought I had designs of a trumpet and treble clef to cut with my Cricut or Cameo, but couldn't find any. So, I used some Casual Fridays stamps instead. Amy loved it and we got lots of compliments on it. Yay for stamping!

And if you will forgive a very proud mama moment, Amy is still in Girl Scouts and is working on earning her Gold Award (the highest award in Girl Scouts). She had to come up with a community service type of project as one of the requirements. She planned a CPR training and first aid class/workshop to be held at her high school. It was open to teachers and students. She held the workshop last week. A local news station interviewed her and filmed the workshop. They aired the piece that night and to our surprise, they started the newscast with her story!

Here is a link, if you are interested in watching.

News Story

I'm very proud of her. 

As for me, work has been a challenge so far this year. Our school was one of several schools selected for an upcoming audit by the state department of education. Many people from the head office are coming in almost daily and many procedural changes are being made to make sure we are in compliance for the audit. I've never been through one before and it's quite interesting and a bit(okay, a lot) nerve wracking. A couple of more weeks til the audit and hopefully we do well and things will settle down. 

I have been doing some creating here and there, but not consistently and I miss it. 

The cards I have to share today were inspired by this card by Christy Gets Crafty.

I just loved how she colored the adorable little snowmen in the Mama Elephant Little Snowman Agenda set. The top card is a copy of her version, but I Copic colored all the images(and fussy cut them out) and used the rest for the second version. The little iridescent snowflakes are from a little bottle  that I found in the Target Dollar Spot a couple of weeks ago. The die with the square openings is from MFT and the sentiment is from Lawn Fawn. 

Thank you so much for stopping by.

I hope you have a lovely holiday season. 

I also hope to be back before the start of the new year. 

Crafty hugs!

Coloring Gnomes for Coloring Challenge

Hello there!

It is with huge thanks to Darnell and her Mister that I am posting today. I expressed to her that I haven't been posting much on my blog recently because it's become very inconvenient and time consuming for me to do so with the purchase of a new camera several months ago and the fact that my phone only uploads a single picture at a time to my Photoshop Elements program. First world problems to be sure, but annoying and made me avoid uploading and editing photos for the blog. She responded with questions about why I didn't upload to the cloud. Um...because I never thought about it and more importantly didn't really understand how to do it. I knew vaguely that Google has a drive and photos and all that, but this old gal never really paid attention. My interest piqued, I started looking into it. So I'm trying upload pictures to Drive and Photos and I get a new email from Darnell and her hubby about being able to upload pictures  to my camera's cloud. So, now I'm looking into that as well. I think I'm going to have pictures in several clouds at this rate. I don't care as long as they are safe and secure and EASY for me to access for editing and posting to my blog. As I tell most people, I only know enough about technology to be dangerous. :)

All that to say...here's my first attempt at uploading from one of the clouds this morning. I was able to get it to my editing program and then uploaded to Blogger. Yay, me!

This stamp set is from My Favorite Things and is called You Gnome Me. I had been on the fence about getting this set for some time, but after seeing this pop up card from Rachel at The Unpampered Stamper that I jumped off the fence into ownership. Rachel was kind enough to share with me the Copics she used to color her gnomes so vibrantly. I copied as closely as I could and took a liberty or two to make it my own. I didn't buy the dies, so I will have to fussy cut the images here pretty soon so I can make something with them. 

This is one of my shares for The Daily Marker's 30 Day Coloring Challenge. Speaking of which, I haven't colored yet today. I've been a little preoccupied with my head in the clouds. 

Oh and I  have Darnell to thank again because she shared something about comments coming to our inboxes again without having to leave ourselves one first. Go here to read what she found out.  Let's hope it works with any comments left on this post. 

You may be seeing posts from me more consistently!

Thanks so much for stopping by! 

I hope you have an amazing day.

Coloring Challenge Efforts

Hello!

Kathy Racoosin is hostessing her 10th 30 Day Coloring Challenge all this month. And I've been able to participate every day, in one form or another. Thank you, summer break from work and school! I have been sharing my efforts on my Instagram account, but wanted to share with you a few of the coloring projects I've worked on. I'll do my best to share more during the second half of the challenge. It's a lot of fun and if you only have 5 minutes to color, go for it. It's just for fun and to give you some "me" time to relax. 

Anyway, in no particular order, here are a few projects. I've been practicing my Copic coloring by following videos of different artists and CASEing the cards they share. 

Here I cased Mayra's cards.  She is so talented! I know I've sung her praises here before. 

On this card, I cased Eloise Blue and used Sunny Studio Stamps. These kiddos make me smile. 

Here is was playing with some shimmery watercolors I bought at Hobby Lobby. The mermaid theme works so well for this time of the year. This is a panel from Carolee's Creations Art Play Paintables, that I found here at Scrapbook dot com. Too bad this shot doesn't fully show just how shimmery this Master's Touch Metallic Semi Color Cake Paint Set is. You can find this watercolor product in Hobby Lobby stores and it is very affordable. The purple pink color looks iridescent to me. So fun!

And finally, here are some adorable Viking Kids I found at CC Designs. They come in stamps or digital. I bought the digital format. I was inspired by a wonderful video by Laura Volpes. She colored her images with different markers, but I played and practiced with my Copics. I really enjoy watching Laura's videos. She does a great job showing what she is creating, but I also enjoy her accent. I don't own the powders she used to make the backgrounds, but they look pretty fun!

That's it for me today. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and I really appreciate your stopping by.
Hugs,