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

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

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