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

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

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

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

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

Make a Wish and a Squirrel!

Hello again!

Wow, I'm posting two days in a row. Go me! :) A card and another coloring page to share. 

First up, the card. I was inspired by this one made by Yuunson Hur. I really liked the rainbow ink blending and how the heat embossed candles stood out. And I braved flicking a little Martha Stewart pearl paint onto the card. I'm so nervous to do that for fear I will mess the card up. I really like the font in the word Wish. The stamp and wonky stitched die are from My Favorite Things. 

I realized after I posted yesterday, I've shown current pictures of Jessica, but not of Amy. Here she is doing 'the whip' after blowing out the candles on her cupcakes. Silly girl, but she has a bright smile on her face and I'll take that any day. 

I finished another coloring page from The Enchanted Forest! The image isn't quite as detailed as the other ones I've colored, so I was able to get it mostly done yesterday.  Maggie's Colours posted a how to video on how she colored the squirrel and I was really impressed with the soft colors and her blending skills. Even as a how to, her video goes quickly and I stopped it often. She used a different brand of pencils than I have, and they may have had a different type of lead. My blending isn't as soft as hers, but I really liked some of the color combinations. The leaves right under his cheek with the yellow, greenish color and blue really made me smile. 

Again, some of these color combinations I never would have thought of to try, so I am grateful for these videos to help me get out of my color choice box. :)

That's it from me today. I hope you have a great start to your weekend and a Happy 4th to all my American friends. :) Be safe. 

Hugs,

Jeanne