I really doubt my blog gets readers any longer but that's alright. I've not been here giving anything new to see. I wonder sometimes why other people blog. Do they blog for followers, money, loneliness, to inspire others???? I think the list could go on and on. The answer for me is varied. At first my blog started to just share PSP tutorials and then it grew to share signature tag making kits but as I was doing all these things I realized I just liked to write. I liked to share my feelings....happy, sad or somewhere's in between. This blog became my not so secret diary sometimes. When my husband died in 2015, I plummeted down a deep, dark rabbit hole that has taken some time for me to try to find the light. I had to find the me without him. It's been hard. I've had to start a new job, find a new home, and create new friendships all the while helping my family learn a new normal. I had to give myself permission to smile through the tears and actively look for the joy in life. I've learned every day that I'm fortunate enough to be on this earth is a new day to be my very best me. 

So my friends....I'll leave you with this little quote I saw while browsing Pinterest the other day.

The pastor to my church gave a sermon awhile back that I honestly can't remember the topic of but I have carried a phrase he used during the service with me ever since.  "Do what you know how to do until you can do different." My whole life is different now and in the struggle to find my new normal I am slowly getting back to doing what I know how to do. Sometimes it's just finding the energy to make the bed and other days it's the sheer determination to "art my hurt away". Its during these art therapy times I think of nothing. I am totally immersed in the process---the colors, the texture of the paper, the way the pencil sounds as it scratches across page in the sketchbook or glides across gesso, the smell of the wax from colored pencils or the distinctive smell of markers, the squishy feel of the paint when you smear it with your fingers---it's almost like I get a "time out" from life where I can exhale quietly with no expectations from anyone or anything.  It's when I can remember that my precious husband was my biggest fan. It's where I can hope he's smiling down on me from heaven still cheering me on. It's where I find a small piece of me I recognize from before my life got turned upside down. It's in these tiny islands of peacefulness that has helped me cope with the loneliness. The absence of my best friend has been devastating. It's in the faces of my journal girls and the doodles on a notepad that I lay my heart bare with words and symbolism that reaches to my core. Sometimes, well a lot of times, words don't convey the feelings I have in my soul. I thought I would share a few of my journal girls. No fancy art supplies used but I do use Prismacolor colored pencils because they are super waxey and blend beautifully for skin. The rest of the supplies used are a mechanical pencil, micron pen, Sharpie water based paint pen for the white highlights and in the Bloom girl the vivid color is from Dye-Na-Flow liquid fabric color. She is also the only one on watercolor paper.
So my friends whatever your troubles are maybe you can art yourself a moment of peace, exhale gently, and turn whatever is hurting your heart into something beautiful. ❤️

Sometimes one needs to retreat from the world to find out who they really are. That's definitely what I've been doing. I've been one half of a two part team for so many years that I'm floundering around like a fish out of water. Everything is just as difficult and unfamiliar to me as the fish who needs to be in the water to survive. Me without my husband literally takes my breath away. I am finding grief to be very exhausting and unpredictable. One day I can laugh and other days all I can do is cry. It's a cruel sack of emotions I go through. For the longest time I thought I was going crazy but then I found a group on Facebook with so many beautiful souls who are walking the same walk as I am. I am NOT crazy. I have found out that what I feel is ok and quite normal and it's my grief and MY time table on when I do or don't do things. Other's move on fast to new relationships and just as equally there's just as many who a Chapter 2 with someone is a foreign concept. I'm of the mindset that I was so lucky to have a love story of a lifetime. How could I be greedy and expect anything more. But if God set someone in my path I would do my best to recognize that gift. Until then, I am creating a life for me with no expectations of sharing with anyone else. I need to find me and who I am as a single solitary soul and sometimes I think I know who that girl is and other time's she's as elusive as smoke in the wind. 

2016 is almost over. I don't believe in resolutions but I have been giving tremendous thought on how I want to live the next year. So many of my days during this past year I just existed. If I got through the day, it was an accomplishment.....it really was!!!! I've decided it's ok to be selfish. I am a team of 1 now. I need to take care of me so my health is top of the list. I will quit feeling quilty for finding joy and I will consistently make time for art, digital and mixed media, and last but not least I will make time for God and set aside time for my Bible study and prayer time on a consistent basis.

Above it all I will will be BRAVE.
Scared is what you're feeling. Brave is what you're doing. 

― Emma Donoghue





Many blessings for the coming year to all of you!

It's been a long time since I have blogged. A lot has happened since the last time I shared. One of the things that kept me away was that I was living life with my husband...we had big plans to sell our home and buy a travel trailer and I go out on the road with him while he worked out of town. We realized that we had lost so much time together already with the work situation and we wanted to find a way to remedy that. You can't get time back.

Then the knock came on the door that changed my life forever. My beloved husband had died. He was only 46 years old and for all we knew healthy. He has just had a physical but a blood pressure issue had went undetected over time and he had a cardiac arrest. He was out of town working. I had spoken and texted him through out the day. Things were great. He was scheduled to come home the next day. In less than a split second my heart was shattered. Just a few days ago marked a year that he has not been the voice I hear every single morning when I wake and the rock I leaned on. I had the luxury to be a stay at home mom and wife. We sacrificed for that to happen but it was worth every coupon I clipped. It's taken me a year to find a new home and a job that could pay the bills that go with it.  In fact, I've only been in our new home a month and I still have boxes to unpack.  

So here I sit.....being eternally grateful for all my blessings and at the same time cursing because this is not supposed to be my life....but yet it is.  Everyday I wonder how I will make it through and at the end of the day I find that somehow I did. I wonder if I will ever feel genuine joy and happiness again. I have moments with my kids......how can I not? but that's not joy felt in my soul.
And if I've heard it once....I heard it a hundred times....."You are so young, you will remarry." I die a little every time I hear it. Me and Ricky were perfect together.....I can't even wrap my mind around anyone else in my life.



So here I sit....working on living again.....and maybe one day I can smile without tears in the corners of my eyes.

Here's to Living Well and Blessings to All☻

Online workshops....oh how I love them!!!! Art ones, photography ones, scrap booking ones.....so very divine!!! It's been my goal this year to actually do the work and participate in them instead of just purchasing them and getting LAZY because of "Lifetime" access. The ease of access, the idea that I will get to it as soon as I finish task A, B, or C. What usually happens is that the workshop that I just HAD TO HAVE OR JUST DIE sits in a forum, downloads sitting in a folder on a hard drive and I never fully commit to taking advantage of a product that I paid hard earned money for. I know I am not the only one out there in the world that does this. Why? Why don't we think we are important enough to set something aside or say NO....block off time in our calendars to commit to an workshop or class that apparently is of great interest enough to invest cash into.

I have my own thoughts on that actually. After all I can only speak for myself and after much soul searching it comes down to the simple fact that I haven't given much value to the things I wanted. The roles of mom and wife have been given prime value while the role of just being me has been at the very bottom of the list. I found myself giving my daughter the advice of knowing who she is and never "losing" herself in someone else and that having her own interests will keep her sane and happy. What a hypocrite I was!!!!!! It's NOT selfish to take time to pursue a hobby or to just sit and unwind with a book.  So my mission this year is to work on completing all the wonderful workshops on my hard drive and really participate and interact with other wonderfully like minded souls in any "live" workshops I take. One of the workshops that is sitting on my hard drive and has a classroom on the Ruzuku platform is Tangie Baxter's The Symbology Project. I was just about to start it right as she put up The Symbology Workshop No. 3.  I will start with workshop no.3 instead because (1) it is in a live forum and (2) I got it free for being a member of The Art Journal Emporium. Please come check it out with me. I would love to cheer you on just out of the sheer pleasure of seeing another beautiful soul taking a few moments to nurture herself♥   

I love February and hate it all at the same time. It's just such a short month but it's also the month of mine and my daughter's birthdays not to mention Valentine's Day. In between the holiday's I have been trying to find a way to balance my digital life (scrapping, workshops, creative team duties) with the real life.  I certainly applaud all who do so with much more success than me. I feel like I need a personal secretary sometimes and other times I just feel like staying unplugged. What did we do before all the technology?!?!?!?  What I have been doing between my temp job and not blogging much is focusing on more hands on craftiness. Over at Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Emporium we are still reading Cat Bennett's The Confident Creative. It has been the best book ever to start out the year reading especially if you have been feeling in a creative slump or never ever thought yourself creative to begin with. I had never really thought myself an artist in a sense that I could draw but I started reading this book soon after I read Mixed Media Girls with Suzi Blu (a book that had been on my shelf for a year) and it has helped get rid of my self doubt and the "I can'ts". I realized I was living a self-fulfilling prophecy by saying "I can't" because I never really put in the effort to really try. My mother is a fantastic artist and that is where I thought the talent ended. My drawings never looked like hers. Fact is, they were never supposed to. They would also never get past scribbles if I never put in the time to develop the skill either. So here are my efforts this past month. Keep in mind I have never drawn realistic nor cartoony faces or figures before. All my work was either trace or cut and paste. I am proud of my work. It's not perfect but that's okay because I am on a journey to find my artistic style.  What is yours? Do you draw? Paint? Quilt? Embroider? Photography? ETC? Do you want to? I so encourage you to just start. Give yourself the gift time to develop your skill/talent. I would love to be your cheerleader so if you want link me up to your blog/Instagram etc. so I can do so. We should be building each other up as we all walk our artistic journeys.

I have been wanting to be part of a book club for several years and (1) I don't read the book or (2) I don't find the book interesting enough to participate.  I can't begin to tell you how excited that I have been participating in The Art Journal Emporium's  Book Club. We have been reading The Confident Creative and sharing with one another examples of how each chapter "stretched" our idea of drawing and our own artwork.  This has been the most perfect book ever to start out the new year because it encourages the reader to just "start where you are".  I have never ever in my life thought that I could ever draw anything remotely realistic. Stick figures are my specialty!!! I have come to believe that when you stop saying "can't" and just start trying and with a little effort and the pressure to not be perfect gone......magical things can happen. This is an example of what happened when I just sat down and changed my belief in myself. The exercise was to "draw what you see".  

Mankind is not mindless. We do not think the same thing. If we allow Freedom of Speech but cannot offend, we have no freedom at all.

I agree with my whole heart with the above statement. I am so very blessed to live in a country that allows free speech. It is my fervent prayer that the massacre of the French journalist and cartoonists will not have the main stream media running scared to report the news. We as a nation do not need politically correct, we need unbiased reporting of the facts. I found myself glued to the television watching the events play out as the French police tracked down the terrorists. They wanted to be martyrs. They are not. Instead the men who drew cartoons and did not let themselves be intimidated into silence will be the "martyrs"...the ones who will be remembered and in the history books for standing up for the right to have the freedom to voice an opinion...Georges Wolinski, who worked under the pen name Wolinski, Jean "Cabu" Cabut, Bernard "Tignous" Verlhac and Philippe Honore, known as Honore and journalist  Charlie Hebdo.  You did not scare the people of France into backing down and becoming quiet, nor did you scare the rest of the
world into silence. 

Of all the photos I saw over the week I find this image of the people in Paris gathering in solidarity so powerful it reaches down into my soul. LOVE not hate UNITES!!!!! 

My heart breaks for the families and friends affected by all the events related to this hate filled and senseless crime. 

This is what has been on my heart this week. The internet has made the world a much smaller place than it used to be. We are a World Community.  Love one another to the best of your abilities and accept your differences. We all have different paths to take through this journey called life. ♥ 

       

Dear Beautiful Me, 

Where will your journeys take you?

This marks the last week of our massive spring cleaning.  The annual youth group rummage sale is set for this coming weekend and what is not boxed and sent by tomorrow will be donated to Goodwill or "if" I can find room to store it till next year I will. After a couple of loads of the car stuffed from the backseat to the trunk, I don't think I will have many things left to worry over. 



The very best places to get free and easy to manage boxes are Radio Shack's (they get deliveries on Wednesdays) and banana boxes from the grocery store. The banana boxes are my favorite because they have handles. 

When not doing that, I have been driven batty with trying to get my Olympus DSLR working properly but I have come to the conclusion that it has come time to start saving up for a new camera. I will admit that I whined and felt sorry for myself for a bit but then decided to take it as a challenge. The best camera is the one that you have with you sooooooo since I have my iPhone with me almost all the time I decided to see how far I can stretch the creativeness of the photography apps and practice my general photo taking skills.  

Here is a before photo of my DD. No editing. Taken with my iPhone 5.



And here is the After. I loved her profile in this and I wanted to do something really artsy but worthy of framing. 



I am very pleased with how it turned out. The only thing that bugs me is the gap on the shadow on the horizontal arrow. What looked good on the small screen on my iPhone doesn't when I see it on a bigger screen. (oh how I would ♥ and iPad) I can't tell you what settings or what order I used these apps...sorry....next time I share before/after photos I will be more prepared to share those steps. 
Here's the apps I used:
FaceTune
Rookie
Afterlight
Rhonna Designs 

Here is another Before, no editing and taken with the iPhone 5. The afternoon sun was absolutely gorgeous shining on this Red Flowering Quince. It's one of the first things to bloom in the spring.



This is the After. Again, I was just playing around just to see how far I could push the apps and keep my photo looking like a cool artsy piece that I would actually be proud to frame. 



Apps used:
Rookie
Afterlight
Stackables

All export at full resolution and all of them have in app purchases for extra filters. In my personal opinion you get a lot of bang for the buck and the extras run from 99 cents to $2.99, definitely nothing too outrageously expensive.

I would absolutely love to hear and see anything you have edited with apps. Link me up so I can leave you some love!!!!♥