Painting My Heart Out

I have been participating in a Chronic Pain Clinic for 3 weeks or so now.  Each week we have to promise an Action Plan.  Which is basically something we want to do, and something that is do-able and then we have to give ourselves a rating as to how confident we think we are going to be able to do it.  My action plan this week was to paint 4 water colour paintings.  Well I did not give myself enough credit for this week, as, I only gave myself a confidence level of 7 out of 10 that I would complete it.  I am happy to announce that I completed it.  

When I painted the meadow, I actually dropped my brush on it, lucky for me, it landed right smack where the fence was going.  lol, so I was able to save it.  My favourite of these 4, is the sunset...or sunrise, whichever way you want to look at it.

So I have been painting my heart out this week!   Here is one I did last week.  I LOVE how it turned out, except for the shrubs...I will have to work on those a little.

I am really enjoying water colour painting!  I wish I could do it by memory and not have to look at a photo, but I suppose there is nothing wrong with doing that. It totally relaxes me, especially when I can play some relaxing meditative music in the background.  There are 2 amazing points about this medium, one is that they last a long time, and when a tube is empty there is nothing to refill, just go out and buy a new one....and two, there is very minimal clean up.  LOVE IT! Looking forward to another day of painting tomorrow.

Ciao

More Happy Mail

Its time to share some more Happy Mail...As you all know I LOVE LOVE LOVE happy mail whether it be art, a post card from afar, or just to be plain thought of for no reason at all.  I have talked about this before, and if any of you know me well enough, Happy Mail is one of my most favourite things of all time, and rates right up there with Halloween and Rainbows.  Here are some things that I got in the mail this week.  I think I have the coolest extended art family ever!

The first one I would like to share is a lovely ATC with a pocket sent to me by my pal Bonnie over at JaspersGems.

Its absolutely adorable and very well made!  I am the one who introduced her to the wonderful world of ATCs and for a long time, I tried to talk her into it and finally she gave in and loves it.  It has been fun to watch her grow in this fun past time.  This background is absolutely gorgeous.  I am not sure how she did this one but its beautiful.  

The bird is on a tag which comes out and there is an awesome quote on the back of the tag.

This quote is so absolutely true!!!!   Who doesn't love chocolate?  lol

The next thing I got in the mail this week was a post card from my friend Laura, who is all the way over in England...Lucky girl she has been getting to travel every where there and see sights that I can only dream of getting to see. 

Love these Seals, they are so adorable!  We got to see some Sea Lions when we were on one of our trips.  Oh how I miss travelling.  Maybe some day again!

Another great piece of art comes yet again from my dear friend Bonnie.  Its a pocket letter, another thing that I introduced her to and she had no interest or desire at the time but has finally gotten around to it.

Hahahahaha...Just teasing Bonnie...any way here is the front of my pocket letter from her.  She said she made two at the same time but mine got done first, so yaaay I got the first pocket letter she ever made...whoo hoooo 

As usual, it is very well done!  The colours are all coordinated, and lots of fun elements.  Here is the back of her pocket letter, packed with lots of yummy goodies!

Well done Bonnie, you never cease to amaze me and I LOVE it when you tell me that your making something that you once told me that you will never do it.  lol your just too cute sometimes!   You realize I am waiting now for you to do a rolodex?  Right?  lol, they are just as fun and addictive as making an ATC and Pocket letters!

The very next and final happy mail that I got this week is from my dear friend and mentor Nat over at SimplySweetStamping.  She always out does herself, she sent me a St. Patrick's Day package along with my children stories ATC.  and OMG they are both just too sweet and adorable!!!!

Her work is always so intimately detailed and when you watch her teach, or watch her make something, her heart is 150% into it.  Nat your artwork always makes my heart smile, and I am very lucky to have you as a friend, too!  When I was little, that monkey story was one of my favourites, how could you have possibly known???

I am so lucky that she also included the following goodies in my envelope. Thank you so very much,  I absolutely love everything that you sent!  The small stickers, the bigger stickers, and all of the lovely shamrocks.  LOL, that was so much fun, because when I opened the package they all almost fell out all over the place and I was in the car.  I could not wait to get home and open it.  lol silly me, eh?  The cook book, looking forward to hearing the story on that and lastly the stamp and die set...omgosh...you silly girl, thank you thank you thank you!!!

Well that is about it for today.  I have a million other things I would like to accomplish and would like to get to at least 4 of them today....big hugs to all

cheerio

Back At It

Very recently my friend Bonnie over at JaspersGems shocked me to bits by telling me that I would never guess in a million years what she was making, my guesses were 1) Cutting die cut gears, 2) counting ATC backs, 3) water colour painting.  All of course were incorrect, but when she told me that she was making Pocket Letters, I was starting to think that hell had frozen over.  I say this because I found out about them shortly after they were originally created by Janette Lane  a couple of years ago already, everyone was making such a big deal out of them, I had to try them.  Well, I tried them alright, I really like the concept of the whole idea because you get a chance to de-stash.  But then everyone was applying far too much pressure to make them elaborate and expensive to mail. Because if you received one that was elaborate well then you kind of felt obligated to send one that was elaborate. This in the end is what turned both myself and my friend off of these.

The first video Bonnie directed me to was this one by Sherbert Ink, I really liked how simple she kept it, and loved some of the elements that she used to make the pocket letter attractive.   Then Bonnie highly recommended this video by Rebecca (iammama24) which showed even more simplistic idea's for filling up the pockets...I especially love how Rebecca uses washi tape to decorate the edging of the pocket page.  So creative and so decorative...this is what made me want to create another pocket letter, so I agree to do a trade with my friend.

Before I show you what I have got on my pocket letter so far, I want to show you an element that one of the videos I saw showed me.  This made me want to make a pocket letter even more because of the cutest ever corner bookmarks that one of the videos talked about.  I googled corner bookmarks and to my pleasant surprise, the amazement of how many variations of these book marks you can make!  OMGosh!!!!

Are they not just the sweetest things you ever saw, and you won't even believe how easy they are to make!  While looking through these images I found another page that gave step by step instructions over at Tally's Treasury on how to make these cute little critters that could literally be decorated into anything or any theme you want!  And they are so much fun to make.

Ok, its time to reveal what I have been making for my friend, I hope she doesn't see my blog today before I actually have it completed.

Anyway.....here is the front of my pocket letter that I have so far....In the second pocket, I absolutely LOVE how the words FOR YOU turned out...this was not planned...it just worked out this way...The green letters spell for you as do the yellow letters even though they are alternated...pretty cool, huh?

And here is the back of my pocket letter...so far....

One last thing I want to show you before I sign off, here is the corner book I made for Bonnie's pocket letter, to close it all up safe and sound inside the envelope, I do hope that she will like it, its no secret that that she loves owls as much as I do...check it out...too cute huh?

I still have a few pockets left to go but should not take me too much longer.   I should have it done tomorrow and in the mail by Wednesday.  I will add photos of it completed when I am done so you can all see.....

Have a good night everyone!

Friends VS. Family

I have been distracted and stumped ever since my last post.   Distracted because I have been busy with health issues and doctors appointments, and also the fact that we have gotten a new to us dog, who is the most precious little thing I have ever known.  There cannot be any comparison between ever between Whisky (our previous dog) and Spencer.  They are just two totally different dogs in absolutely every way you can imagine.  But now that things have died down a little, I can get back into blogging.

Anyway my topic today is family vs. friends.  Someone had brought to my attention that she had forgotten that people who live a long distance away can be closer than people who are considered friends, or even family for that matter can be closer than friends or family who live in your own home town where you reside.  Sadly, that can't ring more truer than anything else in the whole world.  

I come from a large-ish family, my father was born with 11 siblings, 3 sisters and 8 brothers.  My mother has 4 siblings, 2 brothers and 2 sisters.  And in my own immediate family, I have 3 siblings, all brothers making me the only girl of the family.  Naturally, all of my aunts and uncles have children, and they children, and some of them even have children.  But, of course we are all spread out all over the country side so that makes us all a little distant from each other.  Some are close emotionally, but many are not.  Which is very sad, indeed.  

On a more positive note, because of Facebook, I have been able to add many of my cousins, aunts, and uncles and I have been able to see their photos and what they have been up to.  I ended up creating a family group in Facebook, when I first did that, it went viral...everyone was so happy that it was there, but it has died off since, but people still post photos of their family, and what they have been up to, so at least I get to get that news.

As far as friends are concerned, when Abby and I first got together, we had about 20-30 friends each.  We ended up inviting about 200 people to our wedding, and approximately 120 showed up.  So hard to believe that was 12 years ago. Anyway that number of friends and family have considerably dropped since we have been together that long, and especially since we have been living in Northern Ontario for the last 3 years.  It has been unfortunately more noticeable especially in the last year.

However there are a few people who have remained close and we love them and value their friendship with all of our hearts.  There are also the people who I call my extended family, you all know who you are, at least I would hope so because I have been calling the people/artists that I have been trading with over the last 8 years my sisters-in-art....and even though most of you live so far away some even in Australia...I consider you closer to me than many of my own family and friends in my neck of the world.  Even though sometimes I wish we were all neighbours, can you imagine the fun we would have, and all of the amazing hugs we would get?

I thought, that this was kind of important to share.  There are a lot of estranged families out there, and it doesn't have to be that way because of today's technology of computers,  laptops, tablets, cell phones, Skype, Zoom and Google maps (+ many others) makes it so easy for any of us get closer to those people that matter and to those people who are not so disposable.

Thank you Cheryl for bringing this to my attention.  I think its an important message to get across to everyone.

ciao