Faces

<p>I have a book about journaling and doodling that I purchased a while back.&nbsp; I decided to take it to work with me to see if I could start drawing some new things. I really love a lot of the faces I am seeing that people are drawing. Since I am not very good at drawing, I thought I would try.&nbsp; I am pleased with the way a couple of the faces turned out. A couple of them weren't as good as I had hoped. But I guess if I keep working on them they will get better with time! So, here are the first faces I have drawn. Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think about them-----good, bad, cute, great, etc.

Friendship Friday

Friendship is something we all cherish.  Our friends may be next door to us, or half a world away from us.  Wherever your friends are, it doesn't matter.  They will always be close to your heart.  And friends are something that we can never have too many of.  So, when I saw the Friendship Friday post at Create With Joy, I thought to myself that it was a great idea.  I always love meeting new people and making new friends, especiallyin the blog wor.  Where else can you look through your friend's windows to see what they are doing without ever leaving the comfort of your own home????  Today's question was what do you like to do when it is raining?  Well, I am not sure.  I love to do a lot of things.  Shopping, scrapbooking, creating something, and playing with my frogs.  Frogs you say?  You have frogs?  Aren't they slimy?  Aren't they gross?  Why would anyone want to have pet frogs?  Well, about a year ago when we had some really bad floods, my youngest son found an ordinary everyday green tree frog.  Since he has an autism disorder, he can't let anything go.  So we kept him.  We had the perfect aquarium set up that we could put him in.  So we made him a little home.  Well, over the past year we have had several frogs.  A few of them have gone on to the big toadstool in the sky.  Right now we have 5 frogs.  We still have the original green tree frog from almost a year ago.  We also have a little fat brown tree frog.  And we have three frogs that are called a dumpy frog.  We bought the dumpies at the pet store.  One thing that is so cool about them is the fact that you can hold them and they won't jump away.  In fact, if you have a warm spot you can ket them sleep in, they will let you hold them for a really long time.

So, with the history of why we have vrogs, I thought I would introduce you to the ones that I have pictures of right now.

Wordless Wednesday

Another challenge that is posted over at Create With Joy is the Wordless Wednesday.  There are some awesome pictures posted so far.  I love taking pictures of lots of things.  One of my favorite is getting out during the spring and summer season and getting some photos of the emergence of color that runs wild here where I live.  Flowers, trees, water, etc. are some of my favorite things!  I have many pictures through the years that speak volumes without any printed words at all.  I have pictures of everything!  Here are a few I have taken.  I hope these speak to you in the way they spoke to me.  The twins are my children from several years ago.  The sunset is at the point of the lower Michigan peninsula where Lake Michigan and Lake Huron meet.  The bench at the beach is the Gulf of Mexico around Biloxi/Gulfport, Mississippi.  The covered red bridge is at a large park close to where we live.  And the last one is of a perfect flower blooming at a local park.  These are some that speak to me!  Leave me a comment and let me know what they say to you!

Inspire Me Monday on Wednesday

I am loving finding new blogs to read and to inspire me.  I came across one recently called Create With Joy.  It is filled with all kinds of inspiring posts.  It is like a community of bloggers that have come together to inspire others in many different ways.  It may be art, cooking, sewing, your kids, etc., but there are many different blogs to visit where one can get some great inspiration!!!!!!  So, I am going to tell you what inspires me the most.  My children.  I have three of them!  A son, who is 14, and boy/girl twins who are 6-they are my main source of inspiration.  I am living life through their eyes.  Some days I see things from their point of view and it makes me look at the situation in a totally different light.  One thing that I really love to do is to take pictures of the three of them together.  I recently took them to the park here in North Little Rock.  They have a really nice area with a covered bridge, pond, and walking trail.  It is so nice to go there and just let the rest of the world pass you by.  I feel like I am in a different world when i am there with the kids!  A large park in the middle of the city that is so quiet and so far apart from the rush of the rest of the city.  A place where time seems to stand still!  It provides a wealth of photo opportunities.  So, today I am going to share with you one of those serene moments where the outside world was just that-outside of my mind, nowhere to be seen or heard.  I took this picture of my children walking across the bridge holding hands.  It captures the innocence of childhood in such a wonderful way.  I then edited the picture with a couple of apps that I have on my tablet--which were totally free!  I hope this little bit of childhood innocence can and will inspire your inner child to come out and have a carefree day!

Finishing With The Cards In The Set I Was Working On

I finally finished the cards in the set I started last week.  These were totally out of the box for me, but I think they really turned out great.  I am thinking about putting them in sets and selling them.  I would like to do a giveaway, but not sure if there are enough people visiting to do so at this time.  If you are interested, please leave me a message and let me know.  So, here are the rest of the cards that I have made in this series.  Let me know what you think about them, please!

Editing Spring Pictures

Spring is always a beautiful time of the year here in Arkansas.  There are so many places where I live that you can take beautiful pictures.  One of my favorite places is the Old Mill.  If you have ever seen Gone With the Wind, then you have seen the place I am talking about in the opening scenes.  We also have a very large park that has some perfect places to get some great pictures.  The flower photo is one I took and used two different apps on my tablet to touch it up.  I was mainly playing around to see what some of my apps do and deleting the ones I didn't like.  The picture of the kids in the bridge are my kids.  The two younger ones are twins.  This was taken at the park.  They have a really nice covered bridge that you can drive through and have a picnic or go fishing in the fishing hole.  In the covered bridge picture, I used a different app.  I think I used one called PicsArt.  Anyway, here are the two pictures for you to see.  I hope you like them.  Just to share a little secret, I still only use a point and shoot camera!

Another Page for My Art Journal

I feel like I have several projects going on right now.  I found these really cute top bound note pads.  The pages are all blank and they come in a variety of sizes.  Best of all, you can find them on the bargain shelf at Barnes And Noble and Books-A-Million.  I know they are nothing fancy right now, but I am working my way up to better stuff!  Anyway, I really like them because they are hard bound and have a lot of pages.  Best of all the pages are blank and none of them are over $10 (and that is for the biggest one which is, I think, 8-1/2 x 11).  I told you that to get to my point.  These last couple of weeks have been very hard for me.  I am struggling with where I am at in life and where I need to be going.  My heart tells me I need to go in one direction and my mind tells me to go in another direction.  Being at that kind of crossroads in life is not very fun at all.  I have wanted to start putting my feelings down on paper, but just not sure what to say.  I am not a good writer.  Tonight, I was looking on the net for some inspiration from other art journal artists.  One page that caught my eye was one where the person had drawn this curly and naked tree with what appeared to be either a moon or a sun behind it.  I have drawn trees like that before so I knew that was something that I could do.  I started out by drawing the tree.  Then I penciled in my moon with watercolor pencil.  I then painted the tree black to look like a shadow.  Then I colored in the night sky with my watercolor pencils.  I then added some grass, in darker greens to look like night.  There it was, a nice looking page that I knew I wasn't finished with, but did not know what else to do with it.  So I made some cinnamon toast for my daughter and played with her before she went to bed.  Then it hit me.  The tree was sitting there all a line in the middle of the moonlight all naked without any leaves on it at all.  Then my journaling inspiration came.  I pulled out the light beige paint and proceeded ti write out my thoughts for this point in my life.  And I got the following picture.  I know the journaling is somewhat hard to read here, but that was part of the idea.  The journaling reads:  "Sometimes I feel like this tree.  Completely naked and vulnerable and in the big spotlight for all to see my hidden imperfections."  I messed up on the spelling of imperfections, so I covered over it with the beige paint and wrote imperfections in black.  Kind of the idea that in the spotlight everyone does see your imperfections.  Anyway, here it is for all to see.  Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think about it. 

~hugs, mel

Cards, cards, cards!

I am still making cards.  I am almost out of adhesive, though!  Last night I put the paper parts of the cards together.  I had a little help from a certain little 6-year-old!  We had a good time!  I have decided to make several sets that really have no theme or certain pattern to them.  I wanted to step out of my box and do something new!  I started with a main piece.  I them went through my stash to see what I had in scraps.  Then I just let my imagination run wild.  I decided to put a strip on the inside where a person could write a greeting.  On the i side middle part there is an area to write your message and/or a little personal note.  On the other inside flap is a small pocket where you can tuck money or another note or something.  I am quite pleased with them.  The only problem is that I would like to give them a name but just don't know what to call them.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!  So, here are the latest ones I made along with the inside of the cards.

Making More Cards

I bought some beautiful paper at Michael's the other day that was in sale.  It was by one of my favorite paper companies.  I was going to try my hand at trifold cards.  So I cut the paper and folded the cards.  Well, that's as far as I got with it until now.  In sticking with the same type of design for my postcards, I went to town making these cards.  I used a mix of papers.  Some of them don't necessarily match, but that is what makes these cards fun!  On the inside, I placed different papers that would make a great background to write a little note inside.  On the outside, I used a mix of old paper from a book, used stamps, and various patterned papers.  I cut out catchy phrases and sayings from various magazines to finish off my completely random and spontaneous fun feel to these cards.  I am thinking about putting them up on Etsy.  I would love your feedback on them.  Each picture is the outside of the card and then the inside of the card.  This is to show the use of the different papers.