An angel to watch over you

May you have a guardian angel

on your shoulder each day

protecting your every step

along life's way!

I believe in guardian angels and have felt that the special people in our lives who leave this earth

become our special protectors. My grandmother, Fannie, is my guardian. I also think my mother in law Lois is my son's guardian angel; she died before he was even conceived.

Whether you think like me or not, I do hope you have a special protector over your life.

God protects us all and I know that without any doubt.

Peace for the Journey

Peace for the journey I pray
With God by my side all the way
By his mercy I am made strong
Through his love I can do no wrong
Finding grace in His presence
Knowing peace in His substance.
My life is debt free
Since His salvation saved me.

spirit of Sunday

early morning walk

church

time with family

sounds old fashion but

it's still my kind of Sunday

image is older watercolor on gessoned paper

called "Looking Up" Steeple at Unity Place, Gastonia, NC

Saturday Sun

It's cloudy today but I've got the Son to keep me in the light.

Illustration Friday

I was ready for this one. I don't usually have time to create something just for the topic but I have so many moon pieces. This one is archived but I think good enough to post again. It's digital from original art, photos and text.

Now is the time

If you are like me, you often use the following phrases:

someday, when, if only, maybe, then, if...then.....

well what if those words aren't necessary.

What if now is all that matters.

Start each day knowing that you are in the driver's seat along with your Savior and

you together chart your course.

The Lord's mercy and grace go with me each day
Leading and guiding every step along my way.
With hope and faith, I send my prayer
His answer is always faithfully there.
With patience and peace I longingly wait
But He tells me that heaven begins long before the pearly gate.

Try this

Just for today:

smile more

laugh more

pray more

give more

share more

love more

create more

You may find it the best way to live.

Photo is at my beloved Fernwood....

Sometimes it's my favorite day of the week!

I often feel this way about any day of the week.

The fresh possibilities of a new day excite me.

• a new chance to do something good for someone


• an opportunity to make great art


• a day to make someone else's day


• another day with my family


• one more sunrise


• the possibility to serve God better


• a day to just be one with life

This may sound foolish and wasteful but I love a day when I can just go with the flow and be who God wants me to be at any given moment.

GO and make it a GOOD DAY!

TUESDAYS FREE IMAGE

Here is today's free image. It is a detail of a guinea feather.

Enjoy it and use in the most creative way!

May your art be blessed and a blessing!

Every day---

If you are a writer, you must write every day.

If you are a musician, you must practice every day.

If you are an artist, you must make art every day.

I walk almost every morning and during that time I often plan my day, pray, write in my head or decide what and how to execute my next piece of art. I know now that it is essential to the betterment of my day and who I am. I call these words that come to me GIVEN BY GOD.

Here is today's offering and a pic to go with.

Lord you send the sunshine and the rain
I will forever praise your name.
You send the storm and the calm.
You are my holy balm.
You are Father, Son and Holy Spirit all three.
I will forever worship the Trinity.
You are the Lord of peace and forgiveness.
To that I will witness.

through God

Through the river of life
Flows God's love
With his peace and mercy
Sent from above
He gives us family and friends
To share until life's end
If we believe, accept and trust his grace
We will meet him in heaven face to face

I am working on a new devoitional booklet.

Sample above.

Using the recent back drop I painted for the cover.

Free image will be posted tomorrow.

Blessings this day!

It is Sunday and I feel very blessed to say that

God loves me.

God loves you.

Spread the good news.

Fernwood!

Heading to my beloved Fernwood.

Our retirement property, old family homeplace, and home to a new construction soon maybe!

Do I really want a new home this late in life? (I'm 52)

I've always wanted a new home. Actually I just want space for my junk or the will to part with my junk. Being a mixed media artist is detrimental to closet, shelf and nook and crannie availability. Everything is seen as a possibility for a collage or assemblage. Oh! The curse!

Ah! The blessing! Find some space in your day to make art!

Here is a lovely friend I made last Saturday at Fernwood!

Artist Profile

Thanks to Cyndi at http://www.layersuponlayers.com/artist-profile-chris-tessnear/

Hope you will give it a look!

Life isn't as good as you thought IT"S BETTER!

Almost finished with backdrop for church dinner theater. Whoo whee!

Haven't been able to get a decent photo of the entire 15 feet by 7 feet piece, so I've taken several shots of individual panels and pieced them together digitally. Here are the results. A little tweeking on the stream and tree trunks today and hope to deliver it tomorrow.

ALSO, I am suppose to be the featured artist profile on http://www.layersuponlayers.com/

tomorrow July 19. Please check it out and tell me what you think.

Free Image Day!

Here is this week's free background image.

Believe it or not it started as a detail photo of cut glass and with the help of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Microsoft Publisher it became this amazing tile piece.

Use for ATC's, altered books and collages. Or get our your crayons and color a design of your own on top. Have Fun!

addendum to Monday post:

The skies parted yesterday and I got the base coats and general design blocked in on my very large background for the church dinner theater.

Monday rain

The Carpenters sang "Rainy days and Mondays always get me down>" They've got me down too. Tired and much to do and no energy. Ran errands but heart wasn't it that but it's done.

Guess I'll just finish laundry and do some chores and maybe it will either rain for real or the sun will come out.

I need to start on a huge backdrop for a church dinner theater (woods scene -15 feet long by 7 feet tall) but it's too damp outside and I don't have a large enough inside space. I want to get this started and finished. I hate huge projects hanging over my head.

That's life, one project after another, but when it's my own it's not so bad. Doing it for someone else is a different story. The reason I do so few commissions.

Today's image is a card I did last week. My eyes photoshopped into a heart I painted and printed on a transparency. Text reads "You must see with your heart".

Guess that's what I'm doing today!

Hey! I see the sun peeking out.

One last Queen of Heart Spread

This image has a transparency paperdoll of me, a leftover collage image of me as a child from another transfer method, a quote and lots of postage stamps. Stamps make such a great page element.

The quote says:

There is a light that shines beyond all things on earth, beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. This is the light
that shines in your heart
Chandogya Upanishad

When the Sunday supplements offer stamps for a cheap price. Order them and use them in your collages, ATC's and other art enterprises. Great fun!

Sorry for repeat

I just realized that yesterdays image had already been shown. I somehow overlooked that.

So, Today's is different for sure and then there's one more from this altered board book.

You can buy cheap children's board books and sand and gesso them to use but companies are now selling blank ones to start with. If you are impatient like me witht he prep work you amy want to try them. Michaels carries thema and if you use a coupon, the cost isn't so bad; it does save time.

Today's image contains three tape transfers, one of me, a quote and a compass.

The quote says:

By using your heart as your compass, you can see more clearly which direction to go to stop self-defeating behavior. If you take just one mental or emotional habit that really bothers or drains you and apply heart intelligence to it, you'll see a noticeable difference in your life. Doc Childre and Howard Martin, The HeartMath Solution

Have a heartful day!

one more Queen of Heart Spread

This piece has many elements you may not see at first. There is a paper cross with a metal cross on top, a stamp of a lady's face I liked framed by slide mount (painted), a crown on my transfer image, the quote that is a transfer as well and fibers glued down the center.

Background is textured as others with a yellow undercoat.

More from the Queen of Heart

Here is another spread from the book.

These pages have the same kind of layered background with mutiple colors and texturing.

The large pair of eyes are packing tape transfers. The woman is my mother in law whom I use in much of my art. She was a beauty. The heart overlay is a transparency with my eyes overlapping hers. The quote is written with an Elmer's paint pen. they come in many colors and write over practically anything. A great tool for altered artists. Michaels occasionally puts them on sale. They can be bought individually or in sets.

I print most of my images from my own Canon i960 inkjet printer. They are pretty archival with the amount of gel medium I use on them. I have several pieces that are a few years old and have not faded in the least.

Covenant Village Seniors Watercolor class

I'm so glad to be able to add a title again. These blog generators are a bit screwy at times but I love them. Writing my own and reading all the other fine artists' ones.

The ladies were so grand yesterday! They are always up for a challenge and they simply blow my mind with their abilities, even those who say they've never painted before. I hope and pray I am still making art and creating wonderful images when I'm their age, whether at my home or in a home. If I ever lose that I guess I'll just be a really crabby old lady. I'm one now alot of times. I don't like that about me. I never knew getting older would affect me in that way but I think I'm freer to be me. I've held so much in for so long and now I just let it flow.

Well, a dear lady in her late 70's once said the older you get you get to be your real self warts and all. So here I am world...WARTS and all!

Enjoy this photo of the ladies and here is also another spread from my Queen of Heart book!

Covenant Village Seniors Watercolor class

Hello and welcome!

Here is today's free background image to use in your art, personal or sell.

I just want everyone making art and enjoying the blessings of life

I taught a seniors watercolor class today and they bless me so much. I will share more about it tomorrow with a photo.

This image started as a paste paper piece and through Adobe Photo Elements and Microsoft Publisher I made it into a tiled piece similar to a quilt, turning the image to make it interesting. Enjoy it any way you wish. If anyone would like to share how they use them I will post them on my blog here.

Blessings to all!

Blog won't let me add titles the last couple days frustrating but I will continue to share my newest altered book_Queen of Heart.

This spread was first painted in

yellow and textured with a combing tool. Dried and painted in red and combed again. Fleur de lis was stamped with gesso. The dots on the edges are Elmer's paint pens. Great colors and they work virtually on top of anything else. I especially like the white and gold. The image of me is a computer altered image made into a packing tape transfer with a gold crown added, other image of woman is from a stamp and framed with a photo slide mount painted and embellished with the paint pen. The crosses are paper and metal. Quote is a transfer.

The quote says "The purpose of the heart is to know yourself, to be yourself and yet one with God. Edgar Cayce

Another free image comes tomorrow.

Another altered board book nearly finished.

A heart shaped board book from 7 Gypsies, lots of background fun by painting and texturing with one color, drying, painting another color and then scraping texture and reverse stamping with a favorite fleur de lis chunky stamp. Lots of red since it is a heart. Named it queen of heart and used images and ephemera to collage. More pages to come.

Answers to comments and posts

I am so happy to have brought some viewers to my blog...Thanks for all the positive comments.

The free image started as a scanned piece of paste paper and it was altered in Photoshop elements with several different effects but mostly in the liquify effect under the filters menu.

Just play with your images and you never know how many terrific things you may come up with. I make and alter alot more of my own stuff for my altered books than I buy or find. I am absolutely obsessed with computer alterations. Try it and have some fun creating your own designs and get them the way you want them. If like me you find lots of neat stuff but you always wish it was this or that way; it can be. YOU can make it whatever you want.

Here is another great image to download for free just for asking for more info. This image is made of serendipity paper (paper you have smeared leftover paint on) with a leaf print on top.

No computer alteration whatsoever.

Maybe I need to start blogging about all the neat ideas I try. some work and some don't but I still have lots of fun and learn something everytime I do it.

Family Tree house project pages

I'm almost to the end of pages to post for this project. More art projects to follow.

I'm very pleased with the response to the free image I posted so another will be posted next week.

Happy 4th and Happy Arting to all!

Free Background

Here as promised yesterday is a free image to save and use any way you wish in your art!

Enjoy! Remember I will be posting one a week for the next month. If there is enough interest then there will be more!

Family Tree House Project and Announcement

Here are more pages from my Family Tree House.

Also I'd like to announce I will be posting a free background page once a week for you to download and print and use in your art anyway you wish.

If there is good response I may offer them more often.

Tomorrow will be the first image. Please check for it. It will be high quality that you can print full sheet size or save and alter as you wish.

Family Tree House Project

Here are a couple more images...

Family Tree House Project

paste paper background with prismacolor accents, wedding photo is a computer generated image that has become a contact paper transfer, images of myself and my husband and home, accented with prismacolor