Thursday, January 31, 2013

You Were Made For Being Awesome!


 Cause you were made for being awesome! And for being an encourager. Watch this short video till the end. It's worth your time. Then, go be awesome for someone else today. It's your destiny!

The Creator's Leaf

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Coming Soon, Are You Ready?

It's almost that time again! It will be here before you know it. I was trying something different here. Something different for me. An ATC card. I had not done one before. They are so small - just 3.5" x 2.5", not much room to work with, but so much fun! I watercolored this tile first, then used a good ole-fashioned rubber stamp, to add some words, then tangled till I couldn't think of anything else to do. Then I added that cute little rhinestone that you can hardly see in this shot - on the 'i' in mine. Yep, it's almost here!

The Creator's Leaf

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Starting 2013 Out Sick

I'm just noticing that it's the 29th of January, and it's been forever since I've made a post. There are a couple reasons for that - the main one being I've been really sick! Super sick, in fact. I just ate the first meal I've had in over a week. Tonight is the first time in over a week that my temperature has been normal. This is the longest I've been awake in over a week - going on 4 hours now. I've pretty much slept the entire past week. Thanks to a good visit with the doctor earlier today, I am hoping to be feeling much better soon.  For a quick post, let me share the first of my Tangle-a-Day Calendar pages using Carole Ohl's new calendar. If you are interested, you can purchase one from her on her blog.


The Creator's Leaf

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Baby Girl Hendon

This is the most recent sonogram of Jason and Bobbie's baby girl. If you look around 54 seconds in, you can see her yawn. So sweet! Can't wait for her to get here! 
The Creator's Leaf

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Playing Catch Up

It seems like most of the time I am playing catch-up! I am behind in posts, behind in blogging, behind in drawing, behind in my classes >.<, behind in my Etsy shop. It's like the story of my life.
And that would explain why on January 12th, eighteen days after Christmas, I am just now posting some Christmas tangles. I've mentioned before that I am teaching a home school 4-H group the wonderful art of zentangle.
At our December meeting, we worked on Christmas projects. These photos are of my samples. I try to keep the cost down as much as possible for this class. I want the students to be able to re-create this projects at home as many times as they want to. The top two photos are of greeting cards I found at Walmart on the craft row. They came in packs of ten (I think) and were 97 cents a package.  The last photo is a project we made on gift boxes. At Christmas these boxes are plentiful. I got these five to a package at Walmart for $1.00 a set. Very affordable projects! These were meant to be starting/jumping off points for my students. They took these ideas and ran with them, doing an incredible job! Merry Christmas eighteen days late! (Now, on to my next overdue project!)

The Creator's Leaf



Friday, January 11, 2013

Life Book 2013

Meet . . . my Fairy Art Mother!

At the beginning of January, I began an online class called Life Book, 2013. It's a year long mixed-media class, during which I will learn how to use a bunch of different art supplies (ones I'm  somewhat intimidated by) and along the way learn more about myself and become more accepting of who I am. (How's that for a run-on sentence?) I really can't go into what the lessons are (I promised Tam), but I wanted to share my first project with you. Tam had us create a Fairy Art Mother that we can keep near our work area throughout the year. She is to cheer us on and provide positive affirmation (is that redundant?) that we can indeed create beautiful art.

Should you want to join us in our Life Book, 2013 journey, you can read more about Tamara Laporte and Life Book, 2013 here. It isn't too late for you to join us!


The Creator's Leaf

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Love This Phicops!

This has been a great week for challenges! And I am miserably behind in  most of them, so I was really glad to see I could combine several with this one tile!
Linda Farmer at Tangle Patterns posts a new string each week for us to work with. This string was provided by Jadie Wright. I thought it looked like a water lily. You can read about Linda's string challenge here
Yesterday, Laura - at I Am the Diva - posted a new tangle that her husband B-rad designed. It's called Phicops and it was this week's Diva Challenge. So I combined the string challenge with the Diva Challenge and came up with my phicopped water lily.
I combined phicops with betweed, and threw in a little Derwent and there you go! You can check out all the phicops tiles here.

Jenn at Just Add Water, Silly gave us the APR challenge #39 for the word 'resolution.' She left the interpretation of the word up to us. As I considered my tile, and thought about the word 'resolution,' it reminded me of being open to ideas, open to new thoughts, open to new challenges, new ways of doing things, being open to other opinions, open to others' desires, wants, and wishes. Resolution is a means of being open - open like the petals on my water lily. An open heart, a heart reaching upwards. There are so many ways to interpret resolution. This one is mine. You can look at other interpretations of 'resolution' at Jenn's page - here.

And just like that - 3 challenges met for the week :).

The Creator's Leaf

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Wall of Ice

We had a great time at Christmas up in the mountains. And I am still playing catch-up with all the photos I took and drawings I drew. We had one day with no rain.
And on that day we rode up and down the mountain road looking at ice, ice, and more ice.
This was a pretty impressive rock wall that was covered in ice. All the way around the curve in the road in both directions - a wall of ice.
And we were literally standing within about two feet of the highway. Thankfully the cars don't move very fast around those curvy roads. What a great time we had that day. Pretty soon I will show you pictures of the waterfall we visited. :)

The Creator's Leaf

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Books For 2012

Resolutions. Many people make them.
It's a new year, it's time to make resolutions for how 
you will make 2013 a better year.

Last year I resolved to track the books I read.
This was actually a challenge from one of the 
students in our speech league.

So, here are my 2012 results!
This past year, 2012, I read a total of 123 books. Leopards Kill was the first book I read this year. I enjoy Jim DeFelice's writing. His stories are categorized as action-packed military thriller and spy novels, and that is no exaggeration! DeFelice has written over three dozen military and techno-thrillers and I believe I have read at least half of them. Good 'hold-your-attention' author!

As I look back over my list, I seem to have focused primarily on two types of stories - not even remotely related in storylines. I seemed to read a lot of 'mail order bride' stories, balanced with a load of 'military action/terrorism/techno-thriller' type stories. My favorite mail order bride author was Cheryl St. John. Easy reads that didn't require a lot of thought (sorry, Cheryl) or concentration. Some days you just need to have that.
My favorite author for military action books was actually the team of Dale Brown and Jim DeFelice. Their Dreamland Series is excellent! Brown was a former US Air Force captain where he served as a navigator-bombadier. He brings a lot of authenticity to the stories. DeFelice doesn't bring that experience to the team, but he does bring award-winning writing skills which you can clearly see as you read through the series. 
Sadly, that brings me to my most disappointing read of the year - Tiger's Claw by Dale Brown. This book is part of Brown's Patrick McLanahan series which I have been reading and investing myself in for a couple years now. There are 18 books in the series. Along the way I've come to really enjoy the character of Patrick McLanahan, his brain works like no one else's. He isn't afraid of anything and will take a challenge head-on, make a decision, and implement the attack without second-guessing. Coming from my law enforcement background I really like his decision-making skills. So I was really looking forward to this new book, having pre-ordered it. As soon as it was available I started reading. The storyline was excellent, lot of sub-plots to follow and keep in order as I read through. So as not to spoil the book for any of you interested in reading Dale Brown, I was severely disappointed with the ending. Severely. To the point that I have vowed never to read another Dale Brown book, and this being after I've read at least 18, plus the ones he wrote with DeFelice. I realize I probably won't hold to this vow, but for right now I don't even want to see another cover with Brown's name on it. Juvenile? Probably.
With that being said, I had two highly anticipated books this year. The first being Michael Connelly's The Black Box. Connelly's background comes from being a crime reporter/journalist for the Los Angeles Times. He's written two series: the Harry Bosch Series (19 books) and the Mickey Haller Series (5 books.) I've read every one of them. Probably Connelly's most popular book was The Lincoln Lawyer which was made into a movie starring Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, Ryan Phillippe, William Macy, and country singer Trace Adkins. I waited months for this book to be released. I pre-ordered it literally six or so months ahead of time. The morning it became available I downloaded it to my kindle and started reading. Michael Connelly outdid  himself on this one! I texted my husband that I was spending the day with a new Harry Bosch story. Sweet!
Dee Henderson has forever been my favorite Christian fiction author. Well, maybe not 'forever' because she isn't that old, although I do have every book she's written and read them all at least twice. It has been six years since Dee released her last book, so this was a highly anticipated release in the Christian fiction world. Full Disclosure did not disappoint! The book actually fills out a pre-storyline to one of Dee's series and answers a lot of questions I had about other characters. Definitely worth a read - especially if you are into law enforcement, military, and romance.
The final book for 2012 was Vince Flynn's The Last Man, the most recent release in the 14 book Mitch Rapp Series (I've read all 14.) Flynn has an interesting bio as a dyslexic author who received many, many rejections before his first book came out in print. His works are read by presidents, foreign heads of state, and intelligence professionals across the globe. His novels are taken very seriously by the CIA as sources of ways to wage the war on terrorism. This was an excellent read!

It's been a good book year for me. I plan on starting a new list for 2013, starting with a David Baldacci book The Forgotten.

Should you be interested in seeing my read 2012 list, you can find it here.

The Creator's Leaf