More Creativity

Got so much in the works. I'm loving my job. Creating digital scrapbooking kits. I'm also doing more and more photo art. Gotta finish my website so I can start doing some major marketing of my digital art services. Right now though I've got a ton of ideas for Scrap Girls products and so many projects on the go so that's my focus.

Another digital scrapbooking layout. This is me and my mum when I was just a few months old. It's so strange as Steve and I went for a drive to Margate a couple of weekends ago. It's a right dive now. Yuck! What a shame! It's weird to think that my parents took me there for Summer holidays in the 60's as did a lot of families from London, and now I live about 10 miles away!

My Daughter

I'm missing my daughter, Jenni, so much. She's just turned 20 yrs old and is a beautiful young woman. She's so sweet and funny and incredibly precious to me. I was thinking about going to Hobby Craft the other day and thought I'd call Jen - we both love craft/art and love going to Hobby Craft.. and then I remembered - she's in New Zealand. They're the times I miss her more than normal. I remember our little jaunts in the car together and especially when she stayed with me and Steve in Yorkshire. She was a delight. We would go for walks together and go into the next village and wander round all the lovely shops. So yeah! I miss my daughter.BUT

I know she's in the best place. She's happy. She's got a good job. She's surrounded by people who love her and support her. She's part of a fantastic church and has a wonderful church family. But she's on the other side of the world and I miss her. I'm waiting for my house to sell (that I had with my ex-husband) so I can afford to go and visit her. As soon as we've got a buyer and it's sold, I'm booking my ticket and going out there for at least 3 weeks.

Things have been so very hard for my children. I did my best to protect my kids from the divorce and reason for the divorce even though I knew eventually they would have to know. And that they are adults and you just can't protect them from everything in life. It's slowly getting better. And for Jenni that means being in New Zealand starting a new life. I know she needs to be where she is and I'm so happy for her. I'd rather she was there and thriving than here being very unhappy and struggling every day. Even if that means I can't see her as much as I'd like to. Ugh!

Having the internet helps so much. Thank God for this modern technology. Yay! We email and talk on MSN so that helps. I can't wait to go and see her though. I'm going on my own as Steve has to work and then next year we are planning a holiday out there to see her again.

Jen? You truly do colour my world. I love you, sweetheart and I miss you lots. Stay happy! And pray for that house to get sold!

Is it Autumn yet?

It's so cold today. It doesn't help that I feel so unwell. Rotten time of month and it never gets easier in spite of medication and a Mirena device. But that's a whole other story. I look out the window and it's grey, windy and so cloudy. June? More like October which if that was the truth, I'd be reasonably happy. I love all the Seasons... I love the promise of new things that appear in Spring; warm sunshine on my face in the Summer and the hope of snow and cold frosty mornings in Winter. But Autumn is my favourite Season. And I'm not entirely sure why. The colours? Definitely. I think it's also the run up to Christmas.

I love Christmas so much. The couple of months, weeks and days running up to Christmas are fabulous. My mum always made Christmas so incredibly special when we were little. We never had much money but Mum spent time with us making things from cards to decorations. And as we got older, it was still special in a different way. A lot of traditions. Living in Norway for several years made it even more amazing. I love the scandinavian traditions and decorations and I took that on when I got married and had my children. I did my best to make things magical and special for my children even with no money most years when they were small. But it didn't matter. We had the warmth and love of close family and each other. That's what it was about. And so, I love Christmas... And now I wish it was Autumn. The weather is playing games with me. It's tricking me into thinking of Autumn and Christmas when the reality is we still have the rest of Summer.

So in the meantime, I'm going to get back to working on my website, have a nice warm bath to try and get rid of my constant pain and cramps and then snuggle down and watch a dvd this afternoon.

Oh and here's another digital scrapbooing page I created - my beloved husband, Steve:

Weekends

I love the weekends which is strange because they're not that terribly different from the week days for me. But I do feel like I can have a little lie in if I want to as well as perhaps sit and watch a dvd or do something completely different. Most weekends I work. I love my work and it's also my creative outlet. It's what I love to do. Every other weekend I see my boys and daughter-in-law at some point and also my little granddaughter which is a great joy in my life.

More Creativity
I've been busy with more products and doing some more digital scrapbooking layouts. This one is of little Jorja (granddaughter) at Easter.

Here's one that I did of Jenni and my niece, Madison:

And here's some of my recent digital scrapbooking products I've just released at Scrap Girls:
Assemble Your Own: Jewelled FlowersAssemble Your Own: Jewelled Flowers IIAnd Assemble Your Own: Primrose Hill Word Plaques
More details can found at my store at Scrap Girls!

Digital Scrapbooking

I've been so creative lately. Working hard to get my store at Scrap Girls looking healthy with lots of products. Here's a couple of digital scrapbooking kits that I've finished and are now in the store, Primrose Hill and Fairy Tale Knight:

This is such a joy to me and my aim and vision is to do this full time. To make full time "money" being a digital artist. I love it. I'm doing ok at the moment but I need to be earning more. I'm working on completely re-vamping my website as well by offering digital art services such as turning photos into works of art. I love painting and it's even more fun on a computer! No mess ;) I'm busy creating lots of samples of my work using photos I've taken of my granddaughter and my little niece as well as other family members.

I really does mean though that there's never enough hours in the day for all the things I love to do!

Where Did Those Years Go?

My twins, Jennifer and Kristian, are 20 yrs old today. 20! So can someone please tell me where those years went. 20 years has gone by so quickly. All you young mums need to really cherish those precious moments with your children. They grow up into young adults all too quickly. My twins have always been a great joy to me... even through their teens with mood swings and pushing the boundaries! And now in a twinkling of an eye they are all grown up doing their own thing. I'm so proud of them both. Particularly since this past year hasn't been easy on them at all.

Happy Birthday you two! I love you both! Have a great day!

Creative

Just been so busy. Good busy. Creative busy. And I love it. I'm working on several different projects for Scrap Girls at the moment. I'm also putting together a new section for my website offering photo art services such as turning beloved photos into beautiful blended art pieces. This is one that I did of my granddaughter:

And one of some family photos taken last Summer:


So yeah... very busy!

One Day at a Time

Ok so every day I wake up now I've noticed I'm feeling better and better about myself, my life and my art and work. Time is a great healer.

My son, daughter-in-law and little granddaughter just spent the day with us and it was so lovely. I love them all to pieces. It was great just to sit with them and enjoy lunch together. I'm so proud of them. Jorja had a good stretch and play on the floor. She's six months old today and is a sweetheart. I know. I'm bias! I'm allowed.

I realised that it does get easier. For every time we are together, it feels more normal and I know I'm blessed to be close to my family and enjoy my granddaughter. I'm somehow grateful that the divorce and everything that that encompassed happened before Jorja was born. She will grow up to not know any different in regards to her grandparents being divorced. She will know Steve as her other Grandad and it will be just so normal for her.

So now I'm going to spend the rest of the evening doing some Scrap Girls design work and some digital scrapbooking. More lovely layouts to create! Whoooohooo!

Midnight Oil

Slowly but surely my groove is returning. I've been so uninspired lately and it's upset me so much but returning to the Scrap Girls design team really hit the spot. I can't begin to tell you how much more creative I've been since returning. It's not just that though. Learning to lean on God and sort my faith out good and proper has played a part. I want to know what He wants for my life and how best to earn money using the skills, talents and God-given gifts I have. My daughter has enormous faith and really stepped out of her comfort zone recently to answer God's call on her life. I admire that so much and it has inspired me. I've also found a lot of encouragement from the girls on the Scrap Girls design team. Amazing women with character, strength, conviction and that all inspires me and helps me to move forward.

As a result, I've been burning a lot of midnight oil. I'm not tired though. It's strange. I just get into a creative groove and I can't seem to stop myself. I usually put my iPod. Playing happy, soulful music inspires me further and I get lost in my own little world. Before long I realise that it's gone 3am or I happen to notice the sun coming up and realise that it's gone 4 am. Not often that happens. I leave that to my husband who burns much more midnight oil than me! I find it easier to go with my creativity working from home than somehow be rigid in terms of the time frame I sit here. I always get plenty of exercise, fresh air and food breaks!! I'm aware of how bad it is to sit here all day and every day so I'm always getting up to have a wonder round probably every half hour or so. I also go for a really good long walk once a day and push myself so I know I'm getting good exercise.

I'm so blessed. To be able to work from home doing the thing that I love the most. And being with my beloved Steve who also works from home and is an artist for a living! Wow! It doesn't get much better than this.

Moving Forward

So we have finally moved and beginning our new married life together. It's been an interesting time. We spent a couple of weeks living with my parents which turned out to be so good. It was nice to spend time with Mum and Dad but also relax a bit after moving. We got married on April 4th and moved down to Kent on the same day! Our wedding night was spent in a beautiful hotel in the middle of the Kent countryside. It was just wonderful and even more so when we woke up the next day and could actually see where we were since we had arrived in the middle of the night!

Into our second week staying at Mum's we saw a private add for a 2 bed apartment in Whitstable. So we decided to go take a look and sure enough it was "the one". It was available at the end of April so we have another 2 weeks to kind of pack and sort ourselves out again. I couldn't wait. I was sick of living out of a suitcase and not having my main pc.

Whitstable was our first choice when we were discussing moving from Yorkshire to Kent (300 miles away). We both wanted to live near the coast plus Steve was stationed near here when he was in the RAF a few years ago. So we both felt really happy to get somewhere really quickly. The apartment has 2 bedrooms, one of which we've turned into our office. We've got the smaller one as our bedroom. We both like to have lots of space when working plus Steve is hoping to paint again one day so having the larger of the bedrooms for our office/craft/art space made sense.

Our landlord is really nice and the area is so very quiet. We have a ground floor apartment at the back and side of a purpose built "cul de sac" of apartments. There are 4 to a block and lots of really beautiful communal gardens. I like overlooking the gardens and treees. There are alsorts of lovely birds and a friendly little squirrel that visits!

There's a 8 minute walk to the beach and about a 5 minute walk to the town. It's quite idyllic. The town is really old fashioned with various shops such as butchers, bakers, greengrocers. There's a library and lots of little galleries, tea rooms and art/craft shops and boutiques. The beach is all pebbles and very much a fishing/yachting community. We much prefer it to the usual commercial English seaside towns. It's much quieter and perfect for us.

So yeah. We can finally breathe a sigh of relief that we have our own little place and can start our life together now. I still have my moments of grief and emotional outbursts due to my previous marriage and what happened but it gets less and less. I'm so blessed with Steve and we both feel like we were always meant to be together. One day I'll write and share how we met and all the amazing things in our lives that brought us to this point.

And my children: my wonderful and precious children. I love them so much and I'm so proud of every one of them in all they have achieved and in all they are doing. I miss Jenni so much now she's in New Zealand but I also know that she followed her heart and I also know that it was an answer to prayer. She's where God wants her to be and because of that I'm happy for her and it's easier to bear being away from her. I'm planning to go out there later on in the year. Just pray that my house sells.

My work and art. I've suffered a major blow to my inspiration and creativity. I'm not sure what happened. I had a fab job opportunity creating scrapbooking designs and papers for a UK photo book company; I was designing for Scrap Girls and working on my new website when suddenly it all fell to pieces. I lost my inspiration and my creativity hit an all time low. I had to leave Scrap Girls design team and couldn't work on my website as we didn't have the internet for several weeks.

It all made me cry. I felt desperate. I have a ton of ideas for products, work and art and couldn't seem to get any of them done. Ugh! I missed being on the design team for Scrap Girls and my custom work slowed down quite a bit. I spoke to a couple of close friends who really helped me pointing out that I've gone through an awful lot over the past 4 yrs or so. I had to just sit and take stock. Just breathe and relax for a little while. Look forward and start living again.

Slowly but surely my inspiration is returning again. I spoke to Scrap Girls and am re-joining their design team which has given me a little bit of a push in regards to my creativity. I spent time working on my inspiration journal just sketching out new ideas as well as opening up Painter again. It's been awhile since I did any digital art so it was great to just push pixels around just for the love of doing it.

Life is good. I have a new man in my life who is a wonderful, loving husband. I have 5 amazing kids and a beautiful granddaughter. And a sense of real hope again. A future. It's a different picture than I used to imagine but it's a future nonetheless with new hopes and dreams.