Mermaid Card

Hello! I have a mermaid card to show you today. Isn't she so sweet looking? This is an Elaine Cox image from Sweet Pea Stamps. Everything was colored with Copics and a white gel pen, papers, ribbon and pearl accents are from Hobby Lobby. The pearls came out of the bridal section. I have been very good staying out of the craft stores for the past couple of months. I had Jenna and Samantha over here the other day. Jenna was working on a summer reading project so we stopped by Hobby Lobby to see if we could find anything for her project. For once I couldn't think of anything that I had that would really work. The project was to make a travel brochure for a fictional cruise line that featured locations mentioned in The Odyssey. Yeah, I was fresh out of the stuff! Well anyway, since we were in Hobby Lobby we had to look at the entire store and I was surprised to find lots of new goodies, especially the jewels in the bridal section. I have to get one of everything! And since paper was on sale I had to get some of that too.

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I know it has been a while since I have posted. I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I spent a little over a week with my parents in my home town during the last part of June/first part of July. Since I was going to be gone for so long, I didn't really want to broadcast that on here. I scheduled some posts while I was gone and for some reason the pictures showed up but no text. I never did figure that one out. I went to help my Mom work on some things around the house and wasn't online very much at all during that time.

When I came back, my creative inspiration was evidently still on vacation. I sat and colored a few things that I wasn't happy with and couldn't get a project to pull together at all. So I decided to take a week long break of no crafting. For an entire week I did not sit at the craft table, look at my craft supplies or even touch my Copics. I felt refreshed after that week was over and ready to craft again.

After that we have been having intermittent internet issues. It would work, then I would sit down to do something online and it wouldn't be working. It got pretty frustrating. Kip finally narrowed down the problem to a faulty splitter and after he replaced that the internet has been working just fine.

Also during this time I joined my local YMCA. I had been working out at home with the few weights I have and then walking on the treadmill. I knew it was time to add something extra to push my weight loss to the next level and I decided that the Y would be the best fit for me. I didn't know what to really do either so I worked with a trainer to get a routine in place. It took me a couple of weeks to build my endurance, but then I decided that I could really do this! Exercising has been taking up a big chunk of time lately. (that feels weird to even type that!). I am happy with the results--as of Friday's weigh in, I have lost 40 pounds. But it has taken me a little while to work that into the rest of my day without giving up something.

I will probably be posting about every other day until school starts back, but after that I will go back to my regular posting. Thanks for your patience! I'm off to visit the blogs of all my friends that I have been missing!