Jeannie Marie & Company

I really enjoy sitting down and doing collage work in my journal.  It's especially nice when it's a seasonal journal in a season that is as nice as this one, This is one of the pages of my reverse collage book.  A reverse collage means you collage around your favorite images already in the book.   Here is a link to my book:   More news is my Christmas Cactus bloomed!   I bought it on clearance last April and kept it in an Eastern window all year,  This fall it budded out and then bloomed in early December.  Blooms are still flowering!  This is the Christmas cake I plan to make again this year.  I have made it every year since the late 80's.  It's my favorite cake and I could eat it all year around but save it just for the holidays.   It's a Jello Poke Cake. I painted this picture this week of an online friend for her birthday.   Her request on Facebook was everyone draw her for her birthday So I took up the challenge!  

I'm sitting in my empty home with a good bit of sadness at leaving my haven.  We came with high hopes and looking forward to wonderful retirement years.  We were prepared to do our best to see that Mom was always taken care of and comfortable.  We planned to have beach days, take road trips, cruises and enjoy Disney.  Family was close by.  We had a perfectly sized home, renovated to suit us and was easy to care for,  It was a wrench to leave our family up north, but the cold was too much for Bill and the prospect of warm winters was a relief to us both. We arrived July 30, 2011 with everything we wanted from our old home.  Dianne and Chris helped us  pack and came down and helped us settle in.  Everyone was excited, Mom had a welcome sign of course and there was a vase of fresh flowers on the counter in our newly renovated home. The first year of living together 24/7 was a challenge,  but a happy time because for so many years Bill had to work 60-80 hours weekly so there was ne

This month I am participating in Make a Mark March.  Each day a special mark is featured when doing a mixed media piece.  Now you don't always have to use just one mark,  but the mark for that specific day must be included in your submission. It is simply a challenge, not a contest so it's all for fun but I have been challenged by learning new ways to incorporate uniqueness in my backgrounds.  For example: The dark crackly marks were achieved by wrapping a rubber band around a stick and rolling it in paint, then rolling it on the painting.  Each mark is different and lends a certain discord, which adds to the theme of the piece.