With Independence Day (in the United States) coming in just one month, I wanted to create a kit that I have had on my heart for a very long time. There are wonderful people and organizations all over our nation that are doing whatever they can to make sure our troops overseas know that they are loved, supported and appreciated.
In my own tiny church there is a large group of mostly women that have been doing an incredibly good job at this. The ministry is called "Love our Troops," and they send personal notes in greeting cards, care packages and make handmade cooling scarves to express their love and encourage the young men and women that are serving the Afghani and Iraqi people as well as protecting our nation.
Though our family has sent dozens of cards, because of my schedule I haven’t been able to do as much as my heart desires. I began to think about how I could enlarge the effort and realized that I can create a kit that just might facilitate a lot of other people to make cards and send them!
This kit contains 3 greeting cards, one is blank for your own message and two matching envelopes. It is FREE for personal use or for organizations that will be encouraging the troops. You can download the kit by clicking on the picture at the top of this post and a window will pop up from 4shared.com. When you click on that window it could take a while for the download button to appear at the top left of the page (a couple of minutes if you have slower internet service). All you have to do is click on that download button and select a place to download it to on your hard drive.
For those of you who will send these cards out, bless you!!!!! Oh, and if you believe in the power of prayer, take a moment to pray for the service member that you are sending it to.
The BLOG CONTEST WINNER FOR MAY IS the first commentor on this post: http://www.daisiecompany.com/blogs/audreyjeanne/?p=367
Here are the second set of previews on this upcoming kit. It will be available soon at 
I have a blog contest I run (most of the time) twice a month. I’m late on drawing that winner and will do it in my next post, but for those who leave a comment on any post between the 1st-15th or 16th-31st you are automatically entered in to win a digital clip art kit. 
Thank you each and everyone that has emailed me to say you’ve missed my blog and hope that I’m okay! I have been absolutely buried under deadlines for my new fabric line with Fabric Editions that will debut in September. It’s called "Chocolate Love" and when I can finally show you the previews I’ll let you know. It will be available in fine quilt shops all over the USA but I don’t know about the company’s distribution outside of America.
These digital art kits were inspired by a magazine spread I saw some years ago about antique French wallpapers. The papers they showed had such an amazing, faded, distressed but incredibly elegant feel to them. I’ve tried to capture that feel while designing a contemporary art kit that woud be useful for creating greeting cards, crafts and scrapbooking.
Can be found at 
I am offering an introductory coupon for May and June of 2008 good for a 15% discount on your order. To access the coupon simply use "welcometoaje" on the check out page.
To celebrate our "Grand Opening" of our website, 
After many years of desperately needing to have a web site — we have finally gotten one up. Though it is incomplete and imperfect, it’s live!!! This site currently carries only our framed print line, which is where I began in the art business. You can find our site at: 
About a decade ago we had nearly 4,000 stores that carried our products, but as my licensing career grew, we cut back on our wholesale operation. It became too overwhelming to do both manufacturing and designing. It felt a little like trying to ride two horses at once! 
Some of the things we are capable of doing, but are not yet reflected in our web site are drop shipping, gift wrapping and including an enclosure card. So if you have an out-of-area Wedding to send a gift to, you can find the piece you like and call our office to have it wrapped and sent as a complete gift without having to leave your home!
This paper pack should be out in the store next week at 
I remember how incredibly they fragranced my entire room when I tucked them inside my sock drawer. They were both such talented ladies, the knit, tatted, embroidered and crocheted great masterpieces. I wish they were alive today to see the way their genes have been passed along and how I create with a unique set of gifts that have come from the same family "stream of creativity."
Each sprig of lavender that was painted to create the plaid "trellis" of lavender, was painted at full size from stalks I hand picked at a local lavender farm near where I used to live in Southern California. The experiece of picking your own lavender is one I highly recommend if there is a farm near you! At first I was frightened because there were thousands and thousands of bees buzzing all over the place. I’m very allergic to their stings, but though the bees buzz all around you, they aren’t the least bit interested in humans as they are practically drunk on the nectar of the lavender plants! The smell of thousands of lavendar bushes is too awesome to describe and the lovely purple hues of the hillside with the sun shining in a clear blue sky is a picture I have stored away in my heart and mind forever.
I’m including just one product shot of the "Lavender Fields" art kit so you can see a little bit of how these papers would coordinate to create hybrid scrapbooking layout, or how you could make your own greeting cards out of them or other crafting uses. 
One of my top selling kits of all time has been the Gerbera Daisies kit that I introduced early last year. Well, I revisited it and updated it in a little bit of a new direction and created Gerbera Daisies 2 and its companion paper pack that will be coming to the store next week.
I have added some wonderfully textured, chalked, inked and otherwise distressed tags, frames and other goodies. I’ve also created some very fun buttons and embellishments.
I’ve also created some really fun "paper flowers" to take it in a more contemporary and whimsical direction. The paper pack offers several different colorways of some very contemporary papers and wonderfully complex plaids, florals and swirly papers. My 21 year daughter thinks this is the best (which help me to know I’m on track!) 
I’ll post all of the previews at the Daisie Designers/Artist’s Announcement Forum later in the day, so you can see all of the item and papers included. I’ll come back and post a link here once I do.
years ago and it still is one of my all-time favorites. It was fun to pull elements out of this painting to create these two kits.
The main two hummingbirds included in this kit are Rufous (the brown with green and red throat) and Ruby-throated. Both of these frequent my feeders so I’ve had a great selection of photos and real life experience to paint from , the green hummingbird is a tropical variety that I’d love to see in the wild one day.
I’m planning on painting quite a few more hummingbirds later this spring. Those of you that have read my blog for a while know that I feed about 100 hummers during the summer and I have a wealth of photos to work from. They are such fascinating subjects that bring back wonderful memories of my childhood. My mother planting hummingbird attracting flowers in every home that we lived in and we would sit for hours watching the winged jewels flit and play in our gardens. 
In the Day Planner, I’ve set up project planning pages which I’m using for everything from garage/shop clean up to redesigning my framed print line and getting my web site up (the most important project that is still lagging behind) Using these have helped me to get my thoughts down on paper and filed where I can locate them again. In a way, it’s taken the load off of my brain because I don’t have to "remember" the information anymore, it’s written down.