Category Archives: Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

I’ll be back soon… I hope!!!!

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If I don’t collapse first, LOL!  The finish line is near, Surtex starts a week from Sunday and this last week I am working to develop as many new collections as I possibly can for the shows.  It’s been a great and productive season, but I am so ready to get back to “normal” and start writing again, and maybe even playing a little again.  What a concept!

Thanks to all that have sent sweet notes of encouragement and prayers for me.  It’s hard to work 12-15 hours every day, this old body doesn’t do it as well as it used to… but God’s grace is always there for me!

A week from today I will be heading to the Quilt Show in Pittsburgh and I’m so looking forward to the experience.  My fabric company, “Studio E Fabrics” is so delightful to work with.  I really enjoy them and the process.  They’re taking great care of me and I’m going to get the opportunity to meet so many of the quilt shop owners, I’m REALLY excited about that.   I love to pick their brains and learn from their experience.

So keep bearing with me, I’ll be back to normal soon 🙂

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

A Very Special Man Left Us Yesterday…

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My paternal grandfather, Earl Flint, went home to be with the Lord yesterday.  He was a few days short of 99 years old and was a rock and a pillar in our family.

Grandpa was tiny, I think maybe 5′ 4″ but he was a big, big man.  I remember him for years smoking a pipe and quietly presiding over family gatherings.  When I was a little girl, all I had to do was smell a pipe and I would frantically look around for grandpa!!

Grandpa didn’t come from a Christian home.  In fact, from what little I know of his youth, I believe he had a very difficult time of things.  I never heard how he came to the Lord, but when he did it was for LIFE and with his whole heart.  He was a prayer warrior.  Even in his declining years when he was in and out of things mentally, he still prayed.  When the tsunami hit he sat in front of the TV and prayed non-stop for those who were suffering.  My grandmother, his wife of 73.5 years had passed just a few weeks before but he was consumed with praying for others not wallowing in his grief.

He was a hoot too.  At one of their anniversary parties, he literally put a lamp shade on and was dancing around the house!  Grandpa and grandma were still madly in love after all those years and would be frisky with each other right up until the end — what a wonderful example of married love they were.

Grandpa saw grandma at church, she was the organist and figured out how to arrange a “blind date” with her!  He said he was very, very patient… he waited 2 weeks before asking her to marry him.  I believe she was 15 at the time.  The two of them didn’t come from Christian homes but they sure built one together and their influence has spread far and wide in the family they raised.

Bye, Grandpa… give Grandma a hug for me and tell her how much I love and respect you both.  I’ll see you again one day.

Contests, Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

I am Painting Birds, Birds and More Birds!

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The next collection I am working on is going to be filled with birds.  Here’s where you can help.  If you have excellent, up close, high res images of birds that you would share with me and allow me to paint, please leave a message in the comments section (which will give me your email address) and I’ll be in contact.

I’m especially looking for the classic birds that people love: hummingbirds, blue birds, cardinals, all types of songbirds etc.  You are the most generous and amazing people I’m so blessed to be able to turn to you guys for source materials.  Thanks in advance!!!!!

I thought I might even make it a contest.  Each person that supplies photos for me will be entered into a drawing and will receive a digital clip art kit as a gift. By the way, if I use your photo, I’ll provide you the art on disk for personal use as a thank you.

I’ll have to have a release form filled out granting permission for me to use your photos as they are copyright covered items.  You will retain your copyright, but grant me permission to use it.

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

Surtex & Licensing Shows Coming Up

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For those of you that are regular readers, now is the time of year that I have to bury myself in new design work to have it ready for the two biggest licensing shows of the year as well as other lesser shows.  So I’m going to apologize in advance for neglecting you from time-to-time.

I will try to use this time to upload many of my classic digital clip art kits to this site and www.aimeeasher.com since that doesn’t take too much time, but what I REALLY have to do is clean my art studio so I can CREATE ART IN IT!!!

The trash can is in the middle of the floor and I’m working from one end to the other.  It’s beyond awful and NO I will not post pics of it, LOL!  I am vulnerable to blackmail if pictures ever got out!

Have a great weekend all and thanks for your understanding and patience!

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne, New Releases, Products Available, Scrapbooking

Thanks, Lucy! New Instant Scrap Book Pages in the Store Today

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LINK TO ANTIQUED VICTORIAN PANSIES QUICK PAGES KIT IN STORE, $4.98

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.

My friend, Lucy Hampton brought an image that I had placed in my blog to my attention today.  I created it some time ago promising a kit to come shortly, well….  I had forgotten about the kit altogether and it was “lost” on my hard drive!

I had created six, 12 inch premade scrapbook pages and they were just sitting there waiting to be uploaded to the store.  It’s a little scary when your hard drive(s) are so big you can lose your work and not even remember you were working on it.

Ah well!  These are perfect for spring, so the timing is great.  If you scrapbook, you know how much time it can take just to find your pictures and develop your theme.  With quick pages all you have to do is drop your photos in behind the layer, size them and then print out your page.  If you don’t have a printer that can print 12″ pages, you can take them to office supply stores and have them printed onto photo paper very economically.  In fact some of my friends that scrap, feel it’s better quality at a lesser price than it costs to print at home!  You can also reduce them to 8″ size and print them on letter-sized paper to use either in an 8″ album or even place and 8″ page on top of a piece of 12″ store purchased paper and add a little bit more to complete your own unique page.

If you don’t scrapbook, consider the other uses for quickpages.  You can reduce the size, add a photo and some text and create your own announcements, invitations or greeting cards.  You can even send an image like these with your photos to your favorite photo lab via email and print out beautiful Wedding Invitations, Bridal Shower Invitations, Tea Party Invitations or create your own greeting cards.  I especially love receiving photo greeting cards, my refrigerator is covered with them.

Thanks so much for the reminder, Lucy!

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

Blog Contest Winner Wins Free Digital Clip Art Kit

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I remembered on my own, are you as amazed as I am, LOL!  Of course, it is a day late, but as things go that’s not too bad for me.

The winner is the fourth comment on this post:

LINK TO POST FOR WINNER

Congratulations and she won this kit as her prize.  LINK TO HAPPY EASTER 2 KIT IN STORE

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne, New Releases

Devotional, “Times of Refreshing”, and Peony Cottage Blue 2 Digital Clip Art Kit

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CLICK HERE FOR LINK TO PEONY COTTAGE BLUE 2 ART KIT IN STORE HERE, $4.98

I have the second art kit in the “Peony Cottage, Blue” series ready and in the store today.  This is a BRAND NEW art kit that I have hand water colored.  A beautiful a pink English Rose, and a floral cluster with tulips, peonies and roses are the foundation of this collection.  There is an 8″ x 8″ image suitable for a card front included and an elegant painting that is suitable for framing, along with 5, 12″ papers, 3 borders, 2 frames, 5 fun embellishments (two custom buttons, a tag, title banner and photo corners),  two small square art icons and an elegant rectangular floral swag complete the 18 piece collection.

This wonderful cottage-feeling collection will make you feel the warm, gentle winds of spring and the scent of roses on the air!

This artwork is extremely detailed and life-like.  It can be used to create your own cards, craft with or for scrapbooking.  The files in this kit are 300 dpi jpeg and png files.  Art copyright Audrey Jeanne Roberts, 2009  Special thanks to Atomic Cupcake.

SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY: 1 John 2:15-17  Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.  For everything in the world-the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world.  The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.  NIV

DEVOTIONAL: Continuing our discussion about the ways that we grow dry and spiritually empty, I’m sharing today about how we get too wrapped up in “the world” and all of it’s cares.  How does scripture delineate the difference between the natural world that we live in and “the world” which is considered sinful and a wrong place to dwell?  First, we need to recognize that God made us to live in this world.  We need to eat and drink and sleep and earn a living — that’s part of the life he wants us to live.  But if or when the pursuit of any of those things goes to the extreme, we begin to live in “the world,” not the kingdom of God.

If as we work to pay our bills, we walk with Christ in prayer and meditation and we seek to be used by Him in the course of our day — we’re in a great place.  Whether we run the board room as a CEO or we sweep the floors as a janitor, God wants us to dedicate the entirety of ourselves to HIm and His purposes.  But, If we make climbing that ladder of success our goal, we will find that we just may climb the ladder and discover it has been placed against a wrong building!  Achievement for the sake of achievement, honor or money will not last.  It will not satisfy.  In fact it will leave you more empty than when you started.  That can be ANY achievement, even “good” ones — if the achievement becomes more important than the one who created you to achieve.

If you have a home that is a place for your family to gather in love and delight in each other and the Lord, it’s a precious gift from God, but if you are consumed by the caring for that home so much that it crowds out your devotion for God and love of your family — it can be a curse.  The world is less a list of things and much more an attitude of our heart towards those things.

Of course the bible also identifies the world as sins we participate in.  We lust after possessions.  We crave pleasures.  We look at someone else’s husband or wife and covet them.  We yearn for bigger, better, more expensive cars, homes or other things — certain that they will bring joy to our heart.  Perhaps we yearn for financial security in banks, stocks, homes, gold or other physical riches.  Any and all of these can be “the world,” and rob us of a closer relationship with God.

Take time to monitor your thoughts a little.  Are you worrying?  What are you worrying about?  What consumes your thoughts?  Where does God fit into your routine, daily thought life?  Do you ever think about things farther away than next week or next month?  By this I mean, do you ponder the eternal value of each task in your life?  Do you think about how God might want to use you today?  Or do you only think about God almost as another commitment you need to check off your to do list to keep on track?

Spend time today asking God to help you see your “world” through His eyes.  It might be a very interesting and profitable exercise!

PRAYER:  Lord, help me to look at my world through your eyes.  What in it is in the right place and is balanced and what isn’t?  Help me to discern anything in my life that is drawing me away from growing closer to you and anything that I am putting my effort into that will not matter in the light of eternity.  Show me anything that is creating a dry and dead place in my heart and help me to remove it.  Show me how I can add things to my day that will be like springs of living water springing up to water my very soul.

Help me to see how I can make the most of mundane of chores or responsibilities.  Show me ways that routine tasks can build the kingdom of God and how I can experience a refreshing from you as I do the ordinary tasks of life “as unto the Lord.”  Lord, renew a right spirit within me, for I am dry and weary and in need of your refreshing.

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

Elegant Easter Eggs Digital Clip Art Kit, New in Store Today

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LINK TO ELEGANT EASTER EGGS KIT IN STORE  $4.98

I have often had requests over the years for an adult Easter set.  There are lots of little bunnies, chicks and easter eggs, but what do we give to an adult friend or family member?!  So this spring I set about painting some elegant Easter eggs for my own Easter use and this is the kit that resulted.

The front image is available two ways, as a completed card front and every item is available separately so you can make your own layouts.  There are fifteen pieces to this kit and that includes 3 papers, one card front, 5 eggs, the hanging cord and gold attachment, one ribbon, one border and one frame.

SCRIPTURE OF THE DAY:  Jer 31:23-26  This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “When I bring them back from captivity, the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words: ‘The LORD bless you, O righteous dwelling, O sacred mountain.’  People will live together in Judah and all its towns — farmers and those who move about with their flocks.  I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.”  At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me.
NIV

DEVOTIONAL: I love that scripture, “I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.”

Do you feel dry in your spiritual life right now?  Are you weary?  Do you feel overwhelmed by the constant barrage of bad news on our economy?  Does the daily grind, grind even more when you are concerned about making ends meet or when you worry if you or a loved one will have a job tomorrow?

I have to answer “Yes” to a lot of the above questions.  I’ve been feeling dry and spiritually uninspired for a while and had to stop and think about why that was.  I realized a couple of things about myself that might apply to some of you as well.

I go in cycles.  I have long periods of great creativity and energy that are routinely followed by a short period of the blues.  This has been my history for decades, so I shouldn’t be surprised when the blues hit!  But I always am.  Rest is the key for recovery and resting in the Lord is especially key for me.

I work long hours at a career that I love.  Lots of times I find myself energized by the creativity, but over the period of weeks creating I will become physically depleted and guess what?  The spiritual being inside of me gets weakened and tired as well!

When I am worried, He commands me to rest in Him and to give those concerns over to Him.  When I feel dry and don’t feel like reading His word, that’s when I MOST NEED TO DO IT!  When I am weary and “blue” I find that I usually need to ignore my feelings for a while and do what I know is right no matter how it feels.

God is the same powerful, loving God whether I feel confident about that or not!  He’s still on the throne when the Dow is at 12,000 or if it dropped to 5,000.  The economy is so complex that no man can understand or control it, but God is in control of my personal economy and I have to trust Him to walk me through this season of fear and recession.

Oh yeah!  And one of the most wonderful things I’ve learned over the years is that God isn’t surprised or disappointed by my “blues!”  He isn’t upset with my human frailty, but He does want me to come to Him when I feel down.  He wants to comfort me and He can do that best through His word!

PRAYER:  Lord, sometimes I don’t even realize how weary I have become.  I also don’t realize how much that weariness impacts my sense of spirituality and closeness with you.  But you know this about us.  You know how frail our frame is and You have made a place of refreshing for us to come to no matter how we feel at the moment.

Help me Lord to remember to seek you through your word whether I “feel” close to you or not.  Help me to find comfort in you and draw from your strength when I feel weary.  Remind me that I need to REST — physically and spiritually.  AMEN

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

White Matilija Poppy Fields Digital Clip Art Set

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I’m now on Twitter if you want to follow me, I’m “AudreyJeanne”  I found Dixie already and if you’re on it make sure you do whatever it is you do to invite me to follow you.  I’m such a techno nerd at this stuff!

LINK TO WHITE POPPY FIELDS ART KIT IN STORE

Okay, okay, I lied sort of!!!!  I fully MEANT to get this up yesterday, but life got away from me!  This is my new White Poppy Fields digital clip art kit.

These poppies grew in my yard in San Diego.  We had about 25 feet of them lining our creek.  They grow to about 5-8 feet high and have the most amazing fragrance.  Each flower is 6″ to 12″ across and looks like crinkled crepe paper.  I’m pretty sure these were the inspiration for the Mexican crepe paper flowers you see when visiting the country.

To paint them, I have to take digital reference photos, sketch as quickly as possible and sit down and paint them in one sitting.   They literally change before your eyes and before you’re finished painting them, the flower that is before you looks nothing like what you sketched!

I am still working on my devotional, it isn’t finished yet so I’ll post this and hopefully come back to it later today.

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne, Gardening tips, Products Available, recipes and recipe cards, Uncategorized

Brand New Little Boy Card Making Kit

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LINK TO CARD MAKING/INVITATION KIT IN THE STORE

This brand new kit is perfect to make for an invitation to a Baby Shower for a little boy!  All you have to do is add your invitation information inside the card.  This card can also be made up as a Welcome card for a new baby, a Mother’s day card or an encouragement card for a tired, young mother you might know.  The saying on the front is “Oh so true,” isn’t it?

I’m always on the lookout for quick, easy and different ideas to make card crafting kits for my customers.  This week I was searching my voluminous hard drives for something else and I stumbled on a large line of these designs I created years ago.

It occurred to me that they would make awesome cards and I am excited to start getting them to you!  There will be lots more of them coming soon.

Each card kit comes with a 3 3/4″ x 9 1/8″ card in two version.  With the text as shown and blank for your own text.  These cards fit a standard US Business size #10 envelope, so if you’re in a hurry you can make just the card or you can decorate a pre-made envelope with the included sticker set.  It also comes with a matching envelope you can print and assemble for yourself.  There are also two 3D bookmarks, one with text and one blank.  All of this comes for $5.98, which is just a little more than the price of a single store bought card and you can use them over and over again.

Let me know if there are any occasions or relationships you would be especially interested in and I’ll work on those first.  Now back to that hard drive to see which one I’ll do next, LOL!

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne, Gardening tips, Products Available

CHA Show Pictures

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Okay, my daughter downloaded all my pictures for me so now I can start sharing some of the great ideas.  By the way, if you click on the pictures they will enlarge for you.

These pictures came from K & Company’s booth.  I could see this done as a centerpiece for everything from a baby or bridal shower to a Valentine’s Day Party etc.  You could make the top an actual box top and use them for gift packaging as well.   Without a pattern, I would simply cut cardboard for the bottom “cake plate” and use chip board or something similar to create the boxes with and then cover them with purchased scrapbook papers or print your own papers and piece them to cover the form.  They’ve used layers and layers of borders, and have used K&C Grand Adhesions dimensional tags, but you could also create your own out of any graphics set you want to use.  Just print multiples of the item and cut out the pieces to layer with foam tape!

I love these whimsical crowns as well.  You could actually make these at a little girl’s birthday party by pre-printing the items that they could use to decorate their own crowns with.  Of course, you must have lots of glitter and jewels to make them truly special!  K & C used lots of pearls, ribbons and layers and layers of their really wonderful dimensional tags.  I believe that all of these paper collections are Brenda Walton’s, but I’m not positive.  I should have kept a notebook for reference on the pictures and well… my memory is MY MEMORY!!!  Which means it’s not very dependable.

The final item for tonight is another Brenda Walton designed paper collection turned into a bird house.  I’m not able to find this collection online yet, it was Raspberry something.  I really MUST take better notes next time, sorry! The collection was absolutely fabulous!!!

This bird house would be very easily created with foam core, cut to size.  Just draw the front panel on graph paper, tape it to your foam core and cut two pieces.  Trace around a round object for your opening and using an exacto knife, carefully cut it out.

Measure the side of your front panel to get the height of the side panels and draw your template for how long you want the birdhouse to be, this was a square but you could make it a rectange as well.  Cut two.  Assemble temporarily with scotch tape on the inside and measure for the roof panels.  Cut two and cut a base one inch larger than the footprint of the birdhouse.

Cover each of the pieces with the papers you would like to use.  If you use Brenda Walton’s papers you could also decorate it with her matching Grand Adhesions Tags.  Assemble with hot glue and decorate to your taste!

I wish I could credit the creators of these wonderful crafts.  Unfortunately no design credit was given.  Each of them did fabulous work.  More tomorrow.

Daily Life with Audrey Jeanne

Okay, Okay Already!!! CHA Notes to Follow

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LOL!  I have been chasing my tail ever since I arrived home — mostly because my new agents are doing their job amazingly well.  So all things considered, I am not going to complain.  I have a lot of art that has to be sent out to potential licensees so I’ll be a little scarce.  I am really hoping to get to post a new kit or two next week — at least new to the store and AAE, but probably not brand new for those of you that are my faithful customers.  I’m peddling as fast as I can!

I really enjoyed my time at CHA.  The show was somewhat smaller than it was two years ago when I attended it last.  The crowd was down somewhat, but the manufacturers over all were commenting that the buyers were in attendance and ordering, there were just fewer extra people from the stores coming along.

Because scrapbooking and digital crafting are my focus, I spent most of my time in those areas.  HOWEVER, that said, my absolute favorite goodie I wish I could have gone home with was for sewing and quilting.  It is the AccuQuilt, “Go Cutter.”  LINK TO ACCUQUILT WEBSITE. The whole idea of die cutting paper has been brought to those who love to quilt.  This little wonder is lightweight, travels easily and will cut through up to 6 layers of quilting fabric, it will cut batting and other items.

If you’ve ever tried to piece together a quilt that you didn’t accurately cut the pieces for, imagine cutting 9, PERFECT 2 1/2″ strips (the length of an average width of folded fabric) at one time!  The speed and accuracy is phenomenal.  I made a diamond quilt once and if your pieces are not accurately cut, they are a nightmare to assemble.  AccuQuilt has diamond dies, circle dies, hexagonal dies, you name it.  Oh, and their border dies are to “die for!”  Be careful, you might get lost for hours looking through their website.

For those of you that do digital crafting and package up goodies (candy, cookies etc.) Clear Bags, “Crystal Clear Cube Boxes” have endless possibilities.  They have pop up boxes in a wide range of sizes.  their smallest box, which is 1 1/2″ cubed, runs from $.25 each if you order 25 to only $.15 each if you purchase 1,000 at a time.  A couple of interesting sizes I noted are 4″ x 4″ x 6″ at $1.05 each for 25, 2″ x 2″ x 3″ at $.42 each for 25 and 3″ x 3″ x 4″ at $.54 for 25.   They also have a line of Crystal Clear Hanging Boxes for those of you that craft and do note cards, hand made greeting cards etc.  Their box for a 5″ x 7″ greeting card is $.58 each for 25 or $.43 each for 200.  You can find them at: LINK TO CLEAR BAGS WEBSITE.

They are running a special for CHA of 10% off of Crystal Clear Packaging and 5% off of Cards & Envelopes.  Promo: CHAW09, Expires: 2/25/09.

My photographs are on my daughter’s camera and I have to have her help to download them.  I’ll post pictures of some of the most darling projects that I saw, as well as some beautiful scrapbooking pages.