It's 2012!!!

Wow - I can't believe it is a new year!  I love the first day of the year.  This year I started the day getting some things done before I go back to school tomorrow.  Hopefully that will get me off on the right foot :)  Then, I also worked on some things for the blog - these are still in the works but will be coming very soon.  I have spent the last few days thinking about my word of the year and about what things I want to do to make my year the best it can be. I'm really excited about my new word: JOY!  Last year my word was FLOURISH and boy, did my year really flourish.  My skills, my creativity, and more. Davis brought up another word - VIVID - and I really like it too.  I think I will let that one linger a bit as well - maybe I'll have both words guide me through the year.  More to come on that later.

I signed up for several classes that I'm really excited about.  Two classes at Jessica Sprague - Digital Art Journaling and The Art of Poster Design, a class at Simplify101 called  "How to Achieve Your Goals and Create a Life You Love", and Clean and Simple Card Making at Online Card Classes by Kristina Werner, Jennifer McGuire and Julie Ebersole and several other great paper crafting ladies. I'm really looking forward to participating in these classes, and it's going to keep me very busy since three of them start within the next 10 days - woo hoo!  I'm hoping to share all that I'm up to here at my blog - check back for more soon.

In the meantime, I have a few photos to share.  I made some Christmas decor items for the ladies I work with.  These were created on craft wood pieces, and I added card and scrapbooking supplies to decorate, a little paint and thickers, and a whole lot of love.  I think they turned out pretty good.  Hope you like them too!

I like the little Memory Box deer and cardinal, and the snow effect a la Tim Holtz.

This one is pretty simple - I kept this one for my collection.

I love how cute this guy is - I added some shimmer paint to the snowman, glitter on the hat and the asterisk for the "o" in snow.  I think I saw that once from Kristina Werner and thought it was cute.

Another cute snowman -more shimmer paint here and this time I added buttons and crushed velvet ribbon for a scarf and black gemstones for the eyes - got the asterisk on snow again :)

More shimmer on this snowman.  I like that I didn't cut out the mouth on this.  It is so subtle - the mouth is still there and looks almost like he's just coming to life - love that!  LOVE the red glitter cardinal sticker resting on his arm and I added Picket Fence stickles rubbed over the snowflakes on the background paper. This one really makes me happy!

Well, I hope all of you really enjoyed your holiday.  Check back soon for more updates.  Davis took a photo of me this weekend that I plan to use as my new profile picture.  Yay!!!

Julie