babyblues65

Hello everyone! Happy 2024 and now I'm 58 years old!! About 14 years ago I discovered the world of art journaling, junk journaling, gelli printing, ATC creation and just anything that goes along in this realm. I love sharing with others and love receiving their works of art!! I also love learning from others through this process! I work a full time job in the Department of Defense and hate every minute of it even though I'm grateful for a job. So I counter that with doing art in my free time. I love to garden and have so much fun in the spring time bringing my backyard to life. I have 2 dogs who are spoiled rotten. I also have a husband of 11 years and 2 grown children. My son is a brain cancer survivor and I have journals that reflect my emotions going through that, and I still have days I have to put my rage and sadness somewhere so I put it in journal pages. My daughter is a beautiful 27 year old that is an amazing and accomplished artist, I'm totally jealous of her talent :-) but so happy she has it. We as a family love to travel, and we frequently can be found shopping at estate sales finding the best junk and crazy items that I can add to the piles in my art room and ephemera, I love UNUSUAL ephemera and old Vintage Books. My latest count was 52 of them, then I have hard time using them, I finally downsized to 20 and gave my others away to others! I started out art journaling by going to Michael's and Hobby Lobby, but now I'm in the alley ways and thrift stores, the cheap or free or weirder the better! Ha ha ha!!

I used to travel a lot for work. In 2019 I traveled to Lebanon, Ireland, Germany, Amsterdam and was deployed to Iraq for 6 weeks. Of course 2020 put a halt to that and so far travel for my work is not looking better, not sure how much I'll get to travel again for work, they have taken it out of the budget. I have loved that I get to travel a lot, but it really cuts into my Swap Bot Time!! :-) Looking forward to retirement one day so I can craft when and where I want! I did take a small art journal kit with me to Iraq and its challenging to use only what you have around you because there sure wasn't anything there!. I also asked Emirates if I could keep one of their magazines from the airplane. It had the most amazing art and photos in it. I made some fun stuff with it.

My favorite crafts are art journaling, mixed media, watercolor, ATC's, and Junk Journals. I'm big on unusual ephemera and the Gelli Plate is the BOMB! Out of all of these, art journaling is my favorite because there are no rules and you don't have to be organized. One of my favorite mediums is watercolor. Other crafts I do on a limited basis is repurpose old furniture into new and I also love to garden with flowers, I consider that an art. At one time in my life I was an AVID scrap booker. I documented from the time my children were born until my son got sick, I lost my heart for it through that and never picked it back up. I then discovered art journaling after that.

I read really fast and I read a lot!! I have my Amazon Prime Unlimited for this reason, it's worth the money to me to be able to find interesting books at a moments notice. I read anything and everything from non fiction, historical, fiction, dramas, poetry. I love to read about natural health, nutrition, finance, blogging, gardening and a good murder mystery. The one genre I do not care for anymore is romance, maybe because I'm old. LOL! I used to like romances when young, but slowly they became boring to me. I also do not care for deep sci fi, no interest. I proudly proclaim I've never watched Star Wars. Hey, no judgement for others that love it, I just don't. My favorite life time book is definitely Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean Auel.

When it comes to movies, once again they reflect my book choices. I really love all of those genres but also love supernatural, crime. Planes Trains and Automobiles is my all time favorite movie to make me laugh and feel better when I am sad or upset. Don't know why, but it is. Maybe because I travel so much and have experienced similar travel stories. I also love any movies that make me feel or make me think, make me grow as a person (My Octopus Teacher anyone??? The tears, the beauty, it has it all), the same with music. If I like a song, I don't care the genre. So I like something about everything, no matter the genre.

We only have Netflix and so I watch Netflix series mostly. My husband does like to watch Survivor on the internet but television is not what it used to be and I'm OK with it. Now that I don't watch much of it, I get so much more done in my life!! Edit: I just now watched the series "The Good Place". I freaking loved it, so different and to me, thought provoking as well as funny.

I love receiving glittery beautiful things. Different Teas of all kinds. I like hot chocolate. I looovvvee coffee!! ....My favorite thing in the world are feathers, flowers, butterflies, birds and all things natural. In saying that, there is NOTHING that someone has made that I won't love. I'm the most unpicky person in the whole world. I love seeing where other people live, I love receiving ANY kind of mail, I love receiving something from a long time artist or someone starting out because I was there too. I don't have a preference for any kind of tea or extras, I love it all. My favorite colors are blues and greens, I love bling, pinks and reds, yellow when it is super bright and in general happy colors. I do have an appreciation for darks too though, especially Halloween, I love Halloween. It's so much fun to be weird and make Halloween stuff. I like Christmas, don't love it, but it is beautiful and I participate because others love it so much.

NOTE: If you send me something and it doesn't meet the requirements of the swap but I can tell you put a lot of love into it, you will not be rated low. I'm here for the joy of giving and receiving, period. I haven't been flaked on yet so maybe that changes folks tunes. I did have one swapper that was my partner for an art journal that never sent but she had emailed me and said she'd been very sick. I just left it alone, I hope she got better.

Also, if you ever have to pay postage on something, I will make it right!!! I always take my packages to the post office now, but even still I have had a few that still don't have enough postage. WHHHAAATTTT!!!!??

If you made it this far in my profile, thank you for reading it!! Have a wonderful day!