Hello and a little bit about me.

Welcome. I thought I would start off with a little bit about me and how I became an author/Illustrator. 

I am happily married to my husband Steve since September 1995. We were not blessed with children due to fertility struggles and me having a total hysterectomy in 2006 due to Uterine Cancer. We are however blessed with many nephews and nieces. We have a godson and many other children to spoil and send back home to their parents. I mean that is the best thing right. We have a 20lb cat named Gizmo who I am sure will make an appearance here from time to time. 

I began hand lettering in 2015 when the company my husband worked for closed. I had always loved art but hadn’t really done any since high school many years ago. I spent time every day working on my lettering. I tried many types of media. My current favorites are watercolor and pointed pen. 

In the spring of 2017 I decided to join the #100dayschallenge on Instagram. This is where you pick one thing and then do that each day for 100 days. I chose to draw flowers. Somewhere around the middle of April Instagram was being finicky and wouldn’t post my videos so I started posting them to my Facebook drawing page. One of my author friends kept saying I should make a coloring book. I of course said “No way. I wouldn’t even begin to know how to do that.” At the same time I kept getting a clear message from God to create a Coloring Prayer Journal. Three times I ignored the message before finally taking the leap of faith and beginning to draw the pages for my first book. 

A Stroke with God was a true labor of love. It was over a 300 hour process. I sketched each flower and word on paper. Then I transferred them in ink onto tracing paper. I then scanned them into the computer, converted them into vector images, cleaned them up and them saved them as images that I could then insert into the pages in Microsoft Publisher to create my book. 

The thrill I felt when my first printed proof arrived is almost indescribable. It was fantastic, amazing and scary all at the same time. 

I felt the same nudge from God in the fall of 2017 to do another Prayer Journal with Coloring Pages. This time it would be a 12 month one instead of 30 days. I began sketching out a few ideas and the in December when I had enough money saved from sales of my first book I was able to purchase an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil. This was a total game changer. I was now able to draw each coloring page in full and then save as an image to be inserted into my book file in Publisher. I started really focusing on the second book in February and published Coloring Through the Seasons with God on 4/29/2018. 

Most days I still find it hard to wrap my mind around the fact that I have published 2 books. It just doesn’t seem real. Will there be more books? I certainly hope so. Until then I will just keep drawing and see where that takes me.