Hi! Thanks for visiting me today! I’m happy to be here with my third post as CASology’s Featured Designer.
I hope that you’ve been able to visit my week 2 featured designer post:
Craft Space Tour
You can find my week 1 featured designer post here.
If you haven’t and have the time, please do head over after you’re finished here.
I’d like to dedicate this post to my father, Paul Freeman Thibodeau, who is an incredibly gifted artist.
Here’s one of my father’s many beautiful paintings.
For years my father has been saying to me, “Melissa, you need to draw, paint!”
For years I said, “Dad, I do try to photograph something everyday and I have a hobby – 4 children, home-schooling and international moving!” 😉
Germany 2007
I miss both of my parents SO much! Here’s a photo of their wedding day. They were married in my mother’s hometown in Scotland and then moved back to my father’s hometown in Maine.
I am very excited because we are going to be together soon. Next week, my husband, children and I are meeting my parents in Scotland for a family get-together. I am so looking forward to visiting with them and my aunts, uncles and cousins!
My family and I last visited my with parents in late summer of 2014 – it has been nearly 2 years since we were together in Maine.
It was a tough visit. My grandmother had just passed away and then, towards the end of our time there, my husband, children and I all got the flu. It was bad! My husband couldn’t leave his bed. We had to postpone our plans for returning to Germany because my son had a pneumothorax and couldn’t fly.
Also, the weather had been abnormally dry at the time and since my parents have a dug well that made a difficult situation worse.
Laundry and showers for 6 sick people plus 2 more is not an easy task with a low well. However, my parents were so gracious and loved my family and I unconditionally, despite the awful circumstances of our visit.
They are the best! Here’s a photo of them in my mother’s hometown. (I think that it was taken about 12 years ago.)
I love this photo!
I am so looking forward to our time together with them in Scotland. There is sure to be lots of laughter, Scrabble games, fly-fishing, Olympic Games watching, drawing/painting, haggis, charity shop perusing, photography, tea and scones, beach-combing, steak pies, hiking/walking, sight-seeing
and fish & chip suppers!
Can you tell how very excited I am!?
For now, please pass the green smoothie! 😉
My dad, like any good fly fisherman, 
is, in so many ways, no quitter…..
so, he has kept after me to draw and paint!
Thank you, Dad. I love you.
Your tender heart, perseverance through trials, love for your family and God-given, incredible artistic talent are all inspirational to me. Thanks for encouraging me to be creative. I’m taking baby steps – starting to draw and paint again!
So today, I thought that I’d share some of my drawing, painting and maybe a little bit of my “getting messy” with you.
I hope you enjoy this post and that it does not knock your CAS socks off!
Well, maybe I’m secretly hoping that it will. 😉
First off, I’ll share some of my own drawings/paintings. (Please click on any of the photos to be taken to the original post where you’ll be able to see more pictures and get more details too.)
Here is one of my more Clean And Simple sketched and painted cards. 
Here’s a mixed media tag with my sketched Cosmo Daisy:
I love the stencil and stamps I used: ARTplorations – Shower of Flutters stencil and STAMPlorations Retro Butterflies stamps.
A sketch/watercolor of some holly that is growing in my yard:
A sketched rose:
inspired by the roses growing outside my laundry room door…….
One more sketched Cosmo: (Another favorite stamp set here, Happy Little Stampers – Butterfly Birthday.)
Some more sketched holly. Papertrey Ink’s sentiment stamps are fabulous!
I’m always a bit afraid to add paint to my drawings lest I ruin them!
I’m still practicing…….
I think I hold my breath a good part of the time.
I also love lots of inky, and sometimes messy, techniques. Masking, heat embossing, emboss-resist and ink-blending are some of my favorites. I’m also learning how fun and versatile stencils can be.
Here’s a collection of some of my inky and mixed media favorites:
I stamped this next one with an actual leaf from my yard.
I’d be very happy to have you…….
check out my tutorial
for this project (below) over at STAMPlorations:
I will have a couple of new Mixed Media project posts for STAMPlorations going live soon.
Here’s a tiny peek, just for you!
The link to this project will work on 24 July, 2016
and I will have a new tutorial going live at STAMPlorations on August 1.
The link to this project will work on 1 Aug, 2016. I’ll be having fun in Scotland at the time!
After looking through all of these, I guess I’d say my style is…..COLORFUL! Wouldn’t you?! 🙂
Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you’ll come back next week for my final post as CASology’s Featured Designer. I’ll be sharing my favorite CAS cards in that post. The link to that post will go live on 29 July. (I’ll be arriving at the Happy Little Stampers Retreat in England on that day!)
Grace & Peace,
Melissa
P.S. My father has written a book! Check it out!
Also, I’d be very happy if you’d like to visit my Mixed Media Gallery page to see more of my inky-messy creations.
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