Heartfelt Sympathy and a Celebration of a Gifted Photographer

Yesterday was an interesting day.  I attended both a memorial celebration and wedding on the same day (and, thankfully, in that order).  I was just going to pull a sympathy card from my stash, but yesterday  morning I woke up early and because I had an idea about the cornucopia stamp from Lawn Fawn's Harvest Season that was percolating. So I had to wander down to my craft room to develop the idea. I stamped in Memento Onyx Black ink and used my colored pencils for it.  I don't have many and they are just a cheap set I picked up from Michaels a while ago, but they have been good enough to some simple coloring and blend okay with gamsol.  I know I could do better if I had better quality pencils so the other day I did order a huge set of colored pencils that should be here later this week.  Yes, I know, it's crazy that I ordered colored pencils when I'm taking the copic class at onlinecardclasses.com later this month and I'm sure I will be order markers I need to fill in the gaps of what I have.  But I've wanted this set of pencils for over year now and haven't ordered them.  After a bit of a rough couple of days, I thought some retail therapy might help.  So I expect you'll see a lot of coloring in my future both in pencil and in copics.  Good thing I find coloring therapeutic too!

Anyhow, back to this card, after I finished coloring the cornucopia, I added a sentiment from the new Simply Sentimental set from Newton's Nook Designs (love the script on this one) and added random leaves using the leaves from the Harvest Season set and three colors of Simon Says Stamp ink (Leaf Green, Burnt Orange and the new Goldenlocks).  I finished off the card by cutting the panel out with the Simon Says Stamp Frame Die, cutting a second one in black and then cutting the whole background using the stitched frame from my new dies from My Favorite Things, Blueprints #13. 

The memorial was for my intern who passed away suddenly a couple weeks ago at only age 44!  Way too young, especially when I saw his teenage sons at the service and intensely realized what a huge gap it would be leaving in their lives.  It was actually quite a beautiful memorial service and they showcased many of his pictures, as he was a gifted photographer.  During his interview, his photography hobby came up and he shared with me this picture he took for a designer.  I found it on Google and am sharing it here (at the service, his friend encouraged us to share his pictures):

It's such an amazing shot.  I assumed he used a lot of Photoshop on it, but his friend explained that Jeff came to him asking how to use Photoshop and the friend was amazed that the photos hadn't already been through Photoshop (that's how gifted Jeff was at capturing the shot). 

I remember one day shortly before the state fair, Jeff showed me four photos on his phone asking me which one he should enter.  There were four amazing shots and it was so hard to choose between them (the fourth was one similar to the first picture below, but there was a man and his dog in the shot - I looked all over for it because it was one of my favorites, but I couldn't find it):
 

This next one is the one I actually choose, maybe because I love tulips so much.  He entered it and won (the same weekend he died):

 

At the memorial service, they showed many other shots that were equally stunning.  I encourage you to go check them out.  You can find them here:  http://500px.com/Masterlender.  But I'll leave you today with some that were a few of my favorite examples of the beauty that is this great world of ours that Jeff eye's was able to capture to share with the world: