Welcome to the Studio Joyful Heart Designs, aka Jenn Howland!

Join us and get to know her a bit better in her own words and photos:

Tell us a little bit about yourself? (where you were born, where you grew up, your family, kids, pets)

My name is Jenn, I was born in Texas and lived there until I was 20.  We moved around a bit for my husband’s job and are now in Alabama.  I have three kiddos, my son is 28, my oldest daughter is 27, and my youngest daughter is 17 😊  We LOVE animals and nature and have had various “pets” over the years!  Right now we have 2 kitties (Luna & Apollo), our bearded dragon (Copper), a beautiful ball python snake (Whisper), a crested gecko (Saffron), about 12 toads that my daughters have found in the wild and now have as pets (they are SO much fun!!), and we have a little colony of Madagascar hissing cockroaches!!  I know that the last one sounds EWWW to a lot of people, but they are really cool creatures and they do NOT fly, which makes them less scary to me! LOL  We live in a very tiny town of about 700-ish people in a 1911 Victorian home.  Since we are more country around here, we have quite a few creatures that find their way onto our property and that run around in the woods behind our house…it is always exciting to spot deer, a fox, or ground hogs roaming around <3

How did you find designing, or how did you become a digital designer?

I started out designing linkware sets for websites back in 1999, and in 2004 one of my friends recommended that I look into digital scrapbooking design, and then I was hooked!

What is your favorite thing to design? Or your favorite part of designing?

Papers are my main love…I find them so much more fun to create than elements!

Where do you get your inspiration from, for your designs?

Color is usually what gets my creative mode going, and I also really enjoy looking at art online, especially mixed media and collage pieces 😊

What do you like to do, besides designing (hobbies, activities, other work)?

I used to do a lot of reading, but my eyes have gone down hill quite a bit for close up reading over the past few years (I was told that this is usual for people in their mid-40’s, but I don’t like it!!), so I  mainly enjoy feeding and watching the various birds we have here, and taking photos of flowers and various little creatures I discover around the yard 😊  I also sometimes do some gaming with my girls…Roblox, Serious Sam…

Favorites? (colors, books, movies, other things, you pick..)

My favorite color is purple, I love alternative rock, and for movies I like paranormal spooky or comedy.

What is your least favorite? What do you struggle with most?

Elements are my least favorite thing to design…I struggle with coming up with ideas…it is so frustrating!! lol

Is there any place on earth that is at the top of your wish list to see?

I really do not enjoy traveling, but I would love to see the pyramids in Egypt and to visit an archaeology dig site in person!  I hate the heat though, and sunburn easily, so I doubt that I will ever actually DO either of those…just wishful thinking 😉

Why did you choose to be a part of the Studio family? What do you love about the Studio?

It has been a long time since I have been in more than just one store, and I wanted to try it out again, meet new people, and DSS has several designers that I already know from the past several years, so I thought it would be a great place to be a guest <3  So far everyone has been SO sweet!!!

Hopes, dreams for the future?

This is my 20th year of designing, and I hope to continue for at least another 20 years!  I would really love to get a place set up here to do more hands-on crafting and painting to incorporate into my digital designs <3

Check out Jenn’s store here