SALT Challenge - Women of Faith

At the SALT blog this week it was Ruth's turn to set the challenge and she choose inspiring Christian women - a great topic! They could be women from the Bible, from Christian history or from your life. Ruth kept with a Mother's day theme and made a creation using the verses from Proverbs about a Woman of Noble character. Hop on over to SALT to check out Ruth's creation!


I had a inspiring woman in mind immediately, Elizabeth Prentiss, who was the youngest daughter of one of the great revival preachers of the early 1800's, Edward Payson of Portland, ME. Elizabeth wrote the most amazing book, "Stepping Heavenward", which I have been priviledged to read a number of times. It's a wonderful book that deals with the trials of being a woman, a wife, and a mother and is written in a journal format. While it is fiction, the book is drawn from Elizabeth's actual experiences and has a profound affect upon women. If you can get your hands on a copy of the book, I highly recommend it!

Elizabeth also wrote the hymn "More Love to Thee." She wrote to a friend in 1873, "To love Christ more - this is the deepest need, the constant cry of my soul. Down in the bowling alley, and out in the woods, and on my bed, and out driving, when I am happy and busy, and when I am sad and idle, the whisper keeps going up for more love, more love, more love!" Ah...for that to be my constant cry as well!

I created a 12x12 scrapbook page, highlighting her hymn, that I plan to hang on my craft room wall as a reminder to pray for more love for Christ. Project details:
-I started with this fun felt heart (Julie, you've inspired me to use felt!) and sewed four buttons onto the edge of the heart
-The hymn was copied onto a transparency, which was layered under the heart
-Big, giant swirls were added as a design element to my basic gray cardstock (I love gray and red together!)
-I then took a "love definition" background stamp and completed stamped a piece of twill that was tied around the bottom half of the page before adding the hymn and heart
-A tab was added to the hymn that says 100 percent...love that!
-Grudge letters spelling "more" and a love stamp and more swirls finished off the piece

I'm still on the fence on whether or not it is too plain...Boy do I struggle with keeping things simple. "I should add one more swirl...no, don't do it...oh, just a little something here, maybe another button...no, it's fine, leave it alone...well, how about some ribbon....no, that won't work...ok, maybe some more background stamping..." Such are my internal conversations down in my studio! LOL!

I hope you enjoy and please take a stroll on over to the SALT blog to check out everyone's creations and to find out about our very first RAK! One of our dear team members, Casey from Scripture by Design , is offering a bunch of free goodies...Go check it out!

Gillian Made My Day!

My dear, sweet friend Gillian from Ecelctic Me tagged me with the sweetest award! Thank you Gillian! Little does she know, well I hope she does know, that every time I see an email from her in my inbox it makes me smile! I didn't know Gillian until I started my blog and although she lives in Australia (I'll get there on vacation sometime) and I live in the US we have become friends and her friendship is a blessing to me! (And on top of all that, Gillian is amazingly talented!! You must go check out her blog and her handmade jewelry...Stunning!!)

The rules for the “You Make My Day” award are to re-present it to 10 people whose blogs bring you happiness and inspiration and make you feel happy about blog land. Let them know through email or by posting a comment on their blog so they can pass it on. Beware you may get the award several times, and if you do, consider yourself really, really loved.

I will do my best to narrow my choice down to just 10...that's hard to do, so many of you are an inspiration! Here goes...

Deb
Julie
Godelieve
Johanna
Melissa
Erika
Emily
Emilia
Nicole
Kristina

Each of these women are amazingly talented and constantly inspire me with their creativity, imagination, and ability to get more work done in one day than any one person should! :-) Thank you!!

Ye Scalawag

More pirate images from justjohanna! How cute is Al with his pirate bandanna? These are two separate images from Johanna; the boat and Al. And how about that? I pulled out some magic mesh! Anyone use this product anymore? I bought some years ago for a class and never touched it again but it just seemed to work with this card. That fun patterned paper? It's wrapping paper that Johanna wrapped some of my design team kit stamps with...isn't it so pretty? I loved it and put it away, knowing I'd be able to use it again some day. I'm happy that I was able to incorporate it into a card for her!

Stay tuned...more fun justjohanna cards on the way!!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, A Pirate's Life For Me!

My favorite ride at Disneyworld? Pirates of the Caribbean. One of my all time favorite movies? Pirates of the Caribbean. One of my favorite justjohanna images? Al dressed up like a pirate! How cute is my little owl sporting his pirate hat? Don't ya just wanna git yer hands on him and ink 'em up? :-) (This said in my best pirate voice...)

Card is fairly simple...SU!'s basic brown served as a base for my card, layered with a swirly embossed, aged, and pierced piece of pumpkin pie cardstock (the swirls are like water, aren't they?). I don't recall the manufacturer for the polka dot paper but I love it - heck, I love polka dots! My fabulous sentiment (one of my favs that can be colored in!) is layered on a few coordinating pieces of cardstock and Pirate Al is hanging out on top, declaring his desire to live life on the open sea, huntin' for buried treasure!

Check back in tomorrow ye landlubbers for more pirate cards....Aye....

Happy Belated Valentines Day!

Since my SALT post was yesterday, I delayed posting a few Valentine Day cards until today! It's good to have two days of love though, isn't it?? :-)

Just a few stamps used for this card, both from justjohanna. The chipboard heart has been covered with a red cardstock and stamped with a floral stamp that is created for use in corners but since the heart was small I was able to just use a portion of the stamp to cover the heart with the floral print. And then the so fabulous sentiment, "you have a certain je ne sais quoi." I love it! It's perfect for a Valentines Day card!! Patterned paper is an retired sheet from SU!, which I adore, wish I could get more, and other paper and ribbon is by SU! as well.

I created a card very similar to the one above for the hubby...Who on Wednesday said, when I reminded him about Valentines Day, "can't we just stare loveingly into each other's eyes and forgot about the cards and gifts?" hee hee (Translation: "I forgot to buy a card.") You have to know my husband and his sense of humor but he delivered the line perfectly and it gave me a case of the giggles for the rest of the day. I, of course, had to make him feel a bit guilty by announcing that I had made him a special card.

After we had had dinner, cleaned up, etc. I was sitting at my PC checking email and my dear, sweet husband dropped this over my shoulder:

How cute is that?? The inside reads "...with love for you." He quickly used anything that was sitting on my craft table to make the card while I was in the shower. The coffee pot stamp is one I let the kids use, some - how creative is this - pearl head straight pins for the middle of the flower, and the flower was cut out of piece of scrap patterned paper that was sitting on my desk. The stem is hand drawn. This just made my night...too sweet! He's a hopeless romantic that husband of mine...LOL!

Happy "late" Valentine's Day!!

SALT Weekly Challange - Lent

As Kimberly is on maternity leave it was Lythan's turn to set the challenge on the SALT blog. (You can find out the latest on Kim and her beautiful new baby boy, Joshua, here.) Lythan chose:

Lent
This was certainly a challenge for most of us on the team! I think we all surprised Lythan! :-) Definitely check out her blurb on the SALT blog....

The reason for the challenge? Well...most of us either weren't familiar with lent or didn't celebrate it. While I was familair with lent I definitely don't participate in the tradition. In our services (Reformed Baptist church) we worship according to the regulative principle, which means we only do those things in church that are specifically commanded in the Bible (preaching, communion, baptism, etc.). Since Christ hasn't commanded us to give anything up for a set amount of time each year, we don't hold to this type of tradition. So I was stumped for what I could create because it's not something I could personally identify with....and then....the thought occured to me that I could reference scripture that focused on either Christ's sacrifice or what is required of us to . Thanks to our Pastor's suggestions, I found the perfect verses in Psalm 51:14-17, below:

"Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
The God of my salvation,
And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
O Lord, open my lips,

And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.

For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;

You do not delight in burnt offering,

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,

A broken and a contrite heart -

These, O God, You will not despise."

Love this! It outlines all that God requires from us...a broken and contrite heart. Sounds simple perhaps, but that's the joy of salvation, it's a simple plan...

My creation consists of an accordion fold tag album with the verses above written on the four inside tags. The last line of the verse (a broken and contrite heart...) is on the cover of the album. I broke out one of my Papertreyink stamp sets, which I haven't inked in ages. I adore this set...it's versitle, the images are amazing, and I love the font and words. The paper is my favorite Crate collection, Crush. And all the embellishments, as well as the tags, are from Stampin' Up!

We are delighted when you share your creations with us...Want to create something based on this week's theme? Stop by the SALT

blog and leave us a comment with a link back to your gallery or blog!

Christmas Flashback

I know, I know...you're thinking that you can't bear to think about the holidays again! I'm with you! But I just had to share this card...one of the last cards created in 2007 using justjohanna images!

This was another one of those "tricky" challenges where we could use the scroll image and any other justjohanna image to create a card. At the time I didn't have many jj stamps so it was indeed a challenge for me. My starting point was to simply stamp the scroll image and then sit at my studio table and stare at it...willing myself to come up with something brillant! LOL!

I figured using holiday paper would be a good start so I grabbed some Stampin' Up! holiday paper and started cutting. Once I had a few pieces of paper cut, I started playing with layouts. And then the "ah-ha" moment hit! I don't have to use the scroll horizontally, it can be attached vertically too! (OK, I know this isn't a real stretch for most...) Then digging through my jj stamps I found this adorable Flying Al stamp, which happens to also include a bunch of stars overhead with the owl image. Hum...she thinks some more...I could have Al hanging onto the scroll and cut out those teeny, tiny stars to put on the scroll...pure genius! :-)

That's about the whole story to my card making...just added some piercing, some aging (you all know I simply cannot live without aging), and some gold brads...oh yeah, and a handy dandy "Joy to the World!"

EnJOY and Happy Creating!