Zephaniah 3:17

I posted this scripture on someone's blog today. It's one of those verses that I had never noticed before, but came across it from two different sources within a week. I knew that it meant God wanted me to pay attention, though it captured me the first time I saw it!

Here is the translation:

"The LORD your God is with you,
He is mighty to save.
He will take great delight in you,
he will quiet you with his love,
he will rejoice over you with singing."

Why is it so hard to recognize how deeply He loves us? He saves us, he delights in us, He calms our fears - real and imagined, and sing songs to us. Those are not things a careless friend, or unfeeling diety, does for us.

We tend to think like this:
He is mighty to squish us like an insect.
He gets totally disgusted and frustrated with us.
He will wound you with rejection,
He will lambaste you with criticism.

No way.
Never.
Impossible.

Romans 8 says that nothing can separate us from His love. Psalm 139 tells us that we are irrisistible to Him.

He loves us even beyond the cross. Amazing.

NOTE 6/1: I was delighted this morning when I discovered that Our Daily Bread designs just came out with this scripture! It's in English, of course, and I know that many are going to be blessed to receive this scripture on a card! Definitely a stamp I hope to purchase soon!

Birthday in Blue

This technique is called "Serigraph." It's been awhile since I have done it ... I made a couple of extra panels that I took forever to make into cards! But I believe I embossed the image in white, sponged several shades of blue ink over it all, then stamped the image with blue, then embossed the text with black.

A special older lady is having a surprise birthday planned by her family, so this will go to her!

Have a lovely day!

Snoopy!

I thought this would be a good image to include in the last batch of cards for the semester at Houghton. Graduation is definitely a bittersweet time...

I have not posted so infrequently as I have for the past month in a long time. I may continue to be a bit sporadic ... I'm in the process of applying for college. I was hoping to do it online, but I may have a problem with my ancient credits being acceptable at my school of choice. Still waiting to find that out. In the meantime, I'm reading through a couple of my children's college textbooks to get a jumpstart on classes; being a bit rusty in the area of paper writing and intense studying, I need an edge for the first semester! I'm also still working with getting my youngest enrolled in college.

In a hurry graduation card

If you are a cardmaker, and don't take pictures of your cards, I highly recommend you start doing so. I love the ideas I get from stamping blogs and magazines, but sometimes, as when I created this card, when I am in a tearing hurry, it's great to have a card that I can duplicate precisely ... I know I have the stamps and almost certainly still have some of the matching cardstock! (And even in a hurry, I can't bring myself to dulplicate someone else's card anyway!) This was a card design I had made when I first started doing cards, and remade, with the only change being the cuttlebug die cut I used for the cap. Guy cards always seem to be harder to design, so I'm so glad I had photographed this!

Pet Sympathy

Pet Sympathy card are surprisingly few and far between. This was a very simple card to put together.

Smartworks challenge 2

My last post on the smARTworks flower challenge showed the cards that were used on that site featuring one particular flower. These are some more cards that I made at the same time, all embossed with metallic powders. Not what one would normally expect to see with a flower image, but I like to stray from the expected once in awhile!

smARTword challenge: Flowers

I'm participating with smARTworks monthly challenge, and this months floral challenge went a completely unexpected direction. I wanted to make a really gorgeous card for it as I own a number of wonderful, realistic flower stamps from smARTworks. But somehow, the simple outline stamps from the Fun Stuff set grabbed my imagination. It was NOT one of the reasons I purchased that set, but wow, as Anne of Green Gables would have said, it "offered so much scope for the imagination"! I was having so much fun I had to force myself to move on. After all, with two stores to stock cards for, I can't really just concentrate on a single image! These are the cards that Susan chose from my crazy collection of cards. Tomorrow I'll come back and give stamp names and a few details on how I made them. :-) Meanwhile, if you haven't already made a card for this month's challenge, you still have plenty of time. Remember, you get a chance to win free stamps with your entries, even if you are not using smARTworks' stamps!

All use the outline flower from Mixed Bag: Fun Stuff
The remaining stamp info is under each card.

Well, I actually could not find where in the new catalog the text is from, sorry! :-/ It definitely is a smARTworks stamp, though! I glued the paper onto cardstock before trimming so the flower would have dimension.

Sending Cheer faces:
Backgrounds: BG 2 (square dot background stamp)
Friendship: Call it friendship (the boys - faces)
Frames: Message Mouse (Sending cheer)

I stamped the flowers onto cardstock, and trimmed, then sent through the cuttlebug for a texture that coordinated with the background stamp. I had considered stamping and embossing the background stamp with clear ink & powder, but decided it would be too much bother! The faces, (used here and with the "What you see" card), were tricky. The image is a group of four adorable boys wearing hats, and not wanting the hats to show on the faces called for inking the stamp with marker to avoid those lines. It doesn't show in the picture, but I added a little color to the cheeks. The background was stamped in black, then colors sponged over it. A piece of vellum was placed over it. The stems were cut freehand so that I could have flowers at varying heights (I also rotated at least one flower portion to add variety).

What we see:
Trio stamping: Trio& Collage (What you see text & background petals)
Vintage: Eye Spy (eyes from spectacles)
Friendship: Call it friendship (the boys - face)
Backgrounds/Borders: Backgrounds 2 (smudge from top right)
Butterflies: ladybugs (faux ribbon)

I may have gone off the deep end on this one, but it sure was a fun idea to work with! The petals were made by creating several images from the collage picture of the child reading a newspaper. I used a stamp-a-ma-jig to get the precise placement I wanted (the words being at readable angles). For the leaves, I stamped the spectacles, then using the stamp-a-ma-jig, overstamped with the leaf part of the flower image. I stamped the background, then stamped the flower on, and attached the stamped petals and leaves. The text was sponged around the edges.



TOY dot uses:
Flora/Fauna/Garden: Bloom On (square w/dots)
Frames: Message Mouse (with thoughts of you)

The flower petals & leaves were overstamped onto stamped dot squares, and the stems cut from them aas well.

Mother's Day already? Oops!

I had both my mom's and my mother-in-law's cards ready to be written in Monday ... and that's the last I thought of them until just now. I'd like to say they've never gone out late before, but I am notorious for late cards. Sigh. I really DO have the best of intentions, lol!

These are NOT the cards they are receiving, but two others that I put in the campus store in which I sell cards. I've done this identical layout for years now, it's just such a fun set of text stamps!

Prayer and Sympathy

I really enjoy this set of stamps. I know there is a corner punch for the Martha Stewart lattice design, but I don't own it. But I really wanted that look, so I used my Cuttlebug Build-a-Flower set to make the circles that, along with the small daisies, cover the corner areas.