Oops!

There's nothing precisely wrong with this card, but I didn't actually translate this scripture before stamping it. In my English version, the end reads "and the time of the singing of birds has come." However, this Spanish translation has only "the time of singing has come." I know enough Spanish to figure this out, but if I were fluent, I think as I was mounting the stamp and looking right at it, I would have noticed the difference. Oh well!

More Birthday

This was such a cute, simple design to make!

Spanish Birthday card

My daughter, Abigail, is making her first quilted quilt. Before, she's just tied them off. The design she is using inspired me to make this card. When she was trying to decide what to do for a border, she imported my card into Paint Shop and was able to figure out what she wanted to do from that. It was definitely a unique use for one of my cards! :-)

The stripes were very time consuming ... which is why I'll never make a real quilt ... way too much for me! I cut 8.5 inch strips of cardstock and attached them to an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper. Then I cut it into quarters, using some for this quilt card. I did this a few months ago, and have played around a bit with my cuttlebug with the remaining strips, but haven't actually finished any other cards yet.

Spanish Wedding cards

The text in English is "May the Lord bless you on your wedding day." The top card background is white embossing on vellum. The text on both is gold embossed.

Trivia for the day: in Cuba, weddings are done in an office, by a communist official. Christians often will have two celebrations, the state one, and a church one.

Last minute card

I got a call from my husband yesterday shortly after noon that the person we knew who was going to the country of Cuba for a week was leaving that evening. We had thought she was going at the end of the month, and there was enough time to get letters and such up to her before she left. She lives nearly two hours away, and so I had only minutes to put together a card before we left town. I had a second photo printed of Susie's birdhouse, and although it was slightly color-damaged from the printer, it was minor enough to throw a card together with it.

The scripture reads in English: "Cast thy burden upon the Lord and He will sustain thee." The couple for whom I made it is in a heartbreaking state, devastated by years-long illness and depression. I hope they will be encouraged.

Christmas Penguins!

Christmas is such a wonderful time of celebrating Christ's birth, that I make few cards that don't have a specifically Christian meaning or symbol. But this little guy was so cute, and in the dollar pile at a craft store that I impulsively snatched him up. I made them into Spanish and Croatian Christmas cards for the Houghton College store. Why Croatian? Simply because my oldest daughter is familiar enough with the language for me to be confident I had the right translation, lol!

Spanish Christmas

I just realized I did actually make a couple of other Christmas cards this year: foreign language cards. This is a design I created a couple of years ago. I sponged pinks and oranges (latino Christmas cards do not stick to our American/European traditiona reds & greens) on glossy cardstock, then stamped the three kings in black stazon, then computer-printed the scripture on vellum. I had rejected the background panel because I did not want any "lines," but when I looked at it with the vellum overlay, it looked, as you see, very soft, and like light from a star.

salmos 91:11

Normally I focus on bright, bold colors for Latino cards, but I had this pink bookmark I had made a couple of years ago that I wanted to make into a card, and this is what I ended up with. There was a nasty mark in the upper right hand corner, which is the reason for the flower in that odd spot!

"He will give His angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways" is the translation. Our American culture is a bit infatuated with angels, and dramatically misrepresents who and what they are, so I do not often use this scripture in cards. However, it is the Word of God, and so is good. :-)

Romanos 13:15

In English, this reads "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him." Romans 13:15

The embossing powder is a line called "Antiquities," no longer available, but it has a textured look like Tim Holtz Distress powders.

God keeps his promises!

This is an image I've had for forever, but never used ... coloring does not come naturally to me, so I don't do it often. As basic as the job is that I did with this, it's a big deal to me, lol! Thanks to my friend Jacki, who has so encouraged me in this area!

another Spanish birthday card

I often cut extra pieces when making a card, thinking I may create duplicates, or mess one up in the middle of a card and need to have another on hand. I had done so with the papers in this card. With the time press I'm under, I've really tried to make card that were essentially already begun. :-)

Feliz cumpleaños

Another Spanish card!

Bendiciones

Monica commented that red liner tape might work for my letters ... I used a double sided sticky tape, but with the narrowness of the letters, it was difficult to apply, so I had switched to a liquid glue. I also was cutting the letters with sizzix dies in my cuttlebug which is rather challenging, so I still don't think I'll ever do this again!

This is one of the cards I rejected before completion, then decided today that I should at least finish it for personal use.

Hola

I made about four cards using this glossy cardstock, but some I had not examined closely to realize the gloss was scratched, and I had a difficult time with the adhesive getting all over the letters. So, this is the only card that survived. :-( Perhaps it is time to get a Xyron?

I used the build-a-flower set for the exclamation marks.

Gracias in Green

I am going to be selling cards at Houghton College, and they are very interested in foreign language cards. Spanish is the easiest for me, with a husband approaching fluency, and a good number of Spanish stamps. This card will look familiar to those of you who follow my blog regularly; the images were left over from a few cards I made a couple of months ago. A good thing: I have very little time to make cards in all the requested languages: Spanish, Swahili, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese

The season of singing has come...

We have dear friends in Cuba who have been going through an intense trial for nearly two years now. I hope hearing from us will be a little encouragement. It's hard to be so far from people one loves...

See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.

Song of Songs 2:11,12

Thank you!

My husband returned around 8:00, and we and the children talked until I realized it was 11:30 - time to head to bed. So, no time to post now, but I will tomorrow, or Monday if tomorrow does not happen.

They were ecstatic over the stamp supplies! So much so, both women made cards for everyone, which I'll take pictures of tomorrow. I feel kind of badly they felt they needed to use stuff just for us (and various others who have gone down from our church); I couldn't send a ton of cardstock, or I should say, space became a big enough issue I had to take some out - but that shows you their unselfishness !

More to come...

El Jardinero (the gardener)

One of the young men of the church we used to stay at is named Arsenio, or "Arsenito" as we call him. He was in an accident that damaged his brain a bit when he was younger, so while he is a functioning adult who holds a steady job and loves the Lord, he is just a bit on the slow side. He has the sweetest smile in the world, and every day would bring each of us a flower. I still have a few pressed in my Bible.

I decided I needed to make a card with flowers for Arsenito, but I didn't want it to look to feminine. I hope he liked it!

On sending stamp stuff...

I thought I'd post tonight in response to a question of why I was sending the stamps. One of the churches we are connected to actually requested them, as they had been borrowing the supplies I had sent down to Lenia, the "pastora" of the church we were originally connected with, and due to a transfer to another church some distance away, it was very inconvenient to keep borrowing stamp supplies, and the pads were now dry.

They told us they were using them for "murales," probably meaning "posters," for church events, and/or seminarios, which are training sessions for pastoring. Bible schools are illegal, but they are allowed a certain number of days per ______ (I can't remember exactly how it works), but they pull it into long weekends, I think, and people come from all over the Island, walking/hitching if there is no money (I remember one student took three days to get there), riding coches (horse driven buses/cabs), catching rides with someone fortunate to have a car (vintage 50's style).

When I first brought stamp supplies down, it was just for Lenia's, or the church ladies' pleasure; I imagine finding any kind of craft is a challenge, so I was fairly confident someone would enjoy them! It's also practical: they cannot easily find stationery in the stores (frankly, one finds precious little of anything in the stores - lots of bare shelves); letters are usually written on cheap, lined paper. Lenia has made bookmarks for all the women of the church, and I believe they've made cards together. I imagine they've found use for them with children's ministries as well.

Birthdays are a huge deal in C uba, so I imagine that happy birthday posters & cards will be made with the stamps. And of course, cards would be a great gift to give someone.

Could they be used for income? While having your own business is more or less illegal, it's possible someone could sell a few cards here and there, but I doubt they will have done so, they'll have focused on ministry.

I look forward to maybe learning more when my husband returns....

This was a card made for an earlier trip, when I made enough cards so that each woman at the ladies' meeting I spoke at could have one to send a note of encouragement to another sister in the church. Because of the huge number I was making, they were all fairly simple; since I did not have time to make totally new cards for this trip, I just embellished the half dozen I had left. I hoped this could be shown to Mayelin (the pastora receiving the bulk of supplies this trip) as a sample on how to use the buttons I sent down. However, I forgot to tell my husband to show her. :-/

Safe arrival

Abigail arrived in Bosnia this afternoon, after a nearly 30 hour trip ... she's exhausted but flying high! It was great to hear from her! She has to do a one week homestay to make it qualify for her International Studies minor/major (it changes!), which she hopes will give her a boost with the language.

We haven't heard from Bruce in C uba, but we never do. He's only there for a week, so it's not important. I'm anxious to know, though, how our dear friend Orlando is doing. It's been so hard hearing second hand ...

I'm also wanting to know if all our stamp stuff made it through customs. For those of you who are wondering, we were able to take down a large amount of supplies. Plenty of inkpads, lots of re-inkers for the dry pads, papers, embellishments, a cutter, cardstock, punches, decorative scissors, etc, etc. I was really touched and totally thrilled with all that was sent! A few things did not fit; we even left a few bottles of pain reliever & cough medicine behind, which we never do; considering it and ministry items to be the most important items. However, they had specifically asked for stamp supplies, so while I definitely had to remove some things, those were a priority. The rest will go down on our next trip. I thank all of you who sent stuff down; while card making may be more pleasure than necessity for most of us, it will be very practical and useful (as well as fun!) down there.

This card was for Orlando's wife Lenia, the person to whom I originally sent stamps. She loves music, so I recycled this card. The camera flash had to be on because it was nightime when I finished re-making cards, and Bruce was leaving too early to wait until morning. So, the card looks a bit gaudy, but it actually looks more elegant when bright lights are not shining on it! I stamped the music images in black, then embossed the crackle background in clear. I then sponged the on the sunset colors. Originally, I had planned to use the faux batik method (ironing off the embossing after stamping over the image), but when I was ready for that step, I decided I liked the texture & gloss.