Music journal

Here is the journal that I made with the music panels. I love making music-themed cards and journals. Not only do I love music, but their are just so many related symbols for stamping!

The music notes were cuttled, and the white on black sheet music was done with white on white embossing.

With all my lined journals, I used 24 weight paper instead of the standard 20 wt. copy paper; it makes for much crisper lines. Unfortunately, I've yet to find a printer that will give me a two-sided, double page layout that will have back and front matching, so I have to have the paper done at a printshop. This makes the price more expensive than I'd like, but for now, it's the way I need to do it. I make mostly cardstock filled journals now.

I forgot to photograph the journal cover before assembling, so my apologies for the poor quality of the photo. In order to preserve the cover, I punch a no-flap bag from clearbags.com along wo\with the cover before assembling. It's easy enough to remove when the journal is full.

Yet another music circles card!

Here's the last card made at the same time as the previous cards. I was actually working on a journal cover design, and not knowing exactly what I was wanting to do, made a bunch of music panels.

This scripture is very special to me. God used it during a time about a year and a half ago, when I went through a sort of crisis of faith. I spent four days in a motel room sized cabin at a retreat center in Alabama. It was on a lovely piece of property with a pond, etc, so great for walks as well. I spent the days reading the Word and praying throughout the day (I was the only guest in the entire place), and then reading some great Christian fiction in the evening. It was a fabulous time, and I highly recommend it.

Music hello

This is, of course, another card made from the music panels used in yesterday's card. The little piece of ribbon or something is a mystery to me, it's definitely not part of the card - I don't know how I failed to notice it when taking the picture.

Salt Challenge: JOY

I have absolutely loved participating in the bi-weekly Salt Challenge, but this fall was so intensely busy, I spent almost no time on any blogs at all, and completely forgot about Salt. I "rediscovered" it last week. "Joy" is a wonderful challenge theme, and if there is any stamp I have multiples of, it's ones that express Joy. How perfect to find that to be the word selected on Salt. Problem: I have a brand new Joy stamp I wanted to use for this challenge, but I just could not make it "work" on a card. So instead, here's a card that I haven't posted yet that still "qualifies"!



I used a joy stamp on this ministry card because I think it's easy in ministry to be overwhelmed by the responsibility of it all, and forget that God desires us to be joyful.

We're studying Hebrews in a church class our pastor teaches, and I've been thinking about this joy-related scripture about Jesus:

"...therefore God, your God, has set you above your
companions by anointing you with the oil of joy."

This is speaking of Christ's superiority over angels ... and one of those ways is that He has been annointed with the oil of joy. Isn't that fascinating?

Chinese Thank you

One of the complications of making foreign language/culture cards is knowing exactly how to use any given word/phrase. This particular thank you is a very formal one; I would not have wanted to make a "cute" card with it. The background panels on all three are from a Sherwin Williams discontinued wallpaper sample book. It is a very thick, elegant pattern, with thread-like strands running through it.

Another complication is mixing up languages occasionally, ahem, as I did with this one. Thanks to my patient and faithful friend, Ben, I have corrected this post to read "Chinese" Thank you instead of Japanese (see his comment on this post). I do recall him mentioning, when I showed him the stamp, that it was a formal form of the word; so that part is correct. As Japanese, I am told, has four levels of thank you, and Ben can read Japanese as well, it never occured to me to confirm the language!

Being accurate is important to me, so I hope anyone who reads my blog will let me know when I have made an error. :-)

Kitties!

We're not cat people here, though we had befriended a neighborhood manx, occasionally setting out goodies for him or her ... my husband initiated the relationship in hopes it would take care of mice. Or so he says. I think he just misses our dog. :-) We haven't seen the cat since the weather got bitter cold, so we'll see.

Anyway, despite not wanting to own a cat, I did think these little darlings would be great for the campus store. The background is a much nicer purple than my camera says it is. :-)

Doggie Devotion

OnyxXpressions is having a great sale right now, and although I think I exhibited some great self-control, I couldn't resist purchasing at least a few stamps. :-) That gave me the starting point I needed for card posting; I've got quite a few cards, and wasn't sure where to start posting. So, I'll be putting up a few OnyxXpressions cards ...

I try to be very practical when purchasing stamps. But while browsing through their catalog to order stamps for foreign language cards, this dog, and the corresponding text, were just too cute to resist!