Romans 8:28

This is one of those wonderful verses that is quoted so often that it can lose meaning for the hearer. Sometimes it's quoted without the qualifier "...for those who love God (and are called according to His purposes)". It's not meant for everyone, but it is meant for all believers. :-)

The butterfly was an afterthought: I had glued down the panel and the "buttons" too far apart, so something was needed to bring them together. :-)

DON'T FORGET! I have blog candy to award someone, details here.

Mulberry Quilt

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! Please look at my entry below this if you haven't already; there are some amazing blogs to look at (link at the bottom of the post).

Also, I posted a Blog Candy challenge just below the Memorial Day post ... I hope you'll join in!

I completely forgot about this card, which I made a couple of weeks ago for a mulberry card challenge. I've had a bunch of the adorable clothes pins for ages, but never found the right use for them before. I was so happy with this idea!

To give the quilt more stability and thickness, I attached it to another piece of mulberry. I stamped the scenic stamps in dk. green, and used a piece of sky vellum for the overlay.

Memorial Day Bloghop!

Courtesy of Cards for Heroes!

I'm really excited about what Cards for Heroes is doing! I've always had a heart for those who serve in the military. In fact, I considered joining the Marines when I was in high school. I had several lovely chats with recruiters, and took the ASVAB. However, I have scoliosis (curvature of the spine), and worse, exercise induced asthma ... whatever possessed me to consider it, lol?! A very romanticised view of it all, due to some books on my English teachers' shelves!

Still, the interest in our military remained, and I did a card workshop a couple of years ago to send cards to soldiers, using two young people from our church who are in the army as conduits. I never heard anything back from them, but I trust they were an encouragement.

Now I have a son of my own in the military; Stephen just graduated from Navy bootcamp this month, and is waiting to begin his corpsman (medic) training any day now. So, this all is becoming more personal to me! I hope you'll be inspired as you travel from blog to blog...

Here's the info from the website:
A bloghop is a blast of creativity and sharing! Bloggers from all over the US and abroad will be posting a card and sharing why THEY participate in honoring our nation's heroes. And everyone else gets inspired!

This bloghop will be helping us to get the word out to even more crafters and financial donors—so we can get more cards out to our heroes! We're getting more and more requests all the time and need to step up our game, and this is one really fun way to share what we're doing...letting YOU share!

If you have a blog, join in! (details below) If you don't blog, hop through the blogs, and get inspired to make more cards or donate funds toward our work! Tell your friends about it, even if they're not cardmakers...it'll do everyone's patriotic heart good to hear about so many Americans wanting to help our military!

Click HERE for all the fun!

Blog Candy challenge

I've been wanting give away some stuff for awhile; I've been blessed by others, and it's meant so much! Yesterday I spent my afternoon putting together a package for a soldier, today I put this together. Fun!

*10 sheets floral papers
*3 sets chipboard
* new, unmounted Biblical Impressions stamps
*1 package "stork stop" buttons
*2 pkgs bradlets (note: if you click on the picture for a larger look, I used alcohol ink on one of my white stars - works well! You can also emboss brads.)
*Wedding stickers
*2 sets of ten tags
*10 lg. clear dewdrops
*2 small black dominoes
*4 pieces of various types of ribbon

The challenge: Make a card that expresses appreciation for service rendered. Your pastor, someone in your community in military service, a family member who went above and beyond familial duty, a teacher from your school days who influenced your life, etc. Post on your blog or in your photo album, and link to this post, and it would be nice if you don't mind sharing for whom you made it and why. No fair using an old card, this needs to be one you made for this challenge. :-)

NEW DEADLINE is Friday night, June 12th, your time. :-) I will use a random number generator to select the winner on Saturday, June 13th. I will expect to hear from the winner by Wednesday, June 17th. I'll choose another winner at that point, so please e-mail me in advance if you are going out of town during that time.

Blog Candy time is coming!

I've been planning on doing a blog candy challenge for awhile, and finally got started on it this morning, but then the day got away from me ... I was asked to make a care package for a one of the corpsmen (medics) on a ship in which moral is very low. So, I spent a chunk of time at the store, and then my dh came back from taking the dog to the vet: it seems that Isaac has cancer. He's a fairly old dog, and he has really been slowing down, so this is not a shock, but of course it's sad. I had to prepare some "doggie formula" for him to drink. Wow, brought me back to baby days. Anyway, Isaac wanted me to spend time with him in our living room (his favorite place to be), so I was forced to spend a couple of hours reading to keep him company (it was rough, but of course, the right thing to do. ;-) Then a lovely needed time with my youngest daughter. I was able to encourage her and pray for her; not something I often can (or am sensitive enough to?) do.

Anyway, I have a small pile on my counter buried under the care package I'm putting together for the corpsman. I'll exhume it tomorrow, add a couple more items, and post it. It will be a challenge of some sort...

smARTworks Challenge

I love challenges in which one is given some object - a plant, a painting, a piece of furniture, etc - to inspire a card. I love incorporating as many elements of the object as possible into my card. I originally had in mind a design closer to what the cup looks like, but I just purchased the border punch I used here, and couldn't resist the chance to use it!

This inspirational challenge comes from Susan, the owner of smARTworks.

Sympathy

This isn't actually a card I'm sending; I'm still working on the one that I want to. But it expresses well where I've been the last couple of days. A woman in our church lost her husband, age 44, to a heart attack this past Thursday. So young, pretty much the age of my husband and me. She's not a close friend, but we've known them for years, as part of our body, and have been blessed to occasionally help with summer services at their campground. With our pastor half way to NYC (a six hour trip) with a team from our church, and others at work or ill, I was the one who went to the hospital when news of the heart attack came to the church. You can imagine no one was expecting him not to make it, being so young. It's so good to know that when one walks into a crisis, the Holy Spirit is there to give all the grace that's needed for the moment. Yesterday was the funeral, the end of the "formal" saying goodbye. Now comes the learning to live it. Thank God for His grace, His peace, His strength.

Flower Power!

Stamping is very therapeutic. And today, I was especially grateful to have a project. The technique I was trying out is called "Floating Reinker." There is an excellent tutorial, complete with video at Patty's Stamping Spot.



The rose I used is one I have come close to tossing; I am not very good at coloring, and I didn't think the design was especially well done. It was a free stamp I'd gotten years ago, when I owned so few stamps I wasn't about to get rid of any! I'm really glad to have a use for it now, although it doesn't work nearly as well as the beautiful rose stamps in the tutorial.

I put two of the blue ones I made to show the difference made when using white embossing powder instead of clear. The white embossing powder (noticeably not a detail powder, which would be better) is brighter, and does not absorb any color at all.

This is one of those techniques where the type of paper used is essential. I don't own any of the Stampin' Up Shimmery White cardstock, but I do own a Microsparkle White, which I purchase at California Paper Goods. It does not work quite as well as SU's; I needed to actually stir most - but not all - the colors around sometimes to get them to spread. (I used SU reinkers, so that was not the issue).

This stamp worked well for the technique, though with attached leaves, I had to color them separately.


I tried a heavyweight recycled paper for this rosette, and it worked very well. However, it did not work with the larger roses, which I had tried first, so I just did basic watercoloring with the leaves rather than floating reinker. I used to dark a green, so no blending is visible. :-(


I've never layered images before, and I really liked how this turned out. Before coloring the leaves, I took a pink embossing marker, and filled in the edges of the flower, and then embossed with clear. This prevented the green die from leaking into the rose.


Lastly, as I love to do, I had to try this technique out with Opalite inks. I have black microsparkle paper, so although I knew the inks are not normal die inks, it was worth the try. The results were not great, but you can see that there is potential. I'll probably try it again sometime. I included both photos and scans, because as always, opalites don't photograph or scan well. The photos fail to show the brilliance and sparkle, and scans never get the color or "texture" right. So, how the roses actually look is somewhere in between the two, but a little "messier".

Encouragement for a friend

I have a friend who is going through an extremely devastating time. I recently discovered that this is her favorite scripture, and as it was perfect for what she is going through now, I made this card and mailed it to her where she works.

The flowers are not so bold and bright as they appear in the photo; they actually come much closer to matching the muted pinks in the card.

Life returning to "new normal"

Change, change, change! It's fun, actually, to see my children going off in various directions.

Stephen's PIR (graduation from bootcamp)was really nice, and it was marvelous to see him! Today he moved to his training school, also in Great Lakes, for corpsman (medic).

Abigail graduated, with Grandma in attendance, Summa Cum Laude from Houghton College. She starts work at the Texas Hot this coming week. It's great to have her home!

Karen is taking a summer class at Houghton, commuting each day.

Susannah begins her first job hunt tomorrow.

I'm still playing "catch up" from being away for nearly a week. I was really unmotivated today; hopefully tomorrow I'll be back in the swing of things!

Pass In Review

We're getting ready to head out to Great Lakes, Illinois, for our son Stephen's PIR (Pass In Review, or, Graduation). I can hardly wait to see him! In some ways, the time has passed very quickly since he left, yet it seems like it's been half a year since he was home. The only disappointment with the weekend is that it is also when our oldest graduates from college, and we'll be missing that. Her grandmother will attend in our place, and Abigail isn't much on ceremony, so she's fine with it. In fact, she'd skip it in a heartbeat to see her "little brother" graduate from bootcamp!

Anyway, I won't be posting until next week. :-)

Mulberry challenge

Karen Lingle, one of the posters on the Gingerwood board, posted a challenge to make cards with mulberry paper, and was giving away free ribbon to the "winners." As always, I can't resist a challenge, so I made two cards.

This one was done using the "faux batik" method, a favorite of mine with mulberry: stamp image with versamark ink, and emboss with clear embossing powder. Note: If you are stamping multiple images, you will have a difficult time seeing what you have stamped; I find it easier to use a single large stamp. After letting it sit for a few minutes, apply inks over the panel. I like to use more than one shade of any color I pick. In this case, I used teal and turquoise for parts of it, and peach and orange for the rest. When you are satisfied with your colors, iron off the clear embossing. Place the panel on a heat proof surface, ink side up, then cover with a paper towel and iron. I have learned that craft irons are not hot enough for this process, so I use a regular iron.

I generally attach the mulberry to white cardstock before mounting to another panel or the card.

I did the squares the same way (mulberry with faux batik). However, I decided I wanted the shiny look of an embossed image, so I made another set of squares and did not iron off the embossing. After placing the squares on the card, I felt some kind of embellishment was needed, so I took one of the unused faux batik squares and used a flower punch on it, and placed it in the middle.

Karen's sweet challenge reminds me that I have not offered any "blog candy" in ages. I'll have to think about that.... :-)

3rd Inkadinkado free stamp card

I looked for the longest time before I found wedding stamps that I like. I had a few text stamps I like, but no designs.

The graduated oval cutter I use had a much wider gap between the ovals than I wanted; it looked funny being layered wider than the rectangles above, so I positioned the inner oval toward the top, "matching" the rectangles.