Merry Christmas!!!!!

Good morning y'all!!!!     I hope and pray that as each and every one of us anticipated this mornings arrival, that each and every one of us had on our minds the "Reason for the Season"!     I know I did.    With each and every passing Christmas, the "Reason for the Season" grows sweeter and sweeter!    Just to be reminded that the Savior of the world came in to this world in the same manner that you and I did is such an awesome and awe inspiring thing!

God knew we needed a Savior.    God knew we needed someone who could relate to us in every way.    Jesus came into this world as a helpless little baby.     He needed His diapers changed.    He needed to be fed.     He needed to be watched over.    He needed to be nurtured by His mother's love.    He needed to have a strong earthly father figure in His life.    He needed to be taught certain things by His earthly parents.    Jesus had to cut His baby teeth in the same we cut ours, through a lot of tears.    Jesus had the same scrapes and cuts and dings from playing and being a boy that most other little boys did, and a lot of little girls had those same scrapes and cuts and dings.    Jesus knew how badly it hurt to stump His toe on a rock.    Jesus knew what it felt like to play till He got thirsty and tired and kept right on playing for a while longer.

Jesus also knew what it felt like to not be a part of the "in" crowd.    After His ministry started, there was a lot of people that was looking for and planning and plotting ways to kill Him.    And He knew it.    All of those people were from the religious crowd too.    The religious crowd was so full of religion that there was NO way for them to believe that He was the fulfillment of all the teachings that they had been taught.    They just could not believe that He was the long awaited Messiah.    Yet, He had power to heal the sick, cause the blind to see, make the lame to walk, raise the dead and the power to forgive sin!     The religious people could do none of these things.    The religious people were too afraid to come near anyone that needed help of any kind, because they didn't want to become "unclean".     The religious folk expected every one to have smile on their face and act a certain way.

What about us, how close are we willing to come to someone who needs help?   Are we willing to come close enough to get dirty?     Do we expect people to look a certain way, to wear certain clothes, and to smile all the way through what ever it is that's killing them on the inside?   Are we willing to get close enough to smell the rot and stinch of sin?    Are we willing to get close enough to wrap our arms around them and say "Let me tell you about someone who can help you"?    Just how close to those who need a Savior are we willing to get?

Jesus came for ALL of humanity!     Let us make sure that everyone that is in our sphere of influence has the opportunity to hear and learn about how the King of Kings and Lord of Lords was born a babe, yet grew to be the long awaited Savior of the world.     He is still in the business of changing lives and forgiving sin and restoring the years the locusts have eaten.    He is still in the business of seeking and saving the lost.    He is still in the business of renewing and restoring broken lives.     He is still in the business of giving hope to the hopeless, help to the helpless, and life to the walking dead.     Friends, if you have experienced that, you have something to be extremely happy about the birth of Lord and Savior!     If you haven't yet experienced that, let me just say, that it's not to late.    Today is the day Salvation.     He did what He did for those of us who need Him!      We ALL need Him!     I hope that if you decide you need Him, that you won't put it off.     Jesus has never turned anyone down that was looking for a relationship with Him!     You can count on Him.     Celebrate Christmas today with a new reason for celebrating.    Celebrate Christmas as being the day you stepped into new life and a new relationship with the Savior of the world!!!!

"MERRY CHRISTMAS'!!!!!!!

I have a couple of different projects to share with y'all today.    I hope you enjoy seeing both of them.   I have had a lot of fun working on both of them.

The above file came from the Silhouette on-line store.   It is a file by Lori Whitlock.   It is a five layer box card.    I LOVED making these cards.     I made several and everyone that got one really loved them.    This is truly a wonderful card and I will be making more of these.

The above pic and the following pics are of bookmarks I have made recently.    They have been a labor of love for me as I work thru some struggles I have had as of late.    When I can keep my hands busy with a worthwhile project and my mind busy with prayer while working on the project, it helps me to get clarity of mind and to be able to hear from the Lord at the same time.     So, each of these bookmarks and the ones that I did not take pics of have all been prayed over.

The ones above are of my sand dollar stamp from Our Daily Bread Designs and I do love that stamp and then the coordinating sentiments that go with it.    I stamp the design with VersaMark and then use my silver embossing powder and heat tool to emboss it.    I then fussy cut it and use my McGill hand embossing tool and work around the outer edge on the back side to get some cupping going on and then use dimensional adhesive to adhere it to the tag cut from card stock.    A little bit of sheer ribbon taped down under the sand dollar sets it off.

These were some of the tags just run thru embossing folders and then I inked the  embossing on the front of the card.    I really love those too.

Close up of the sand dollar.     I do enjoy these.

A close up of one of the sentiments.   I used a corner rounder on the corners of a scrap piece of cardstock and then used liquid pearls to make little rivets on each side of the sentiment.     

 This is the second pile of bookmarks I made.

The two here with the crosses on them are really "grungied" up and I love them.   I just took my ink pads and literally smeared  them around on the tag.   Then I used some of my spray and just spritzed them on the  tags.    I then glued the crosses in place and last but not least used my "goose bumps" spray on them and I love the looks of these two bookmarks and also the feel of them.   They feel like they have little goose bumps on them.   hehehe

Well, that's what I wanted to share with y'all today.   Just a little bit of what I have been up to here lately and I do have more to share later on and hopefully another video or two in the works.

Ladybug, I hope that you are soon much better and that we can celebrate Christmas with the family soon.   Until then, just know that you are loved and have been prayed for by many!    Sweetpea loves you bunches!

I do hope and pray that all of y'all have a very Merry Christmas!!!!!   Thank y'all very much for stopping by here and spending time with me.    I am so thankful for each and every visit and I do love reading your comments.

Remember, God loves y'all and so do I, hugs, Patty

Grungy Card 2

Good evening Y'all!     I hope you are enjoying this fine evening.    In my neck of the woods right now it is a very pleasant 71* outside as of 8:39 pm tonight.    I love it!    Up to 100* over the weekend, I'll take the lower temps any day!!    I still have humidity hair, and I guess that's not gonna change any time soon.    I know you know what humidity hair is.  

It's when you spend all morning with every hair appliance known to women to straighten your hair.   You get it straightened just perfectly and add a few perfectly placed little rats to give you that perfect height.   You take that one final look at your perfect masterpiece, just after you have sprayed a little hair spray on to keep in place.    You hit the door for that trip out town, just knowing you have this great looking head of hair.    You make stop after stop, just hoping everyone that you come in contact with notices your finely coiffed head of hair.    You have on your nicest smile, and you quickly smile at everyone you meet, but some of the ones you are smiling at are looking a little strangely at you.    Oh well, they must be having a bad day.    You sure hope their day gets better, you pray.    On you go, errand after errand and you are still stylin' and profilin' that snazzy head of hair.    Upon arriving at home, you walk by a mirror and catch a glimpse of someone.   You wheel around and run back to the mirror for a closer look, only to find that someone has replaced that beautiful head of hair that you was sporting so proudly, with a bad fake wig that looks like Bozo's head of hair!     That my friends, is humidity hair!    Yeah, you know what I'm talking about, don't ya'!    hahahaha

This is Grungy Card # 2.   I mentioned it when I put up # 1 the other day.

So, this is my Iris, from Crafters Companion, that I have shared a few times already.   But, I love this stamp and I never get tired of using it.    I stamped it on a background that I cut out on my Silhouette.    The image was created by Penny Duncan.    You can find her blog on the right side of my blog.    I love her designs.    I am trying to use her backgrounds more in my card making.    I loved the loops on this file and used them to run my 1/8th in grosgrain ribbon thru and I really liked the look.   You can also see that I added flat back pearls in the top and bottom corners.

After I colored the  Iris,  with my Spectrum Noir markers, I used my Sakura Gelly Roll Clear Star pen on the image to add a little bit of blingy goodness.   It's not real flashy, just very subtle.   It looks really nice in the hand.

I just used it more as a highlight than anything else, but it definitely looks nice.

I had it finished, I thought.   Then I took my liquid pearls and put a few dots of it around the loopy border and I think it really set it off.    The grungy part of this card is the edge of the bottom layer of the card.    I grunged up the edge with a shimmery mauve ink pad.    It doesn't show up as much as I wish it did in the pic.   Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this peek at grungy card # 2.    Three is on it's way shortly.

As I leave you this evening, I leave you with this scripture: Matthew 5:44  "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

In the setting here, Jesus had just called Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, to be fishers of men.   And a bit later he called James and John.   Jesus was going throughout Galilee teaching, preaching and healing the sick and diseased among the people.  Word spread all throughout Syria and people started bringing all their sick, hurting, afflicted, hopeless, demon possessed, paralyzed, and seizure ridden people to Jesus and He healed them.   Where ever He went, crowds followed.   So He seen the crowds and went up on a mountainside and sat down.   His disciples came to Him and He began teaching them.    This is where the Beatitudes are.   Jesus taught them many different things.  

Can you imaging being in that class, with the Master Teacher of all time teaching with "authority" of the Kingdom of God!    That is one class I would sign up for in a heart beat!    Of all the things He taught them, He also taught them to "love your enemies."    Can you imagine such a teaching?    Well, that's what He taught them.

Oh, let me tell you, it is so easy for us to love those who love us.   It is easy to pray for those who pray for us.   It is easy, isn't it.   Jesus asked them what was the reward in loving "only" people who love them?    The reward comes from loving those who persecute you and who are your enemies.   Jesus was asking them to not treat them as enemies, but to treat them as people God created, and as "potential" followers of Christ.

Fast forward to today.    He is still asking the same thing of us today.    I have to confess right here, right now, and just be very real with y'all about this.   I have not arrived yet at the place where I can love those who hate me, and pray for those who would persecute me, in the manner that is pleasing to my Lord and Savior.   It is a definite struggle for me.    But...I keep on trying!     I keep asking the Lord to help me with this.    I keep humbling myself in prayer and asking for help.   I struggle every day with this, and you know what, I know I am not the only one with this struggle.    It goes against every thing that we as human beings "feel".   How is it possible to get past the "feelings"?    Well, I won't get past the "feelings" on my own.    As Christians, we are called to live, based on what we know, not based on what we "feel".    Our feelings change, from one minute to another, one day to another.    What we know, never changes.    We know that Jesus Christ gave His life's blood for us to have a right relationship with God.    God never changes!!!    We do!    Our "feelings" change.    In essence, we should treat people based on God's feelings and not ours.    Jesus taught His disciples that all people are created by God, His own special treasure, His own peculiar treasure.    With that knowledge, we are to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.    Easy?     No!    Possible?    Yes!!!     God never asks us to do anything we can't do.    God never sets us up for failure.    When we fail, it is because we haven't called on God for help.    So, if you are like me, keep on crying out to God for help!     That's where the reward is.    When we are calling on God, we are growing closer to our Creator, becoming more Christlike.    Therein is the reward.    Becoming more Christlike.    All Praises to God!!

I hope y'all have a great night of rest and a wonderful day tomorrow.   Good night y'all!  Till we meet again, take care.

Ladybug, sweetpea loves you with her heart and looks forward to seeing you soon!

God Bless Y'all and remember God loves y'all and so do I.   hugs, Patty

February Swaps

Good afternoon, y'all!    I pray that y'all are having a wonderful, fun filled and crafty day!    It has been raining here in my neck of the woods most of the day, with lots of heavy wind.    Seems like when it's rainy, I kinda have a rainy mood.    So, the best place for me today is right here, getting caught up with some projects for y'all to see.    I have been busy here lately, but today, has really been a lazy day for me.    I think I have been trying to refuel, since a great weekend.    We had a very full day at church yesterday.    It was just a great day to be in the presence of the Lord!    So, today has been a slow day, with plans for a busy week ahead.

I have gotten all my swaps for the month of February in the mail, some have already reached their destinations and some are still in the mail system hoping to be received tomorrow.    I made a card, a tag, artist trading cards, and ornament.   I did make pics of course, and I want to share them with you.

The above two pics are of my atc.   It was supposed to be "pastels" in hopes of Spring being just around the corner.    I stamped my image in Memento london fog, which is gray.   Then I used my water color pencils and a blender pen.    I stamped my sentiment and when all was dry, I took three of my little Studio ink disks and just lightly touched the edges all around to color the background and then I used a lot of my glitter glues to get the bling going.   hahaha  Gotta bling!

The above three pics are of the "green and Spring" card swap.    So the green is my background and I also used my green water color pencil on her dress.    I used a new stamp I had just gotten, and I do love the elegance of her.   I stamped the sentiment, added a little bling and then I brushed the whole layer of the lady with a coat of Deco Art Glamour Dust, Ice Crystal Paint.   Love, love, love it!    It is a new product I had just gotten and I will be using it a lot!    I put a couple of purchased stickers and some stick on gems.    If you will notice in the pic below, I also added some hand made flowers.   The flowers were cut with a die that is about the size of my thumbnail.   Then I used a quilling tool to roll the tiny flower and glued it.    Then I cut the little leaves to go with the flowers.    They really are so tiny.    I will make a pic of the flower with a dime and show you later on.    Click on the pics to enlarge and hopefully you can see the tiny flowers better.

This is a pic of all my swaps together.    I hope you can see the tiny flowers on the card above.    There is an ornament between the card and the atc.   That is the ornament I made for the ornament swap.    I'm in this with a friend and we do this each month and we are having a great time with these.    The ones I have been making are themed for the year and I'm calling them "Victorian Ornaments".    I am searching for victorian style, free images and using them for my ornaments.    I love them and they are fun to make.   This one was to have a tea pot on it for a sign of "hospitality".    It is two sided, with a diff pic on the back.   I am so mad at me, that I did not get a pic of the ornament by itself.   I could just smack myself.

The above four pics are of my tag swap.    It is the brick wall technique.   I have already showed you one that I had done earlier for another swap that had gotten lost in the mail and the purple one was a replacement for my friend.    This is the one for this months swap.    I am so in love with technique!    I cut my tag on my Cameo Silhouette.    It is from the Silhouette Store.    I enlarged it and cut two layers and ran a layer through my 5 inch Xyron and stuck the two layers together.    I lightly inked the edges of the tag with a brown ink disk.   Then I took a piece of white Georgia Pacific paper and stamped my crackled background with olive green and then I stamped my rose.   I colored the rose with several diff colors of water color pencils.  After it was dry,  I cut it in brick fashion, being careful not to loose the placement of each piece.   After I got it glued down and that dried, I then added a little faux stickles for sparkle and bling.   I stamped my sentiment and then put my ribbons and threads through the loop and it was finished.   Then I had fun with my GooseBumps!    I just love the Goosebumps!    I loved making this months swaps!    I hope you enjoyed looking at them.

As I leave you this evening I ask, "What have you done today?"   Has today been important to you in any way?    Every Sunday at church, one of our Ministry Leaders will ask the congregation what today is?    There is one faithful saint that he will always call on to tell him what today is.   She will always say, "This is the day the Lord has made; we will be glad and rejoice in it." Psalm 118:24

I pray that y'all have been able to say that you have been glad and rejoiced in today!    Every day is not going to be a perfect day, or live up to our expectations.   But, when we have a proper perspective on every day, we can always find something great in it.   Every day of your life and mine has been given to us by the Creator of the day!!!    I don't know about y'all, but I cherish that!   God created the universe in an orderly and reasonable manner.   Much thought went into creation.    With that in mind, have we all been glad and rejoiced in this day?    I sure hope so!    God really had all of us in mind when he spoke the universe into existence!    Let's determine in ourselves, that we will be glad and rejoice in every day that God allows us to be a part of!   Sounds like a plan!

God bless y'all!   Thanks for stopping by and I hope y'all make plans to visit again, soon.

Hugs and much love, Patty

Tag for a Swap

Howdy Doody Folks!!!    I sure hope y'all are having a great week.    I know that many of our friends are still dealing with horrendous weather.     I keep praying for all of y'all who are trying to make it from one day to the next with all the snow and cold you have had.    We have had a lot of "much" below normal temps, but we have been very blessed in our neck of the woods to have missed out on most of the "precipitation" weather.     For that, I am so thankful, but I do still keep everyone in my prayers.    I just know that spring will eventually make it.    When it does, I promise not to complain "too much" about it getting to hot or being hot. You have my permission to remind me, later on, if I do start complaining. ggg

Since it's been cold and I don't like to be out and about in the cold weather, I have been in my craft room more here lately.     And, I have been having a ball!!

This is a tag I made for a swap.     The tag I made and mailed off in January, did not make it to the person I mailed it to.    Thank you USPS! gggg    My friend was very gracious about it and said I did not have to make another one to replace it.     I love getting the little packages of artsy goodness in the mail, and I also love sending them.    So, I wanted to make another one for her.    And I must say, I am so happy I did.    This was a new technique to me and I am hooked!

 

This is called the "brick wall technique".    I know I did not do it exactly like the was the tutorial called for it to be done, but, that's ok, as far as I'm concerned.    We all have the creative freedom to put our own spin on something and I did on this tag. 

 

 

A brief description of how I done mine is, I actually cut the purple tag with my Silhouette Cameo.     I cut two tags and put one piece of it through my Xyron and then put the two pieces together.    I love the feel of a beefy tag.    I took my white card stock and used my fav "crackled" background stamp, then I stamped my rose.    I used my water color pencils and colored it in.    I then took a lite fuchsia ink disk and tamped it down over all of the white area.    I then cut it in strips a little less than 1/2 inch.    I then cut the strips in brick fashion.    Being real careful not to mess up the pieces and keep them in order.     Then I took my black ink disk and inked all the edges.    The black was a real deep contrast, but I thought it worked really well.    After it all dried, I started at the bottom and worked myself up to the top.    Placing each piece and leaving a little space between each piece and each line.    Then I stamped the word "love" up in the right hand corner.     After that dried, I put my threads through the hole at the top and laid it in my spray box and I sprayed it with Goosebumps.     I really love the looks and feel of Goosebumps.    Well, there you have it, my tag.    I hope you enjoyed seeing it.    I certainly had a ball making it.

Be on the look out here, because I have a whole lot more stuff to show y'all in the near future.    I just can't get it all uploaded fast enough.    So, keep checking back from time to time.    Ok.

John 3:16. For God so loVed the world thAt He gave His onLy bEgotten SoN, thaT whoever believes In Him should Not perish but have Everlasting life.

As I leave you tonight, I leave you with warm Valentine wishes!     Did you know that God gave you and me a Valentine?     It's in the verse above.     Can you see our Valentine as you read the Scripture?    Oh, it's there!     Yes, I know you see it.    Had you ever seen it before?    Do you have any idea how much you and I mean to God?    We mean so much to Him that He gave us a special Valentine.    Jesus Christ is our Valentine!    Thank you, Father, that you loved us enough to give us the very best that You had to give, Jesus Christ!

Happy Valentines Day to all of you!!! Much love and hugs, Patty

Pics of some Swaps posted

Good afternoon Y'all!   I trust that you are enjoying this beautiful Lord's Day today!   How truly awesome it is to Praise God for His tender love and mercy, Y'all!   We had a great worship service at church this morning and I look forward to a wonderful time of praise, worship and Bible study this evening. 

I wanted to pop in and share a few pics of some swaps I was in for January.   I had a great time with these swaps.   It was just a few short months ago that I joined my first swap of all time.   Can I just say, "Y'all, I'm addicted", but I must also say, it's a great addiction.   It is part of my quiet time, alone time with the Lord.   So, I love it.   I also get to pray for whom ever receives my swap.   That makes my crafting so meaningful.   I know that any skill or talent I may have came from the Lord of my life, and I praise Him for that.

So, without any further ado, here are some of my pics:

The picture above is my tag that is all about Love .   I cut the tag on my Silhouette and then the hearts are a Sizzix sizzlit, (I believe) and it is a cut and emboss hinged die.  It does it all in one pass.  Pretty neat.   The little xo on top and the small heart in the middle and the ticket stub on the bottom were pieces I had bought.  They were in 13 inch strips for borders, so I snipped what I needed and used some more on another swap.  I really had fun with this.

The above pic is the image I put on the back of my tag.  I just wanted to gussie it up a little bit, too.   I had printed out several vintage images and used one.   I inked the edges and also darkened the whole image just a tad to give it a more vintage look.

The above pic is of my ATC swap.   You will see some more of one of the borders I used.  I snipped off two of the xo's and used on these.   I had posted a mini tutorial back earlier in the month showing how to put small pieces in an embossing folder and keeping them from moving with a very tiny piece  of scor tape.  Well, the ATC's is what I used those on.  They are in the very center of the card.   I just wanted an element with embossing on it.   I cut the letters out with my Silhouette.   They cut like butta'.   I had gotten some Viva Decor Inka Gold Metallic Rub for Christmas in 5 diff colors.   The edges of the ATC's have four of those colors on them.   Gotta love me some Viva Decor!   Love that stuff, Y'all!

The last swap was a shaped Valentine card.   I had gotten this card from the Silhouette store and thought it was perfect for what I needed.   My Silhouette, again done a beautiful job.   The white pieces you see were cut with my Cuttlebug and various dies.   I believe that all of those pieces was cut with diff Spellbinder or Sizzix thin dies.   You see some really small hearts scattered around on the interior of this card.   They came from the exterior of the card which you will see in the next pic or two.   They were the perfect size to just pop on here and there.

See, you can see where all those little hearts were cut from.   It was such a shame to think about tossing them, so, I glued them on and them glittered them up.   Oh yeah, you knew I would get around to bling!   Love me some bling!   I also used my perfect pearls and went around the scalloped edge with gold.   More bling, y'all!   hehehe

Since my card wasn't a regular sized card, I needed to make an envelope for it.  So the above pic shows my envelope.   Then, I took out one of my embossing folders and my Grand Calibur because it has a larger area and got the folder just so on the flap and embossed with my Sizzix heart folder.   I enjoyed how that turned out.

Ok, so for this last pic, I decided my card needed a closure of some kind to hold it shut.   I had mentioned about some borders I had purchased and used some of this one.   I took what was left and folded it in half and glued it together and a made a band to go around it to keep it closed.   All of my swaps had purple in them.   Y'all, I love purple, what can I say?   So, I used purple and pink colors.   I think purple and pink says "Love" as much as red does.  

Well, that is the pics of my swaps and the story behind them, and I'm stickin' to it.   gggg   I hope and pray that my swap recipients enjoy them just half as much as I enjoyed making them.   Oh, and stay tuned, because I have some more pics of projects and you DO NOT want to miss them! (hehehe)

As I leave you this evening, I leave you with a message from Jesus, "I Love You, my child!"    No other person will ever love you as much as Jesus loves you!    Jesus is the best Valentine anyone could ever give or receive.   So, as we are thinking towards Valentines Day in February, that is my Valentine to you.

John 3:16-For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I pray that you will accept this Valentine in the spirit in which it is offered, LOVE!   Jesus loves y'all and so do I!   God bless y'all every day in every way!

Good evening and Hugs y'all,  Patty