Calendar Girls ~ With Sympathy ...

 

For me, sympathy cards are the very hardest for me to make.

Truth be told, I'd rather trek myself down to the nearest Hallmark

and pick one up!

 

Baby cards have been known to stump me,

masculine cards have me crafting in circles and scratching my head.

But sympathy cards ...

eh, I stare at the paper, ink and markers with a wary eye, indeed!

 

But the reality is ... part of being an 'artist' is often challenging

ourselves to stretch beyond what is comfortable for us.

I love that part of art ~

adventuring into the unknown,

not really having a direction or inkling of creativity.

No spark, no idea, no plan :)

 

Pen to paper.

 

The Calendar Girl's theme this month is presented by Terry,

and this is the theme she gave us to work with, in her words:

 I have recently (within 2 weeks time) had 3 friends lose parents. Very sad situations for all of them.
With that and the anniversary of 9-11 coming up I would like you all to create a Sympathy card.
Unfortunately, we will all need them at some point. It's a sad thought, but reality.
As an added challenge, I would like you all to share a memory of someone you lost and what that person did to change your life.
 

This is my humble offering.

 

The person that I've lost that influenced my life was my sweet

Grandma, Thelma.  She passed away at 89 on Halloween, 9 years ago,

the same year as my dad.

She was a woman of faith, strength, courage and spunk!

 

Grandma Thelma had 12 kids at a time when just one was too many,

and times were tough ~ VERY tough.

I remember her telling me stories of having to make a meal

to feed everyone from a small sack of flour and an orchards filled

with apples and peaches because "that's all there was."

More than that, she was filled with an incredible faith

and gave my mom her first bible,

which in turn became mine.

 

We didn't get to see Grandma Thelma very often as she

lived on a farm in California and we were traveling all over the world,

often so far way, letters would take weeks to arrive.

But she always wrote!

She always remembered us and stayed connected to the far away family that we became and reminded us that family and faith were two things

that can always remain unbroken.

Love and miss her muchly ♥

 

Be sure to stop in and see what the rest of the Calendar Girls

have created with their cards -

you can find them in my sidebar.

 

Big hugs, Bigger Blessings!
~Kelly

 

 

Crafters of Faith: Inspired by Song! :)

 Hi friends and a Happy Halloween

                              to all of those that are celebrating!

It's also the 31st of the month, and that means the Crafters of Faith

post our monthly cards with a chosen theme.

This month, our sister in Christ, Liz, gave us a joyous theme of song!

I absolutely love music and have loved christian, gospel music every since I was a little girl.  I used to drive my mom batty running around singing 

"I've Got the Joy In My Heart" over and over at the top of my lungs :)

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!

Where?

Down in my heart!

Where?

Down in my heart!

I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart ..

Down in my heart to stay!

Okay, you can unplug your ears now!  LOL! 

Sweet Liz gave us this scripture this month for our challenge:

The scripture for my challenge is:

"But I, with a song of thanksgiving, will sacrifice to you. What I have vowed I will make good, salvation comes from the Lord." Jonah 2:9

And here is her challenge theme:

I love music and a "song of thanksgiving" surely pleases the Lord. Never does He speak that the songs of our hearts need to be perfectly performed to be a joyful sound to Him. So, think of some ways you can make a joyful sound to the Lord your God. The challenge this month will be to use a musical instrument image, musical score paper, musical note brads, etc. Whatever you have in your stash that is of the musical nature!

And my card!

My 3 daughters were/are at a High School for Performing Arts

and were/are part of a vocal choir.  

My dd16 auditions for many plays and Operas and God has blessed her 

with a truly angelic voice :)  I had her in mind when creating a card,

which finally came together after 3 attempts, lots of cardstock and dsp in the trash and a few images later!

close up of the sentiment :)

I went with a wonderful dancing girl stamp, sent free in the mail from

Inkadinkado in their giveaway a couple of years ago.  They were so generously giving away thousands of stamps - all you had to do is send in an email,

and they sent 3 wooden stamps to you, completely free!

I received this one among my trio and until this year, it has not seen ink

- another LINY card and USE EVERY STAMP challenge card :)

For the musical part, I added a small scrap of music paper behind the images

and the inside is stamped with a sentiment from SNSS stamps.

It is a verse from the book of Isaiah 12:5

"Sing unto the Lord; for he hath done excellent things;

 this is known in all the earth."

Be sure to stop in and see what the rest of the Crafters of Faith

created with Liz's wonderful theme!

You can find them listed in my blog sidebar.

I'm off to a field trip with my son today

and he is SUPER excited about wandering through our neighborhood

to see the spooky houses, wear his GI Joe "Snake Eyes" costume

and pass our candy to the little ones that show up to our door :)

Big Hugs, Bigger Blessings!
~Kelly

Entering my card into:  Word Art Wednesday!
Songbird:  Dancing Queen
DragonsDream "film of choice" - Flashdance!
Handmade Harbour - Having fun!

A flower a day keeps the ...... snow away!

Hi there!  This has been a productive and crafty weekend for me - rare but exciting none-the-less :)  It's so hot here, even with the beach and pool visits we have been making, it's soooo much nicer to stay in and ink and color! :*)

I thought I'd share the card I made for the SOTC (card group on SCS) ~ our hostess this month is Maryann.  Bless her heart, Maryann has had her share of snow and more snow -  and asked us to create a card with flowers to bring out the sunshine!   I actually created one, totally CAS, and then read her requirements to include at least one embellishments, so in order to keep the CAS look, I added a dallop of ric-rac and some tiny pearls in pale yellow.

      

Here was the original: just a subtle difference, right?

I'm still trying my hand at creating new things this year.  You may remember from this post, it's my LINY year!  I absolutely fell in love with this card and wanted to CASE it, however, as you can see, that idea fell way through!  I'm not really happy with how this turned out, but I had good intentions :/ 

 I'm trying to embrace the crisp, CAS look of cards and have these wonderful ideas - then put them 'on paper' and it just falls flat ... no pun intended! :)  I thought Bridget's card was stunning in blue, but really wanted to use yellow - to represent sunshine and to make it cheery.  I also had fun playing with one of my old stamp sets again as per my crafting goals, like this one from SNSS from their February flower of the month (Iris) collection.  

The color combo at Dynamic Duos this week is to use green and yellow, so I'll go ahead and enter this card there ...  

and Cas-ual Fridays Challenge #108 asks for a CAS card with a swatch of any material - I used ric-rac on the card so I'll go ahead and enter this card to their challenge as well :)

Thanks for stopping by today ~ have a great rest of the weekend!

Big hugs, Bigger Blessings!

~Kelly