Friday, October 28, 2011

Faith Blog Hop - Whom Shall I Fear?

Welcome to another blessed Faith Blog Hop. This month we are focusing on the theme of Fear and we pray you find hope in the midst of any fear you may be experiencing. Join us as we showcase the talent the Lord has given us through projects that reflect what we know about God. The hop begins over at My Paper Tree House, so if you just happened to find this blog, make sure to go on over there first. If you came from Carolyn's blog, you are in the right place! Know that we are praying for you!
Before we can ask the question: "Whom shall I fear?", we must first define the word FEAR. According to www.dictionary.com, Fear is "a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, etc. " It is interesting, though, that the original Webster's Dictionary (1828) defines fear as the following: 1. To feel a painful apprehension of some impending evil; to be afraid of; to consider or expect with emotions of alarm or solicitude. We fear the approach of an enemy or of a storm. We have reason to fear the punishment of our sins. When you contrast the end of the definition provided, you can tell that the reasons behind our fears have changed. With that change has come great compromise and a HUGE loss of the reality of the greatest thing we should fear... GOD! You see, we fear losing our jobs, our children, our homes... We fear the dark, or changes that come our way... We fear thieves, and guns, and accidents; yet we refuse to fear the Lord. The Bible says that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord. I always wondered why this was true, until I came across the following verse:"Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28) God is the ONLY ONE who can destroy both your body and your soul! What a scary thought!In both definitions it is clear that fear comes from an expectancy of danger, pain, or evil. All of the threats that we face on earth can potentially take our physical lives away, but they have absolutely no power over what will happen with our souls. Interestingly enough, more people are afraid of speaking in public than they are of dying... and the truth is that to die apart from Christ would bring destruction to both body and soul. How is it that we do not FEAR this reality? The enemy has done a great job at making some believe that apart from God we CAN do ALL things. With others, He makes them feel so desperate and broken, that their hope and trust in the reality of God is stolen from their hearts, which leaves them with a bigger fear: the Lord is NOT big enough... Which lie have you believed? Do you feel you are so able to do ALL things that the need to fear God has not been a true need? Or, do you feel so far away from God, that your fear is now based on your belief that God will never be able to pull you out of the mess you are experiencing? Whichever your position, look at Matthew 10:28, consider your life and answer in an honest way: "Whom Shall I FEAR?"

For my project I chose to do a simple card. I have not been able to completely get into the vintage look, but I found that for some reason, talking about the Lord and his wonderful love and grace, that it was deserving of me to try. It just seemed appropriate to me for some reason. It's amazing how we all know God is a God of love, yet it may be confusing to some how we should fear him. The fear we need to have for him is not that of a bad nature, but one of obedience and respect. We are humans and we make mistakes. But he can pull us out of anything that we are going through, whether it's a situation or just the mere fact that we find ourselves distancing ourselves from him. I would never want to jeopardize my trust in him to a point that it will pull me away from him. When I find myself in situations as suck and that of fear, I pray and just ask God to take over. This is the whole reason why he sent his son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for us. To carry our burdens, so that we wouldn't have to. I will not be weary of things that I know that he can handle for me. I will trust in him.


I used  KinderStampO's vintage letter charms and Art philosophy cartridge for the flowers.  The lace and pearl strings were a gift from my sweet friend Tanya.  The rest was just some pearls and stickers I had at home.


Now for some blog candy! To qualify for this giveaway, please leave a comment below.  For an extra chance to win, sign up for my email newsletter and let me you know did in a separate post. I love your comments, but blog candy must stay in the U.S. Here's what you can win:





Thanks for stopping by. For your next stop you have to hop on over to Dolores' blog.

Monday, October 24, 2011

Crafty Sprouts Halloween Week

Welcome to Crafty Sprouts' Halloween Week! You will see throughout the week some awesome projects from the Crafty Sprouts' design team as well as some guest designers. Today is my turn along with a couple of other ladies to show off some halloween crafty skills. I wanted to make something for my son's classroom for decoration so a banner seemed to be appropriate for a second grade classroom :)
Recipe:
Crafty Sprouts' Totally Witchin stamp set
The Greeting Farm Hallo Shedevil Anya
The Greeting Farm Hallo Skeleton Ian
Art Philosophy cartridge (banner)
Cuttin' Up cartridge (font)
The Twinery twine (lilac and mandarine)
Creative Memories orange cardstock
K&Company Spooktacular Design Paper
You still have time to enter the Candy Goes HERE challenge for a chance to win some awesome DCWV paper stacks and some twine from The Twinery!
Thanks for stopping by and don't forget to visit Tanya and Holly and see their wonderful creations! Have a beautiful day!

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Christel's Birthday Month Guest Designer

I am so honored to be a part of Christel's birthday month celebration and I want to say a special thanks got her for allowing me to celebrate with her! The designers that she has had throughout the month have been amazing. For this special celebration, I made a matching card and gift bag set. I used zebra paper as a background and American Crafts glitter cardstock. I also used My Creative Time's fancy frame and die set. The sentiment is from Crafty Sprouts' Besties for Life stamp set. The flower is from Nestabilities Blossoms and I used violet inka gold. I was able to learn how to make this type of flower and use the inka gold while visiting the West Palm Beach Expo.
Happy (belated) Birthday Christel! May God continue to bless you in many many ways!

Friday, October 21, 2011

Crafty Sprouts DT Day

Happy Friday everybody! Welcome to another Crafty Sprouts Design Team Day! We are continuing our Candy Goes Here challenge. I skipped right over Halloween and Thanksgiving and made something for my favorite holiday of the year, Christmas!
I used Tags, Bags, Boxes and More for the cut and put some jolly ranchers inside to match the cute sentiment from Crafty Sprouts' Have a Cool Yule stamp set. You can also visit the rest of the design team to see their awesome creations!
So don't forget to link up your project for a chance to win 2 stacks from DCWV.
In addition, anyone who comments on the challenge post and enters the challenges will have a chance to win The Ultimate Sampler pack from The Twinery!
So get your projects going!!! You have until October 27th to enter.
Hoping everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Market Street Stamp Block Party

Wow! It's been a year since www.marketstreetstamps.com has been around and now to celebrate, they are having a block party! Since I have some of their awesome stamps, I decided to enter the contest with by submitting this sweet autumn card.  


I stamped the pumpkin image from the Autumn Greetings stamp set on a Canvas Corp mini circle and color it.  I then used Tim Holtz' spiced marmalade distress ink for the edging and K&Company Spooktacular paper for the background paper. Used some awesome twine form the twinery and voila!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

Monday, October 17, 2011

Winner of Kimi's Baby Shower Blog Hop

Hi Everyone! What a fun weekend it was for me!! First I went to my first ever Scrapbook Expo with my wonderful friend Liz from WhichCraft. We had an awesome time and learned some new things which we will share with you in the near future, not to mention all the retail therapy that I did! We also had an awesome baby shower hop for our dear friend Kimi from Lovebug Creations. Thanks to everyone who stopped by and left some love and now to the winner of the blog hop:
PurpleFuntastick Creations said...

What a fun hop this has been hop and so sweet of all of you to do this for Kimi to help her out in her first year with the baby! love your LOs and thanks for sharing! :) The secret message is: Congrats Kimi

Kari you have 3 days to contact me to claim your prize! Thanks for hopping with us and I hope to see you soon!

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Kimi's Baby Shower Blog Hop!


Surprise!!!!! Welcome to Kimi's Baby Shower Blog Hop!!!! I am so excited to be a part of this blog hop and to shower Kimi with some wonderful gifts and beautiful layouts that everyone has created! If you have arrived here from the wonderful Michelle's blog then you are in the right place. If you have just stopped by for a visit, you may want to go to Pam's blog to start the blog hop. You don't want to miss the incredible projects and layouts made for Kimi and the chance to win an awesome prize by revealing the secret message! More details on that at the end of this post.
Kimi is a wonderful crafter and great friend with two small children at home and in a couple of months she will have a new addition to her family! We all got together and thought what a wonderful gift for her to not have to worry about scrapbooking her daughter's first year of pictures. So we created some layouts for her to have handy and scrap her wonderful memories in. Here are some pics of my layouts:
Congratulations Kimi! And I hope you like the layouts, they were made with lots and lots of LOVE!!!!
Now, for the secret message. Everyone that has participated in this blog hop has given you a letter for you to link to the next. The letter to complete the message is I. Now here are the requirements to be eligible to win:
1. You must comment on every one of the blogs.
2. You must comment in here and reveal the secret message.
3. Winner will have 3 days to contact me to claim their prize.
So what do you have a chance to win????? 3 sets of stamps from Crafty Sprouts and 1 image stamp from Simply Betty Stamps:
I will choose a winner through random.org on Monday. Good luck everybody! Thanks for stopping by and have wonderful weekend!

Friday, October 14, 2011

Crafty Sprouts Challenge - Candy Goes Here!

Happy Friday everybody! Welcome back to another Crafty Sprouts challenge.  This week's challenge is all about candy containers and storage.  I made these quick little sour cream containers and I'm in the process of making a whole bunch of them for my son's class and my daughters' friends.  


The paper is from some lose paper I had (can't remember the name) and the twine is from The Twinery.  I combined Manderin and Peapod colors.  I used My Creative Time's scalloped and stitched circle die set and Crafty Sprouts' Totally Witchin stamp set.


So don't forget to visit my DT sisters and leave them some love and most importantly link up your project here for a chance to win 2 DCWV paper stacks.  In addition all entries for the month of October will have an opportunity to win some twine from The Twinery (woohoo!!!).   Thanks for stopping by and have a beautiful day!

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Altered Magnetic/Dry Erase Board

Good morning everyone! I hope you all are doing great.  A while back I found this magnetic/dry erase board at Michael's on clearance for $5.  So I decided to pick a couple up to see what I could do with them.  It came with 1 magnet and a marker that dries into a pinkish color.  I thought it would be perfect for my daughters' room.  They love to hang things on their wall!


I used Martha Stewart's leaves and branch border punch along with a paper from one of her stacks.  I made the brads with my I-Top and the paper from the same stock.  I embossed all the sentiments from Crafty Sprouts' Text Talk stamp set.  My daughters loved it, but I think I have to make another one so there are no arguments! lol!

Hope you all have a great day!

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Imagine Layer & Print Challenge

Good morning everyone, I hope everyone had a fantastic long weekend and for those of you who had to work, I hope you had a fabulous Monday! 

Today I have some tags I created for a Cricut Circle Challenge.  Last year I had joined the Cricut Circle, but really didn't take full advantage of what they had to offer.  This year, I rejoined and made a commitment to be more involved as a circlet, so I've decided to enter my first challenge.

Here were the rules: Use your Imagine Machine to print a background (it can be a solid color or a patterned paper from your Imagine cartridge) and use it on your project as well as cutting an image of your choice in layers- that’s right, choose the layers option on your image and print out one or all of the layers offered, piece them together on your project! 

And this is what I created.  I actually made these a part of a gift for my ex-director who recently resigned.  She loves to give homemade jam as gifts during Christmas so I thought this was perfect for her.




I used Kate's Kitchen Imagine Cartridge to print the background tag and cherries.  I layers the cherries and added a pretty ribbon.  I also used Martket Street Stamps' Autumn Greetings stamp set.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a beautiful day!


Friday, October 7, 2011

Crafty Sprouts Design Team Day - Do Not Shake!

If are you looking for the From the Xander Zone Blog Hop and Auction click here
Good morning everyone! So happy to be here today!!! I want to thank everyone that has been participating in the Xander Zone Blog Hop and Auction. I can guarantee you that Betty and Christian surely appreciate all the comments and efforts made to help them in this unfortunate situation. Both the Simply Betty and Crafty Sprouts design team thank you from the bottom of our hearts!
As we continue on our color challenge for Crafty Sprouts, I made a card using Simply Betty's Merkids collection. I love the little mermaids!!! This one in particular is called Tiki Merkid and is available in digital. Just click here to look at the Merkid collection. I also used the Do not shake sentiment from Crafty Sprouts' Have a Cool Yule stamp set.
Don't forget to visit my DT sisters Raven, Jess, Sandra, Kristi and Elsa and to click here to link up your projects for the color challenge! Signs by Designs is sponsoring with an awesome prize of 25 colors of vinyl!!! Now who wouldn't want that????? In addition, Erika is having a card drive for Christian (Simply Betty's son). You can click here to link your project to that as well. She has an awesome giveaway for this as well (2 stamps from Betty's new Jude and the Rockers fall release!) , so don't miss out and get your crafting going!!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a beautiful day and a wonderful weekend!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

From the Xander Zone Blog Hop and Auction

Welcome to the Xander Zone!! You are in for quite a trip through todays Blog Hop and Auction. Our dear friend Betty Roberts, owner of Simply Betty Stamps has just found out this week that her 17 year old son Christian has Stage 1 Throat Cancer. He will be having surgery next week and many months of Therapy to follow. (To read more from Betty on what’s going on please go HERE)
Betty’s DT and the Crafty Sprouts DT along with a few friends have come together today for the From the Xander Zone Blog Hop and Auction! If you are stumbling into this hop please head to Crafty Sprouts to catch the beginning of the hop!
If you hopped here from Suzi's blog then you are right on track!
As you hop along today you will see cards created with Xander, the first in a new series to be released called “From the Xander Zone”. He is available with a donation to Betty’s family. Christian will be undergoing Surgery next week to remove his tonsils and then the thrice weekly Therapy will begin on the tumor. His therapy could last for many months.
There is also a contest running through October 16th and Christian will pick a random winner who will receive the whole collection! The details on the contest are at the SBS blog.
As you hop today you will also see many cards and projects up for Auction. In order to make a bid on an item leave a comment on that person’s blog with your offer AND your name and email address. Please remember that it might not be you who gets the winning bid, so check back if you really want it!
At the end of the Hop (Tuesday night October 11th at 9pm EST the auction will come to a close. Winners will be sent a paypal invoice and the Winners will be announced on the Simply Betty Stamps blog. Please note that we are asking for timely payment, with 48 hours of the announcement on Tuesday morning or the runner up will be chosen. This is for the simple fact that Betty’s family needs this money as quickly as possible for all of these unexpected and out-of-pocket needs.

For my post I have used a stamp form Simply Betty, Max and Miller.  I used the Art Philosophy cartridge to cut the card (American Crafts specialty paper) and used the stars for the image and stickle them.  Easy peasy!!! The inside is a sentiment from Crafty Sprouts' Let's Go Blog Hopping set.

From here please hop over to Wendy. If you get lost along the way, here’s the hop order!
In order to raise some money to assist Betty with some of the expenses coming her way, I have put up for auction today a beautiful Creative Memories 12x12 red poinsetta coverset.  Bidding should start at no less than $10.    Happy Bidding! Please no international bidding as the shipping can be very costly.  Thank you for your understanding.

Christian, we all wish you a very speedy recovery and we are praying for you!

Thanks for stopping by and have a beautiful day!

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Spotlight Saturday

If you are looking for the Faith Blog Hop please click here


It’s Spotlight Saturday time again!! For those of you visiting for the first time, every week I feature someone’s blog on my blog. There are so many crafters and blogs out there with a wealth of knowledge and creativity and unfortunately like some of you, I’m ot able to visit them all the time, but I know they are there. This is my way of giving them the recognition that they deserve and perhaps a few more followers ;-)

This week I am featuring Cindy from Cindy B Creations.


Here's a little bit about Cindy:


My name is Cindy Beland from http://cindybcreations.blogspot.com/ .I live in a small town in Northern Ontario,Canada.I am a stay home mom with two wonderful children and am engaged to a great guy.Because of my situation I am lucky I have a lot of time to be creative and do my projects.This year I created my own blog and shortly after was asked to join the Design Team "Whimsical Wednesday" which I happily did.I have really enjoyed this as I have met so many wonderful and talented people,actually this is how I got to know Zeni.It has also inspired me to start drawing again,I have always loved to draw and colour and with the digital age its so easy to share with the world.I am also looking forward to starting my own digi shop (a work in progress).The card I am showcasing is one of my images I call "The Pumkin Patch" hope you like it.
Thank you so much Zeni for choosing me for your spotlight :)


Isn't her card just fabulous!?!?  Please show Cindy some love by stopping by her blog.  Cindy, please feel free to grab the badge on the side for spotlight saturday! Thanks for stopping by and I hope you all have a great day!