The last of 2013 and Maybe WOYWW#239

I do not hold emotional attachments to things and times, they come and they go as if with a will of their own. With this new year  I do hope to encourage more and grow more . Regardless of what day or year it is,  I say good morning to my prayer time and reach for  the bible and then the "to do" lists and the address books and the phone numbers, knowing at the end of every number is a person  and a life that I am somehow connected to, even if it is only to pay a bill, but still a person who needs the same things I do.  Love, respect, hope, purpose, what gap can I fill today? I won't say good bye or hello to a calendar year, But I will greet every new day and all the opportunities it will offer, being thankful above all else that God has called me to walk in His marvelous light, with Him and with Steve.  Yes Happy New Year!

The last Work Desk blog hop for the year finds me making "thank you" notes.  These I made for my Son, trying to make them not look to Momsy Made :) The ship is a digi on Strathmore paper,

which I colored.  My Work desk:

 

                                                                     The work

 

 

 

 

The base is a 110# navy blue felt and really nice in weight and feel!  The smaller A2 size.

 

I made 2 of these  cards today for an Oriental Stamp Arts swap, the theme Year of the Horse- black, red and gold"

this card is 5x7, Strathmore paper and 110# black base.

 

 

 

If you'd like to see more work desk wonders, go over to Julia's where the blog hop will start later tonight!

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you have a wonderful New Year!

Ginny M

Using It Up!

The last Monday of 2013, really the only thing of any note about this last Monday is that Steve has the day off and he is about to paint the kitchen! Yeay (this was just delayed)! We're going a few shades of lighter yellow.  My kitchen is tiny, we painted the cabinets an ivory color and the walls yellow about 3 years ago and we really like it but we are getting ready to reface the cabinets and go to a whiter white with them. So my pretty painted brick needed a little refreshing to!  I 'll post a picture when its done!

With Christmas falling on a Wednesday last week I find I am totally off what day it was, today is no better, it feels like a Saturday to me.  It's kinda funny how the odd days off and not  normal church schedule has left my mental calendar in a fog!!  How about you??

I did get a few cards made last night for the Use It Up Challenge, actually I made nine cards and that didn't even seem to make a dent in the left over bin!  And because this seems to be a much bigger project than I originally thought, I tossed a ton of scraps!  These were good cardstock pieces but I have been hanging onto them for 3 years and hardly touched them.  So they had to go, they were occupying far too much of my craft room real estate. Now what I kept fits in three drawers:

 

 
 

Last nights' Cards bring my UIUC total to 97:

 

These were all made to be used in OSA  RAKS and Birthday Greetings.

Made earlier in the week:

 

 These sweet cards were made using images from Patsy Paterno (with Permission) click over to her blog, you will be so blessed!!

 

 

 

 I have also been busy this weekend indexing all my digital scripture verses, sentiments and indexing my sentiment/scripture in rubber.  I've finished the digital side and am going to make books with them today.  Last night, a whole lot of printing!

  

I'm putting together a bunch of stamping goodies for one of my friends, I sure don't need two of anything, so my friend gets a bunch of happy rubber!!

 

Doing the indexing is part of my ongoing Stamp art organization project.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have an awesome day!!

Ginny M

Looking ahead

With the new year just around the corner, are you looking at a new you?  I am !  Many make New Years resolutions, with good intentions,  I don't!  To me making a new year resolutions is like jumping off a cliff and hoping there is something soft to land on.  I don't like that philosophy, I tried it once when I was ten.  My thought was if I jump off the diving board in the deep end of the pool I will force myself to learn how to swim.  The life guard told me there was a better way to learn after he made sure I was breathing again.
There are many season in our lives, some are longer than others, some are happier than others, but they all come and they all go.  This new Year I want to be a kinder person, I want to speak more life and healing into peoples lives and less judgment and criticism.  I also want to take better care of myself so that I can better care for others.   I posted 'there is nothing too hard for the Lord' from the verse in Genesis; in the NT testament the Lord tells us, that 'with men some things are impossible, but with God all things are possible'! I want to slide my impossibilities over  to the Lord and watch him surprise me, pouring his grace and mercy, making all things possible!
I encourage you to take a few minutes and think about the impossibilities in your life and ask God into to those situations and then have faith for a happy surprise!!

 

 

 

 

Today I made a couple of Birthday cards with my Use It Up stash:

 

 5x7

 

 4.75x6

This gal was supposed to go on the card above, can you guess why it didn't?  Yes you are right.
Ugly. When I went to put a dot of CR3 on her lips, oops!!  Needless to say I choose a slightly more subtle color for the image I did finish the card with! You cant see the pl1 (pink) I did use in the photo, but you can see it in real life .

 

I hope you have a great day, thanks for taking a minute to stop by!

Ginny M

Snowy afternoon

The Christmas snow came today!  It is a nice quiet day here, recuperating from the Christmas fun!
Our oldest son made his drive, safe and sound from  Seattle WA to Charleston SC over the weekend: 3,000 miles in 60 hours solo, in a sports car, through the Rockies and Plains through the storms. When Roy became a Marine 10 years ago, I became a Marine mom and a more prayerful woman, good thing! I'm thankful he is safe and sound doing crazy things state side, there is a little less stress!!  Our youngest is driving home from VT this afternoon, his first driving in snow.  I'm not sure why my hair isn't grayer! 

I'm in the process of getting the house back under control and digging out in my craft room, I am still working on 3 last Christmas presents!!  I did make a few thank you notes to get in the mail this afternoon and I thought I'd share them.

They are actually scrapes left over from Christmas cards I made for a shop, so these also qualify for 'my use it up' challenge!  and I thought I'd add a little Asian influence.

 

I made a dozen of these. They are the smaller A2 (half sheet size) on 80# wedding white cardstock.

They were fast and fun and hopefully convey my thanks!

 

I hope you are having a great day and still enjoying the Holidays!

Thank you for stopping by!

Ginny M

Merry Christmas!

May your life be Blessed by the Love that came to Redeem mankind from Sin and Darkness.

May your Heart  Mind and Soul be filled with the Light of His Peace.

May we give thanks on this special day that brought us into Love Divine.

 

 

 

 

Steve and I wish you a wonderful day!

Ginny M

 

 

WOYWW on Christmas Eve!!

Oh Boy, all I am going to say is my room looks like a bomb went off!!  Christmas gift Crafting!!!

It Christmas eve, nothing wrapped here, gifts aren't finished, At least we found the stocking!!!

We are even having a hop at Julia's tonight! Go here if you need some craft sanity!

 

 

Here's my desk and maybe Friday I'll show pictures of the finished gifts!

 

 

 

 

Back to baking and gift making!  Have a wonderful day!!

Ginny M

Two days before Christmas and OSA

Two days before Christmas and I am still making gifts, how about you?

I made Zero cards for my Use It Up challenge this weekend, too busy!

I can't show you the things I've made for this Christmas, no sneak peeks!! 

 I Did make a set of cards for an Oriental Stamps Arts Challenge (OSA) ,  that I can show you!!

 

This challenge is called the Black plus One color challenge.   Like the name you make one black plus what ever the month color is - this year was a little different, it was black plus shades of one color.  I signed up for the whole year-I think this is my favorite swap.  The black plus one swap forces you to  work the theme and produce something that is not totally drab!  Last year I had a theme for my cards and I did the same for this years.  Making the whole batch at once was a new idea for me.  Now the swap is done and photographed so all I have to do is wait to get notice of my partner for the month and off it will go!

 

I used Kromakote paper and inked the center focal paper to the months' color and built the card from there.  I selected all papers and stamps ahead of time.  The total time to make these 12 cards was about 4 hours, I relaxed and enjoyed the process!  So here the are, the "Black plus shades of color" swap.  All of the stamps I used were from the company Art Neko. The Art Neko stamp company has by far the best selection of Asian stamps and the quality is the best. I highly recommend their stamps.  I included a link if you'd like to browse their offerings! Another plus, there is always a sale going on and you can't beat the customer service.

 

January - shades of Purple

February Shades of Olive

 

 March - Shades of Chocolate

 April - Shades of Coral

May - Shades of Green

 

 

 

June Shades of Tan

July - Shades of Turquoise

 

 August Shades of Blue

 

 September- Shades of Grey

October- Shades of yellow (this is very yellow in real life)

 

 

November- Shades Pink

 

December- Shades of Red

 

 

 

 

 They look like pretty jewels on my work table!

 

 

I hope you are enjoying  you holiday season,  and will have time with your family and friends.

While I love the "joy of the season", I am passionate about the Reason for the season and that is all year long and grows stronger (unlike the 'Christmas Holiday') the older I get.  It seems with each passing year the Love of God  reaches deeper into my heart and burns brighter.

The Bible seems dearer with each passing day and like King David, I think                                          " Lord lead me in The Way Ever Lasting"!

 

Bon Natalie

Ginny M

How Busy Is Your Weekend?

I know everyone is pretty straight out right now with Christmas around the Holiday!  Steve and I went Caroling with friends at a nursing home this morning, We had a good time, there were lots of residents there and we had about 24 singers, accordion, trumpet, 2 sax's, Steve played his Trombone, conga's and a tambourine.  For a production with no rehearsal it turned out great!

I'm Christmas shopping and I finally got my tree up last night.

For Crafting, my' Use It Up' bin looks like this :

Lot of great pieces in there and a scrape book magazine, I need to come up with a mini album for 1/4/14. I've never done one before - Gulp!!

 

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by!

Ginny M

I'm not getting much crafting done this week, I am getting a lot of things in the mail!  I make cards to send out, I love the card making process and the whole paper crafting  genre; but the point of  it all is to be a blessing and encourage someone.  Last summer I got to a point when I wondered if it really made any difference to anyone.  Actually because I was getting so little response from this "ministry" I wondered if it was a waste of time and resources.  I'm being real here, I was feeling discouraged.  Then  my birthday happened. I hate to admit it, but I had a little meltdown.  I received two birthday cards. Okay I know, this sounds like I am such a baby, but it gets worse....  I looked up in my book for the year and saw that I had mailed over 300 cards to people I knew and 100+ to people I didn't really know and this does not count my yahoo card swap group.   My feelings were so hurt (whaaaaa - whaaaa) that nobody remembered me.  I  hang my head here -I know- what a whinner!  But Then I felt that still small voice speaking to me so lovingly, reminding me of what a wonderful life I have been blessed with, especially with my husband who I could not hope for him to love me more.  My little meltdown made me realize how important what I was doing with the cards really was.  Many of these people I send to regularly are elderly and many with chronic health problems  - they have little fellowship and crave that company, my little cards are important to them, the bible verses are a comfort and encouragement.  To feel forgotten and unloved has to be the worst feeling a person can experience.  So it was with a renewed vigor I started making cards and mailing them out.

If you are Christian you can understand that I do this with a great deal of prayer, and that I do it 'as unto the Lord' .   Now to do this 'ministry'  I have to keep things organized, I need to have an idea of what goes where , I don't want to over load anyone or forget an important date or send the same verse to one person a dozen times, that would be a little scary!!

So I have a system to keep it hopefully under control!  Yesterday I made my system pretty!

 

 

I keep my sentiment stamps and my biblical verse stamps in two locations.  One problem I was having  was that I could not remember what I had!  I have a nice size collection of these stamps in rubber and am even larger one in digital, none of it does any good if you can't remember what you have and where it is!!

 

The first step was to round up the occasions stamps, happy birthday, thank you, thinking of you, Etc..

Then my sentiments and quotes in rubber. I wanted these right on my desk (seeing = using)  So I covered a box with paper;

 

 

Tink thought it would be more interesting if I fed him a few treats!

 

 

 

 

This is the finished box

 

Next step was to pull my scripture and encouragement stamps and bring them to the desk area

These all came out of a drawer which would have been fine if I could remember What was in the drawer! Plus I needed to index my real stamps and my digital stamps.  Some of you may think that if I can't remember what I have then I have to many.  Well if you think that, that tells me you are NOT a stamper and you are not over 50. 

 

 

I took an old file drawer we picked up some years ago and covered that with fabric ( it was an old military drawer in scratched up OD green). I then covered my large address 3 ring binder and my small book of dates ( everything matchy matchy with out spending any money, money).

 

 

 

 

 

Next step was printing an index book of sentiments and scriptures from the digital collection, that took HOURS.  I learned I have 377 digital scriptures.  Figuring out how to print this and make it expandable  was a little time consuming as my file of digi stamps is in png format and needed  to be converted or merged into word so that I could make eBook.

 

 

I simply bound it with ribbon so that I can add to it. 

 

 

 

It is not perfect and I didn't aim for perfection, I just wanted it in print. 

Steve said "why" why did I need to have this on paper when I had it on my computer, my portable drive I use for storage and on my thumb drive I keep in my purse.  Because I am all about paper and ink, The computer just helps me and expands my abilities, I still need to see it on paper!

 

This book is also just nice to pick up and read during prayer time.  I made one last year, I had about half the verses and I cut and pasted the verses (literally)  into an album.  I ended up giving that album to a friend and I know she uses it as a devotional help.  Now since I have this on file I can print another one for another gift!!

 

I keep some supplies right next to my desk also and a group of devotional and inspirational  readings that I pull from regularly:

 

 

 

 

 

 I have my verses and index and date/address books right on my desk:

 

 

My Hope is these changes help me to get more done.  Just in case I spend too much time sitting on the job, Steve brought my elliptical machine into the basement last night, yea! Now If I could only write and do the elliptical at the same time!!

 

Thanks for stopping by, I appreciate it and I hope some of my organizing  might help you be a better  encourager!

 

Ginny M