A Week of Gratitude: Day 3, An OLW Challenge

Today, we're going to be grateful for mothers. To play along with this Week's One-Layer Wednesday theme-based challenge, make a card expressing gratitude to any mom...she need not be your own. It may be your friend who always helps you with parenting problems, your grandmother who raised you, an aunt who gives you that extra bit of motherly attention that makes you feel special, the mother of your son/daughter-in-law, your own daughter or daughter-in-law who is a mom, or your actual mom. Doesn't matter. Just has to be a mother. (And yes, furry babies count!)

My card is for my mother, who loves to sew and made most of my sister's and my clothes when we were growing up. The houndstooth butterfly in the new SU butterfly set gave me the idea by making me think of fabric, then mom, then the stitch-themed Papertrey set sentiment. And that's how this happened:

My dad isn't part of my life, and when I think of my family growing up, I think in threes: Mom, my sister, and me. Those were the constants. My sister and I are butterflies who, as adults, have flitted all over the country, but our mother keeps it all together. So three butterflies stitched together with that awesome stitch stamp from PTI's Faux Ribbon set makes symbolic sense.

Mom will totally get the meaning of this card when it arrives. And for that, I'm grateful.

And as you can see, I'm using that lime and gray color scheme again today. Oh how I love that.



OLW22 Rules

1. A one-layer card is defined as a single piece of cardstock folded in half.

2. Make a card that is inspired by gratitude for a mother-figure in your life. Remember to keep embellishments to a minimum.

3. Please share your creation by posting your card online and then using the InLinkz button in the sidebar of Simplicity to link to it.

4. Most important of all...HAVE FUN!

Remember to leave a comment here and one on Mary Dawn's blog post today to maximize your chances to win the gift certificate to Shady Tree Studio (my order from them has shipped....YEAH!!!!) or a copy of Card Style and two shadow ink pads!

A Week of Gratitude: Day 2

Welcome to DAY 2 of  A Week of Gratitude! Remember to leave a comment here and then check out Mary Dawn's post at My Pink Mexico to leave another comment for a chance at this week's give-away!

Yesterday, I made a card for an old friend who's been out of contact with me for a while. I just want her to know that I still think of her and value her friendship during those years of my life in Idaho.

Today, I'm sharing a card for a very new friend in my life, a woman named Barbara. We met a week ago at our first Stephen Ministry class, and we are now prayer partners for the duration of our training. Obviously, Barbara and I have faith in Christ in common, since we both feel called to the Stephen Ministry. We're also both a bit uncertain and nervous about the responsibility of providing Christ-centered care for people in need. The Papertrey set Everyday Blessings gave met the perfect stamps to make a card for my new friend!

Design Discussion: I really wanted the scripture to be prominent, so I offset the cross and made sure it overlapped the sentiment on the word Lord. The gray medallion in the center of the cross forms a bit of a right triangle with the sentiment...a design I can't remember using before. My original plan was to put the matted panel on a standard 5.5-inch wide card with a bow off to the left for balance, but that looked, well, odd, sort of like the eye just didn't know what to look at. It was a distraction.

So I cut the card down to evenly matte the stamped panel and added pearls to the corners to anchor the whole thing. Now the eye moves just between the cross and the verse, which is where I want it to be. At least, I hope the design works that way!

I'm really liking the gray and lime color scheme lately. It's so fresh-looking, and softer than black and lime would be. I'd rather not beat someone over the head with a blessing, if you know what I mean!

Do you have a new friend (or person you hope will become a friend) in your life? Why not make a card for him or her?

Supplies
stamps: Papertrey
ink: Memento
paper: PTI white, SU gable green
accessories: SU ticket punch, half pearls, dimensionals

A Week of Gratitude: Day 1

Six years ago, my pastor preached a sermon about how sad it is that Thanksgiving gets lost between the commercialism of Halloween and Christmas. That year, I noticed that Target had six aisles dedicated to Halloween. The Halloween aisles switched straight to Christmas. In fact, the only display specific to Thanksgiving was one end-cap, although there was one side of one aisle with dried fall arrangements and a row of hand-towels on another end-cap in Home Decor.

The pastor suggested several ways we reclaim Thanksgiving from the mad rush of Halloween and Christmas. My favorite won't surprise you at all. He proposed that we take special time each year to send Thanksgiving cards or letters to those who have touched our lives in some way.

Oh, yeah! I have been ALL OVER that one ever since. Each year, I send about twenty cards to random people from my address book, letting them know that I'm thankful they are (or have been) a special part of my life.

Mary Dawn and I had so much fun with Kraft Week a while back that we decided to do something else later. Later is here, and it's a Week of Gratitude! We're going to showcase cards expressing gratitude to various people. We'll have two prizes for random drawings from comments on both blogs, so the more posts you comment on, the more chances you have to win! The prizes are

1. An issue of Papercrafts Card Style (oh, how I love this special-issue magazine!) and two shadow inks.

2. A $25 gift certificate to Shady Tree Studio.

We're also challenging you to join in. We'll be adding an InLinkz button later this week for everyone who wants to take up the challenge to reclaim Thanksgiving for themselves.

For my first card, I chose to go vintage with a shabby chic card. I KNOW!?!?! Where did THAT come from?!?!?!

 But I was thinking about my friend Deena, who was my best friend when we lived in Boise, Idaho. Deena and I shared all our secrets and supported one another each and every day. We worked side by side for three years, and then I moved to Rapid City.

And that was it. I tried to keep things going via email, but Deena felt like she had to write whole letters and just never found the time. We sent each other Christmas and birthday presents, just little things to let each other know we were thinking of each other. Then, she started sending the gifts late. Then, my last birthday and Christmas, she sent nothing at all, nor did she acknowledge my Christmas package.

Through another mutual friend, I know that she is fine and busy and doing well, but she has gone the way of so many civilian friends. You see, military folks are so transient, we learn to make friends very, very quickly. Our military friends understand the effort needed to stay connected over distance and DO SO, largely because we know that eventually, we will probably be reconnected at another base. There's hope of reunion, and that keeps the friendship close.

Civilians, on the other hand, lose hope, and friendships fade. To use a military metaphor, you fall off their radar scope, and their lives are too busy to put forth the effort of extending their scope's range to maintain long-distance friendship. They've got enough on their scope to keep them busy closer to home.

I used to be hurt and a bit bitter about this fact of life, but after it happened for the umpteenth time, I realized not to take it personally. FaceBook has helped to reconnect with these lost friends a bit, too. But Deena isn't on FaceBook. So I decided I'd send her a card this year.

It's vintage style popped into my brain when I was looking through Take Ten and seeing all the cards with text backgrounds. I thought the shabby style would reflect the friendship itself, a bit worn around the edges, a forgotten corner in the garden of life but still beautiful and precious nevertheless. The color scheme is soft pink and brown, a bit faded and washed out. But still pretty.

How-To Tips: First, I masked the vintage cream card base, and stamped Text Style on a long rectangle in Soft Wheat ink. Then I sponged some Pixie Pink VersaMagic to give the rectangle a bit more definition. After removing the mask, I stamped the large branch from Turning a New Leaf in Pixie Pink and the sentiment (from a fall PTI set from last year...can't remember the name) in VersaMagic Sahara Sand, a lovely light brown. The flowers were punched from a piece of stamped and distressed vintage cream (the paper was wadded up and flattened repeatedly, and sponged with Pixie). The centers of the flowers were punched from a piece of kraft that I repeatedly ran through a paper crimper (haven't used that in FOREVER!), poked holes into, and tied twine like a button. This keeps the card flat for mailing but adds some lovely softness and texture to it.

I hope you like this because OH MY GOSH, I do. It's wonderful when the style of a card reflects the message so perfectly and in such a personal and specific way for the recipient. I make hundreds of cards for other people every year...cards used by soldiers whom I don't know and will never meet and sent to people who are precious to them but unknown to me.

It's wonderful to make a card for someone I know and love. That's what makes handmade extra special, don't you think?

If you haven't done so already, check out Mary Dawn's blog My Pink Mexico for her kick-off to A Week of Gratitude!

Winners Announced

First of all, thank you ALL for sharing your thoughts about inspiration last week! I'm so excited to announce the winners for all five days!

Day 5 Winner (Box of inspirational embellishments)--#76, girlgeek101, who said,

I have those leaves too! I just love them. Your card is beautiful and the golden edge is the perfect compliment. You go! Thanks for all the changes you are giving us to win!


Day 4 Winner ($15 gift card to Shady Tree Studio)--#6, scgustaf, who said,

find inspiration in magazine/newspaper ads from clothing stores. The colors are usually fresh and in new combos that I may not normally think of. Thanks for your daily inspiration and baring your thoughts with us, Susan! So sorry you returned from the Midwest with a cold. Try Reliv nutritional supplement as a preventative...


Blessings on your day ~ Carol G. in northern MN

Day 3 Winner (SU paper pile)--#42, Mary, who said,

Great card! The thing that inspires me most from nature would be colors. But that happens mostly in Fall, as it is my favorite season too! I wish I still lived further north ( Ohio! ) so I could get my fix faster. Here in NC the colors change and the temp drops but it just takes longer and doesn't last long enough.


The Fall colors really get my blood moving and remind me I'm alive and get my fingers itching to craft something!

Day #2 Winner (MFP stamp set)--#96 kingstonmama, who said,

Like most people, it seems, I love nature stamps with flowers, leaves, and trees. Also birds.


Day #1 Winner (MFP stamp set)--#23 delightfuldaisy, who said,

I just love the SCS gallery! I get most of my ideas from there~it is truly a wealth of overflowing inspiration!




If you are a lucky winner, please send me an email at susanraihala at woh dot rr dot com with your snail mail address so I can get the packages out ASAP!

Thanks again to everyone who participated. Tomorrow will kick off yet another give-away, so check back!

Oh, and I keep forgetting to acknowledge the fact that my hit count on Simplicity is now over the QUARTER MILLION mark. I'm absolutely blown away by that number and cannot express in words what it means to me that y'all keep coming back for more Simple. Thank you.

Birthday Butterflies

Are you sick of my new butterfly set yet? I promise this will be the last time I post a card with it for at least a week. I think. Maybe. I could be wrong. In fact, I probably am wrong. Now that I think about it, I most surely am wrong. You'll see one this week during the Mystery Week of Fun that Mary Dawn and I have planned for you.

Anyway, this little set of cards will go to my sister, Lisa, as part of her Christmas present. She and I often just give each other money for Christmas because she likes photography equipment and I like stamps, and neither are things you can really buy for another person. It's best to enable them to pick what they want. Or what they don't already have....

This year, however, Lisa wants a box full of handmade cards she can send to people. She's a busy working mom of three who can't make it to Hallmark easily. She also wants a subscription to Martha Stewart Living Magazine. She has no time for the DIY stuff, but she loves looking at the magazine anyway.

I, in turn, will ask Lisa for money to buy accessories for the letterpress that my mom is giving me for Christmas. YES!!

Lisa loves clean and simple.

She loves white space.

She loves butterflies.

I guess she'll love these cards, too.

I hope you're enjoying your weekend and have had your curiosity piqued for this week's fun. See you in the morning with  THE CARD, the one from yesterday's post. With all the build-up, I hope you are NOT disappointed.

If you are, please don't tell me.

Supplies
stamps: SU butterfly, PTI sentiment
ink: Memento
paper: PTI white
accessories: scalloped scissors to round the corners a bit

Inspiration: A Fable

Once upon a time, there was a blogger who decided to spend an entire week talking about inspiration and asking her readers to share their feelings about inspiration, all the while giving away stuff to inspire people. Our blogger loves to give stuff away. It makes people so happy!

She shared good stuff about inspiration on her blog, and her readers shared even better stuff. For instance, she learned that many people both enjoy using and are inspired by patterned paper, although she herself usually ends up cutting it into little pieces and throwing it away in frustration. She has even been known to swear--just a bit--over lovely mangled sheets of Basic Gray.

But no matter.

The blogger loves that the world is made up of people who love different things. If everyone preferred apple pie for dessert, for instance, there might not be enough for her. She is happy to eat apple pie and let the patterned paper lovers have all the patterned paper they want without sharing any with her.

When the week of inspiration was over, our blogger felt very good about bringing all these different people together to share and discuss the one thing they most certainly all agreed on, which is that papercrafting is fun. Although she suspects a lot of them like apple pie, too.

So Friday, when our blogger needed to get to work making cards for the next week's blogging fun (what a surprise she had in store for her readers!), she sat down at her craft desk and started to work. After two hours, she realized that she had made six cards that were all crap.

Well, perhaps she was being a bit hard on her efforts, but truly, after a week of writing about inspiration like she knew what she was talking about, she had to admit that she was...uninspired.

Years ago, she would have beaten herself up as a total failure at life, the universe, and everything for something as negligible as two wasted hours. But not this time. Experience had taught her how silly such melodramatic over-reactions were. Instead, she grabbed a stamping magazine and her notebook and a pen, and she sat at her kitchen table to drink a Mike's Hard Pomegranite Lemonade and study the latest issue of Take Ten, while her husband sipped his beer and studied a new triathlon magazine called Lava. When she observed his magazine, she made no comment but totally understood the title as a reference to the location of the Ironman World Championships at Kona.

She then realized she knew entirely too much about triathlon and needed to focus on her Take Ten if she was to knock herself out of her slump, while at the same time noting that the layout of Lava might possibly, one day, provide inspiration for a card. But her husband was reading it and didn't want to share, so that would have to wait.

She sipped her Mike's and jotted a few notes and saw about fifty cards using a similar idea that she'd seen a thousand times before when inspiration struck! She got all tingly--and not just because of the Mike's--because a card popped right into her head, a card she was excited about, was willing to waste any amount of paper to create even though it would require doing things to paper that she doesn't normally do to paper. She didn't care! She immediately ran right up to her craft room to create her brilliantly brainstormed art!

This is NOT that card.

In fact, this card bears absolutely no resemblance to the miraculous card inspired by Mike's and Take Ten. This is, in fact, a card she made over a week ago with a left-over punched butterfly that accidentally got tossed on a piece of sahara sand cardstock. She liked the look of the black, white, and sand, but thought it needed something with umph. So she searched her red embellishments drawer and found this flower-shaped bling and thought, "What the heck?"

And it was good.

You'll just have to wait until next week's Mysterious Five Days of Fun to see what Mike's Hard Pomegranite Lemonade and Take Ten--and a little patience--inspired her to create. She and Mary Dawn have been conspiring again, and seriously, you will love the results.

At least, she hopes you will.

Inspiration Week: Day 5

To conclude our Inspiration Week, we're going to talk about product. Often, a card idea can originate with a really cool embellishment, which is why walking the aisles of big craft stores can be such an adventure. SO MUCH GOODNESS! SO MUCH TEMPTATION!

My recommendation (for what it's worth) is to be very careful when buying random embellishments. It's terrifyingly easy to over-buy. But when something speaks to your soul, don't hesitate.

When I saw these gold skeleton leaves at Michael's, my soul took control of my hand, which reached out and threw a package in the cart. I had no idea at the time what I would do with them, but I knew I could make something beautiful.

This card is really all about the product. The Strathmore watercolor card (which has a matching envelope...be still, my heart!) draws attention to itself with the gorgeous edging and texture without my doing a thing. The leaves and their attendant bling give the card shine, sparkle, and texture. All I did was stamp the sentiment (Hero Arts) in real red and glue everything else down.

A few carefully-chosen products can carry a clean-and-simple card beautifully.

Give-Away

Today's give-away consists of various embellishments I culled from my stash, all things that I've used in the past few months that inspired me to make art. I hope they will inspire some random lucky winner. To enter, just answer the following question in the comments of this post: what products most inspire your creativity?

Today's give-away is open to everyone, and just a reminder, the deadline for comments on all five Inspiration Week posts is 12:00 Eastern Time, Saturday, September 25th. The winners will be announced on Sunday.