All Day Long

From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised! 

Psalm 113:3

Hi Friends!
Psalm 113 is a psalm of praise. It starts and ends with "Praise the Lord!" It speaks to the fact that there is no one like our God, and that He raises the lowly and broken and gives them what they need. Verse 3 says from the rising to the setting of the sun God be praised- so all day long. So I had to ask myself, am I praising Him all day long? Uuuhhh, noooo. Sometimes I praise Him, if I think about it. That's the problem isn't it, we get so busy that outside church or our daily study, prayer, or journaling time, we can forget to be praising Him. So my goal is that when I'm going about my daily routine, I'm taking time to praise Him. I'll set myself reminders on my phone at first. It sounds silly, I know, but this will help it to become routine. He's worthy of all day long praises!

Page Details:
This post is a little different than my normal posts as I'm going to spend a little more time explaining the design of my page. Because the verse says "from the rising of the sun to its setting", I knew I wanted a sun on my page. I've done suns before on pages, and wanted to do something a little different. I decided I wanted a mosaic look. I searched "mosaic sun pattern" online and was inspired by the images. My first step of the page was drawing the horizon with a pencil. I then drew lines along the ground that I wanted to paint different colors.

I'm not the best with acrylic paints, but I do ok. So know up front, it's ok if it's not perfect! With a sponge brush, I applied blue and black acrylic paint to my page for the sky. I let them blend with my brush strokes adding more blue as I went. Then with the black, I outlined the horizon and the lines for the ground.

Then I took a variety of paint colors to paint the ground. In each section, I started with the darker color, and then would blend in the lighter color with my brush.

Finally, I used a square brush to paint the circle of the sun. Then using the same brush, I made the sun's rays using yellow, white, greens and blues. I dipped my brush into different combinations of the colors to get slightly different hues. I started with yellow and white, then yellow and light green, then light green and blue, darker green and lighter green, etc.

I used a heat gun to dry the paint. I've found if acrylic paint is not completely dry and you stamp on it, the stamp can actually pull the paint off the page. So it's important to make sure it's dry before stamping! I used the Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps set called Women of Praise. This set is one of my favorite sets!

I used Archival ink to stamp on top of the paint. Again, from experience, I've found that other inks tend to bleed- they don't stay crisp on top of acrylic paint. Archival doesn't bleed into the paint. I wanted the words to kind of blend into the sky, but also wanted your eye to be drawn to them. So my last step was using a white pen to highlight the words.

I hope this helped! If you haven't tried acrylic paints in your Bible, I hope you'll try them! They don't bleed through and actually protect the backside of the page from bleedthrough.

Have a blessed week, my friends, and Praise the Lord! Andrea

Faith minus Love = Nothing

Hi friends,

The Bible has a lot to say about faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God (Heb 11:6). Faith can move both mountains and fig trees (Matthew 17:20; 21:21). Faith in prayer is both vital and powerful (Matthew 21:22; James 5:15). But in 1 Corinthians 13 Paul makes it clear that there is something that is needed alongside faith, without which, faith is null and void.

We can have faith that can move mountains, that achieves things, gets results and is impressive to those around us. But without love, this means nothing. In fact, Paul says that without love 'I am nothing'. Lack of love nullifies all the other things we think are important or impressive. Having come from an environment in my past that emphasised faith in a big way, but had catastrophic gaps in the practice of love, this scripture really speaks to me.

This verse is challenging because I think a lot of the time it is easier to focus on faith than to walk out love. This may be because things that we have faith for could benefit us in some way and therefore we are more motivated to believe. It also could be because loving people is difficult, messy and usually unspectacular. But without love, all that faith can achieve is pointless, because without love, we aren't representing the God who we claim to have faith in. What a sobering challenge to our priorities in our daily walk with God and others.

I created the background on this page using a brick wall stencil and different shades of pink paint. I layered another stencil with broken lines using white paint over the top and sponged a little white paint over some of the bricks to create a distressed look. The verse was stamped using a combination of Walk by Faith, Teeny Alpha, and Seek Him stamp sets along with some alpha stickers.

I pray that God would continually enable us to demonstrate his love with those around us as we walk by faith in him.

x Amy x

Watch and Wait Scripture Card

Hiya, friends! Today I'm sharing a project that is all the rage in the Bible Journaling and crafting world, and I've recently jumped on the bandwagon too -- Scripture Cards (or Rolodex or MemoryDex Cards).  A scripture card like this can contain any combination of scripture, decorations, and sentiments.  

I decided to make a card for this project with the verse Micah 7:7:

"But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord,

    I wait for God my Savior;

    my God will hear me."

In this passage, the prophet Micah is talking about all the terrible things going on in the world, and how all those around him are untrustworthy.  However, Micah watches, waits, and hopes in the Lord, knowing that God will hear and deliver him.

What a powerful reminder of faithfulness and trust!  As I was studying this passage a few mornings ago, I definitely knew that it was a verse I wanted to commit to memory, and refer to frequently.  That's why I chose to make a scripture card with this particular verse.  

To create this card, I used a Project Life grid card as the base, and then sponged Cracked Pistachio, Faded Jeans, and Dusty Concord Distress Oxides in three layers.  I carefully blended the colors with my blending tool and sponges, and then spritzed it with water for a spotty look.  

Next, I stamped my words on the card with the Set Apart set and the Skinny Minnie Alpha set.  I stamped "watch" onto white cardstock in the three distress oxide colors with the Typewriter Block Alpha, and then cut them out to make my own alpha tiles.  Then, I also stamped the arrow, heart, and star on the cardstock, colored them, and cut them out.  I stamped some background images with stamps from the Set Apart set, such as clouds, doodle and art marks.  I added a tab at the top, adhered my elements, and then tied a slip knot bow at the bottom with some grosgrain ribbon.

I love how this little card turned out, and I especially love how it can visually remind me to just watch and wait on the Lord!

The links (some are affiliate -- thanks!) to the products are above and below.  Thanks for coming to visit today.  Leave a message below if you have any questions or comments.  

Set Apart

Typewriter Blocks Alpha 

Skinny Minnie Alpha

Purer in Heart

Purer in heart, O God, help me to be.

Hi Friends!
I have an old hymnal in which I've been journaling. As I was flipping through it, I came across this hymn- Purer in Heart, O God. It really spoke to me. It's a prayer that God help us be purer in heart- that's the first line and it's repeated in each hymn verse. Here are some of the characteristics this hymnal prayer asks God to help with:

• Whole devotion to God in our lives
• That God watch  and guide our wayward feet
• That God teach us to do His will
• That He be our Friend and Guide
• That we abide with Him
• That He keep us from sin
• That He reign in our souls

Wow! I want all of that. And those characteristics are what being pure in heart is all about. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus tells us, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." Do you want to see God? I sure do! Being pure in heart means that we are focused on God and desire to please Him throughout our lives. And the only way we can truly be pure in heart is through Jesus. Only He can cleanse us. Psalm 51:10 tells us, "Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me." God is the one who makes our hearts pure. We can't do it ourselves. And that's what this hymn is all about- asking God to help us day in and day out devote ourselves to Him. O that I may be purer in heart, Lord!

Page Details:

I used the following Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps sets for this page: Set Apart, All Your Heart, Walk Humbly, and Love Your Neighbor. I used watercolor crayons and a white pen as well.

Have a blessed week! Andrea

Just be...

Hello everyone! 

Today I am excited to share with you about our creatively growing our faith collab sale going on now thru Monday the 22nd. Enter code (cgofsale) to receive 15% off your purchase and also be sure to check out the other amazing discounts offered! Also there is a party over on our Facebook business page, we recently hit 10,000 likes!! WOOOHOO! So you know what that means...a big ole GIVEAWAY! Yup, so head on over and enter the winner will receive free stamps for a year...winner will be drawn August 1st. 

Now on to my bright fun party page...

Today is a fun new messy experiment that I cannot wait to share! For this fun background I used a little bubble wrap and acrylic paint in a few fun colors. I painted the bubbles and stamped the wrap onto the page creating these fun, imperfect polka dots. Once it dried I added my title using Just be, and Set apart. To finish off this page I added a few tabs, stickers, and puffy hearts.

"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God." Matthew 5:7-8 

Sometimes my thoughts are not deep, or even profound. Sometimes I use my Bible to remind myself of my true goal in life....to become more and more like my heavenly Father. 

Don't forget to use that code (cgofsale), as well as check out the other amazing shops participating in the creatively growing our faith collaboration sale (see image below). Also remember to hop over and enter our 10,000 like giveaway over on Facebook page.

Love and prayers!

Jenn @Creativegurl85

What is your Mountain?

Mark 11:23

"Truly tell you, if anyone says to this mountain 

"Go, throw yourself into the sea", and does not doubt in their heart, 

but believes that what they say will happen, 

it will be done for them."

Hello friends! 

This will be a bit of a personal post for me, sharing a little bit about my history and one of my personal testimonies. 

Have you ever have a "mountain" in your life? An obstacle that seemed so large, so impossible, so daunting that you thought there was no way over or around it? I expect most of us have had at least a mountain or two in our lives. For me, mine was at the extremely young age of 7 months! Yea,... just 7 months old!

This is a part of my personal story that not everyone knows, only those closest to me. But I am going to share it with you readers to brag about just how good God is! When my mom had me, like a lot of mothers, she needed to go back to work after her maternity leave was up. A hard decision for a lot of moms I'm sure. To find someone you think is trustworthy to watch someone you love so much. Well when I was only 7 months old, while at the babysitters, I was severely injured. To this day, all these years later, we still don't know exactly what happened but I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance unconscience with a severe head injury.

After being assessed at the hospital they said I had several fractures to my skull and my brain was swelling. I don't know all of the details because it was such a traumatic thing for my parents but I have slowly learned more details here and there as I have gotten older. I was unconscience for 2 weeks in the hospital because of all of the swelling in my brain, and appeared to be paralyzed on half of my body. The doctors told my parents I had a 10% chance of survival most likely. I just could not imagine getting that news as a parent. To have to watch your child suffer that way and feel so helpless.

But the reason I share this story with you all today, is because it was God and God alone who saved me! My great grandmothers pastor at her church came to visit me in the hospital a few times. He prayed over me as my family stood around him. The third time he prayed over me, I woke up! The doctors were amazed. And what was even more amazing was that I wasn't paralyzed. I was awake, I could move, and in a few days I smiled. Praise the Lord for He is so good!!

That was my mountain, an incredibly big mountain for a 7 month old. But God makes all things possible. He moved that mountain out of my way and saved my life! My parents prayed and trusted in the Lord and He took care of me. I hear these stories my parents have told me about what happened and I am just amazed at God's amazing power. He saved my life and thank the Lord I am able to see, walk, talk and you would never know I went through such a traumatic experience. 

I still have the scares on my head (hidden under my hair luckily), to remind me of what I overcame with His help! Your mountain may not feel as huge as mine, or maybe it does. But do not lose hope, do not lose faith in Him! He is a good good father and He is there to do amazing things!!

xoxo,

Stephanie Gammon

@faith.and.creativity

Walk by Faith

Inspire!

Supplies used will be listed below! Thanks for reading!

Happy Tuesday to you!

My goal for this blog is to purposefully and concisely aim you in a direction of intentional encouragement and inspiration. At the very end, I have a bit of a creative/encouragement challenge for you in hopes that you will be uplifted and run with it!
__________________________________

One time (actually, multiple times) I heard my pastor say, "Everyone is under-encouraged." 
First of all, I wondered how this could possibly be true.  Everyone? 
The people who are the highlights of Hollywood?
Those with more numbers in their bank accounts than one could fathom?
Those who receive thousands likes on an instagram post, followed by hundreds of additional comments?

Yup.
Everyone.

EV-ER-Y-ONE.
And the sad thing is, those people I mentioned above sometimes need an extra boost of, "you are loved just the way you are," just like you and me.
We are made to be relational, work together, make peace together, and promote community.  We are made to encourage, lift up, build up and inspire each other to things of a higher calling!
Fame, money and popularity are bonuses and signs of success, but one time (actually, multiple times) I have heard it said such things can hinder meaningful relationships and promote loneliness.

⇨⇨Listen, friend: everyone needs to know that they have meaning, they have purpose, they have a direction and a destination.  They are loved, they are beautiful, they are unique and they are not meant to fit in to any mold or make of the world. 
The loving Lord is a wonderful God, reaching always into humanity to have communion and achieve the highest possible connection via His Holy Spirit.  Inspiration flows from His heart deeply into the core of the person He made us to be. 
+  If you see something worth noting in someone, write the someone a note.
+  If you see something worth admiration, share admiration.
+  If you notice a talent, a gift, a honed skill, a blessing, a success, a victory, a happiness, a pleasure given to another, he/she needs to know this is how you feel.
+  If you become moved, challenged, motivated, or blessed by another, bless, move, and motivate back!  I promise it is NOT a waste of breath or time!

The Bible says, "Encourage one another and build each other up."  (I Thess. 5:11)
"And let us consider how to stir one another up in love and good works." (Hebrews 10:24)
"Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act." (Prov. 3:27)
"

I can assure you, sister, there is nothing the Devil wants more than to see the church of Jesus fall.  He wants nothing more than to see the children of God behaving like overgrown misfits of gossip, slander, anger, envy and strife.  In fact, the Bible tells us to FLEE from these things BECAUSE these are easy side-steps to an otherwise fruitful walk with our Maker. 

I encourage you, sweet friend.  Send a note.  Send a card.  Send a small post-it or leave a small token of appreciation for someone(s).  It's truly not a waste, and it's something that builds upon the kingdom of God - into an eternity that is being made ready for you and me!

Here's the challenge part now: 
1} Ask the Lord to show you someone, to lay someone on your heart so that you would know who needs to be encouraged.  Someone may pop directly into your mind!  With this lead, you can then create a little something for this person to let him/her know - at the VERY least - that you were thinking of him/her.  
2} Before you send/give it, take a photo & post it on social media!  Be sure to hashtag it #encouragementchallenge and tag my handle so I know you've posted. 
3} Watch as encouragement spreads and morale boosts in this sweet community that extends beyond the bounds of Instagram or Facebook!  It's phenomenal!

This card I made for a friend, who has overcome doubts and fears in Jesus' name.  Difficulties surrounded her, and Murphy followed her, so to speak.  It's not uncommon for one to sink into a shell of despair, but I saw her sink, find hope and re-emerge with vigor and confidence that Jesus IS her God! 
She inspires me; I want to inspire back.
She has moved me; I want to stir her up!

Much love,
Deeds

Sentimental Wordfetti here. 

Bitty Minnie Alpha here.

Fantastic Flowers set here.

I colored in the flower and leaves with my new Arteza Everblend marker set.  I love them, and I am so looking forward to using them more!

Walk by Faith

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil.

II Corinthians 5:-10

Trusting God when we can't see the outcome is the mark of a true Christian. It's also one of the most difficult things to do. Take a minute today to read and meditate on II Corinthians 5, and choose today to walk by faith and not by sight.

A good song for your playlist today: "Walk by Faith" by Jeremy Camp

I used the new "Walk by Faith" stamp set from Sweet 'n Sassy Stamps and Distress Oxides to create this page. So bright and fun!

I would love to connect with you on Instagram. You can find me at @journalingjoy. 😍

Have a blessed day!!

Janelle

The Shepherd Lamb...

Hi friends,

One of my favourite images to study in the Bible is that of a shepherd, particularly as a metaphor for leadership (in fact I'm hoping that will be the focus of my post-grad research for the next few years!). So when I received the new stamp set The Shepherd's Voice I knew I would be creating a lot of pages with it!

When I got this set I did a search on Bible Gateway for the word shepherd and made a note of loads of scriptures I could journal. This verse from Revelation 7:17 really caught my attention:

For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

Not only is Jesus the good shepherd, he is also the Lamb. He knows what it is like to be one of us, to be governed by bad shepherds, to be vulnerable and mistreated, to be weak. Having experienced what it is like to be one of us, he also laid down his life as the sacrificial Lamb who paid the price of our sin. What an awesome shepherd and leader he is!

This imagery also turns on its head the worldly view of leadership as power and strength... In Jesus we see true leadership modeled as self-sacrifice, compassion and love as a shepherd cares tenderly for his sheep. This encourages me in coming to him in my weakness because I know that he understands. It also challenges me in my leadership of others as I need to remember that leading others in the kingdom of God needs to follow the pattern of Jesus as the sacrificial shepherd. This applies in the home, in the workplace and in the church.

For this page I stamped the lamb and good shepherd/staff images then coloured in pencil. The crown is from another new set from Sweet 'n Sassy called Set Apart. I stamped the verse using a combination of Bitty Minnie Alpha and Happy Alpha. Here are the sets I used:

I'm so grateful to have the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world as the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls.

x Amy x