crafts and joy

Last year, I went to a fellow Quotarian's house and made ten holiday cards. She hosts a "Stampin' Up" card making party. It was fun. It was creative. I was very proud of the cards I made. I brought them home and took pictures to eventually post on my blog.

Except I never put the pictures on the blog. And then my laptop was stolen.

Oie. Sometimes it still gets me right here.

*sigh*

Moving on. This year, I went back to her house and made ten more. I brought them home and took pictures of them. Then I dug out the leftover ones from last year (I didn't want to send them because they were so pretty, but I realized that is not the point of making them) and took pictures of those.

Then I sent them.

I know you'll all be waiting to see if you get one. If you do, count yourself very lucky. And if you do, please thank your mailman.

The cards are bulky.

They may be sent back for postage due.

In the meantime, I'm going to post about holiday joy and amazing friends.

I put out the call for some of my creative friends to make something for me to hang in the house. I had realized I needed to be surrounded by positivity. One of the things that made me think of this, is a set of Christmas decorations I have. They are fuzzy letters. They are glued together and they spell out "Peace" and "Hope". I would love to leave them up year-round, but they have been deemed Christmas decorations, and are deemed to be put away at the end of the season.

One of the other things that sparked this idea was a gift from one of our former students (now away at college). She made this for me at the end of the summer.

Part of my request was for the creativity to flow using words such as Hope and Peace. Compassion and Love were a few other words. I didn't want to be restrictive. I wanted to see what would happen.

My wonderful friends Greg and Shannon were the first to respond.

Here's what they came up with:

 Greg is a collage-maker. This face is covered with words. Specifically Bible verses with the above mentioned words.

Shannon is a graphic designer. She made this. It's a verse from Galatians. (I bought the frame for it.)

I have one other piece that my friend Dana gave me last week. I have to take a picture of it in daylight so you can see it clearly. It's a watercolor and it's also beautiful.

I made a few thank you cards (since I was inspired by the card-making class). The first one was for my sister who gave me a pair of warm fuzzy socks.

(Sorry, this post went astray. I mean, the idea is still there, but now I've written it over a couple of days. I know it's disjointed, but I just want to publish it. Go with it.)

Then I made this (actually, I finished it). I had started it back when we lived in Jersey. Since I started it for Shannon and Greg, I finished it and sent it to them with the thank you card shown below.

I took a picture of the house from the outside with our wreaths (thanks Mom and Dad!) so I'll post those tomorrow!