Living as a Victorious Christian Woman

Ok, it's time to admit that I didn't get Christmas cards made this year. Yes, the woman who makes card for a living didn't make any for herself. Please forgive me... Instead, I'm making a few New Year's cards. And I absolutely love this design. Feel free to copy it if you'd like - it's a lot of fun! I started by printing out a "Happy New Year" on the computer. I didn't have a stamp or any letters that I liked, so I created my own. If you're wondering why it's on white paper when I'm putting it on white card stock, there's a perfectly good explanation. There are actually two: 1. I needed the extra stability because the card itself wasn't very thick, and 2. I'm going to stamp on it and I need it to be very dramatic. A background color would have detracted from the idea in my head. And 3. I was using up some damaged white card stock. You can see the pucker and tear in the first picture. Once the

For the next few days, everywhere you look you'll find tips on setting your New Year's resolutions. Exercise more. Eat better. Stress less. Love everyone. Declutter everything. For the first couple of weeks (or days ... or hours ... or minutes), things go pretty well. You're riding high on adrenaline and hope. And then reality sets in. Your schedule gets too busy to hit the gym today. Doughnuts were on sale today. The calendar just got amazingly crazy. You don't understand any of the people you work/live/fellowship with. Stuff has taken over every corner of your life and you just can't catch up. So then what? Do you just give up until next January 1 and call it a year? Of course not. Silly girl. The problem is that we tend to make resolutions and set priorities that are out of whack and completely unattainable. The solution to this failure and disappointment is found in a familiar Scripture that applies perfectly to the end of December. But

 It's fun to play around with sketches that are completely out of your comfort zone. I love layers, but this one was much different than what I'm used to. Think of this sketch as lefthand-heavy with a secondary image in the bottom righthand corner to balance it out. That's the way I'm thinking about it, just so I can wrap my brain around it. Silly, huh? And be careful with patterns. Too many busy patterns and it gets a little overwhelming. You'll want nice, clean layers with contrasting patterns and colors, otherwise they'll get all lost and muddled. That's what I was thinking about with the card I made using this sketch. I started with the tall phrase and then worked my way backwards. I knew what papers I wanted to use, I just had to make sure they weren't so busy that they canceled each other out. The XO image in the bottom corner is just a piece cut from another sheet of paper. I didn't want anything too bulky or too fancy - it neede

One of my Christmas gifts this week was this beautiful scraper. I can't imagine ever actually using it (with the chance of ruining it), so it will be displayed in a corner where I can always see it. Why would I want to look at a scraper? As pretty as it is, it's because I want to remember the verse that's on it. Serve the Lord with gladness is part of the 100th Psalm. Make a joyful noise unto the LORD, all ye lands. Serve the LORD with gladness: come before his presence with singing . Know ye that the LORD he is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations. These are the words I want to remember during the last weekend of the year. It's not about me. It's not about my schedule, my plan or my wishe

I haven't had very much time lately to do anything new for Christmas, but then the Christmas cards started rolling in! We decorated for Christmas while Danny's parents were here, so everything is out all over the house. It's for that very reason that I realized we didn't have anywhere to put our Christmas cards as they came to the house. So I put together this adorable Christmas card holder with a piece of leftover wood Danny had in the garage and some clothespins. I absolutely adore the size, and I hope it will hold most of the cards we receive. I went out to the garage and spray painted the board in white and one side of the clothespins in red. The other side I left plain so the adhesive would stick better - and it really did. Once they were dry, I brought them inside and hot glued the clothespins to the board. It only took a couple of minutes for them to dry completely and be solid. I have a couple of Christmas stencils that I love, so I used the holly

You don't need to have it all figured out to move forward. Trusting God means moving forward into the unseen, knowing that He has already been there. For I know the thoughts I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Jeremiah 29:11 God knows. We don't have to. God has our lives all planned out. We don't have to do the planning ourselves. God has thoughts of peace for us. We cannot plan our own peace. God has planned our end, seen our end and knows everything that will happen between now and our end. We don't have to. Our finite minds want to know. We want to be prepared. We want to feel secure in knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. But that's not trust. Trust means following the Lord even when we don't have it figured out. Trust means believing that God has our best interests at heart. Trust means staying as close to Him as possible so we can see His footprints before us.

A trusty sketch is like a great friend - they're tried and true and they'll be there for you whenever you need them. This is one of those sketches in my personal book of card design. It's simple enough to be incredibly powerful on its own, but it's also versatile enough to work in a hundred different ways. Start with a double-matted background, then choose a contrasting side border. The more mats the merrier, I say ... or something like that. The phrase or focal point is then overlapped onto the border, creating a balanced package. There's also room on the righthand side if you want to add a small accent like another image or embellishment. For my card, I used the last scraps of some of my favorite black, white and cream paper. Then I triple-matted the background so there was both white and cream showing. The border is single matted, as is the yardstick sticker phrase. If I had used a quieter pattern for the background, I probably would have used a small