Life, Joy and abundance!

Hello everyone! Happy Sunday! I hope you are enjoying a wonderful weekend! With Sunday comes another Stampin Sisters in Christ Challenge, and this week, Peggysue is our Challenge Hostess. She has chosen John 10:10 for today's Scripture:

"I have come that they may have life and that they may have it more abundantly."

You know, God is so good! Many of us think of the joy of our salvation mainly in terms of an eternity spent with God because of the work Christ did on the cross... but I think we sometimes forget about the change He makes in our lives here and now when we come to know Him! His very nature is pure love, and He wants only the best for us. Before we were even born He knew us and loved us! Now that doesn't mean that He never allows bad things to happen to us... sometimes we need the bad stuff... perhaps for our own growth, perhaps as a witness to others of how having Christ in our lives carries us through difficulties. He knows what we need the most, and that is to be in a right relationship with Him! When we are, then our lives are filled with joy and true fulfillment! That is what life more abundant is all about! The first part of this verse says that the thief comes to steal and kill and destroy, and that is what Satan wants to do! He will lie to us, accuse us, keep us feeling all sorts of negative feelings and thinking all sorts of destructive thoughts if we let him! But Christ came that we may have life and enjoy it to the fullest! Let's determine today to not let the devil rob us of our joy and to enjoy our Savior and our new life in Him to the fullest! That's His desire for us!

Peggysue's challenge this week is
Use a series of hand drawn in dashes or lines, like faux stitching, or real stitching on your project

I have used a cute Whiff of Joy stamp I won from the sweet Crystal in some blog candy she was giving away. I had so much fun coloring this! I paper pieced Willow's dress and shoes and colored her with Copics. I don't get to do cutsie images all that often and it was fun to get a little practice in on skin and hair with Copics! I also used this week's Midnight Madness Sketch 70. I pierced around my panels and drew faux stitching lines with a SU! Marker.

Card Details:
Papers: Papertrey, Neenah, BasicGrey Porcelain, scrap for dress
Ink: Memento, SU! Marker for my faux stitching
Accessories: Spellbinder's Classic Rectangles and Classic Scalloped Rectangles, Prima Flowers, MS bough punch, May Arts Silk Ribbon, ZVA Creative Pearls, SU! Piercing Mat Pack

Our sponsor this week is Simon Says Stamp, where you can get this sweet image I used as well as MANY others! Good luck in the drawing!

We'd love to have you play along! If you do, please leave a direct link to your card on the SSIC Blog and please link the challenge in your post!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Design Team for more inspiration for this week's challenge!

Chris
Cindy
Linda
Randi
Peggysue
Miesje
Rebekkah
Lisa
Patti

Challenges I'm entering this into:

MMSC70 Sketch
Bee Crafty - Anything Goes
Creative Inspirations - Lace and Sparkle (my dp top panel is lace, lots of sparkle)
Gingerloft- Anything Goes
Charisma - Something new or never tried before (this is the first time I used this stamp)
Pocket Full of Posies~ Floral Fantasy
Lexie's Creations- flower power
CES (Crafty Emmas) - Floral Frenzy
Digital Tuesday Challenge blog -use dots & stripes! (Lots of dots, stripes on bg panel)
365 Cards - tools and techniques (Copics for coloring, pearls for dimension)
Fab n Funky- What'Eva
Stamp Something - Something Cute
Your Next Stamp - Anything Goes

Springs of Water

Hello everyone! Happy Sunday! This post and the last several have been prescheduled as I have been away due to the death of my DFIL.

Sunday brings another Stampin Sisters in Christ challenge. This week I am the hostess and I chose John 4:10, & 13-14 for today's Scripture.

10Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water." 13Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

I hope you'll read the devotional thoughts I wrote on the Stampin Sisters in Christ Blog today, as these words of our Lord offer a great gift to all who will receive it! Don't you love the word pictures Jesus used? Water.... it symbolizes cleansing, refreshment, and is an absolute necessity for life! Without it we would die! Without the spiritual water Jesus offers, we will surely die spiritually!

My challenge to you this week is to create a card or project that refers to water in some way, whether in image or sentiment.

I used the Sept. release from Our Daily Bread designs "Never Thirst" for my water pump image, and last month's Harvest Blessings and Die Cut for the sunflower images I placed around the pump. The images are colored with Copics. I absolutely LOVE how easily the die cut all these flowers out in seconds and they all popped right out perfectly! Wow! What a time saver! I mounted my images on a lattice panel I cut with a Martha Stewart mega lattice edge punch. I lined it up and cut it from both sides. I then cut another one from tan bazzill as a shadow effect. My verse is stamped with Memento and cut out, sponged with TH Distress Ink in Pumice Stone, then adhered to a Spellbinder's Fancy Label cut from Papertrey Dark Chocolate CS. My card base is Papertrey, then matted with Bazzill and the designer paper is Me & My Big Ideas. The twine is May Arts.

Our sponsor this week is
Art and Crafting possibilities UK
Be sure to check the SSIC Blog for all the details!

We'd love to have you play along! If you do, please leave a direct link to your card on the SSIC Blog and please link the challenge in your post!

Be sure to check out the rest of the Design Team for more inspiration for this week's challenge!

Chris
Cindy
Linda
Randi
Peggysue
Miesje
Rebekkah
Lisa
Patti

As you can see we have a brand new DT member, Patti Gilliam! Welcome aboard Patti!

Thank you so much for visiting! Your comments bless my heart every day!

I am entering this in the following challenges:

A Crafty Little Place - Anything Goes

Our Daily Bread Designs - Forgotten Embellishments - Brads

The Craft Den Anything Goes Challenge - Say it with Flowers

My Time to Craft - In the Garden

Bee Crafty - Anything Goes

Pollycraft - Add a Little Nature

A little birdie told me....

This is a flip card and this is the front:

Hello everyone! It's Sunday and time for another Stampin Sisters in Christ challenge! Today's hostess is Randi Barrett. If you don't know Randi, I highly recommend you start visiting her blog and getting to know her, because she will bless your heart! Randi has been through many serious health issues, and is presently awaiting results of tests again. For all of us who have been there... we know that waiting to find out what's going on and what the treatment will be is in many ways the hardest part! It's hard not to be just a wee bit anxious... but Randi has this incredible sense of humor that I believe is a gift from God! She is so grounded in God's Word that she does not worry about tomorrow, for her future is sure! But for today... she will lighten any room she is in with her strong Christian testimony and her ability to make us laugh every time!

So given her sense of humor, it is no surprise that Randi chose for today's Scripture:

Proverbs 17:22

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones."

The challenge for today is to make a clean humorous card.
When you flip the middle panel, this is the inside message:

If you can't read it, it says "So I ate him. Your secret's safe with me. Happy Birthday!"

I don't have a whole lot of humorous stamps, but I do have a couple of these Repeat Impressions stamp sets which include a two part sentiment designed to go inside and out, or in this case I made a swing card. Trouble is it's a BEAR to photograph!!! I could not get the two parts in one photo you could still read and because it's more or less a Z fold, just the way it stands makes it hard to picture the front. So please forgive the bad photography... but I thought the sentiment was funny. (No I don't think it's funny that cats eat birds...I love birds and that's one of the reasons my cat is an inside only cat! LOL... ) I used a combination of Copics and Prisma Pencils to color my images and I sponged around the outside with Pebbles Pearlescent Chalks. The DP is K&Co by Marcella. I used a couple of tiny punches for the little flowers, and an MS branch edge punch for the green edge.

Our sponsor this week is DeeDee's Digis. Thank you DeeDee!
DeeDee has some of the cutest digi images! Be sure to check out her site and good luck in the drawing!

We'd love to have you play along... if you do, please place a link to the Stampin Sisters in Christ Blog in your post, and place a direct link to your project on the SSIC thread.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Design Team for more inspiration for this week's challenge!

Chris

Cindy
Linda
Randi
Peggysue
Miesje
Rebekkah
Lisa

Challenges:

Penny's Paper Crafty - Anything Goes
Creative Card Crew - Cute and Girly
Crafty Creations - Winged Things
Lili of the Valley - Spring Summer or Winter (Spring birdie)
Fab & Funky - Favorite Color Combo - pink and green

SSCC Plans for You!

Hello Everyone!! Today it is time for another Stampin Sister in Christ Challenge and Chris is our hostess this week.

For the challenge she chose the scripture:
Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made: I know that full well.

Her challenge is: Use the talents you have been given to create a card or project that is knit together (stitched- faux or real).

What a great challenge and verse! It is amazing to realize that God formed every part of us for a distinct purpose, and He makes no mistakes! We are fearfully and wonderfully made!!! Have you ever wondered at the miracle that healing from every day scratches and colds really is? God made our bodies with incredible healing abilities! Think about the miracle of birth... it still amazes me to see pictures of a very young fetus... at a very early term, that baby is all there... fully visible and functioning.. and just the way God planned! I decided to use Our Daily Bread designs May release set, "For the Graduate", choosing the Jer. 29:11 verse to go along with the thoughts on God's plans for each of us. I also used the Iron Works Borders set and cut out two.

I am also entering this in the Totally Gorjuss Challenge - stitching.


Recipe:
stamps: For the Graduate and Iron Works Borders from Our Daily Bread Designs
Paper: Papertrey, Making Memories, The Paper Co.
Accessories: Spellbinders Fleur de Lis Pendant die, Anna Griffith brass embossing template, Silver Embossing Powder and heat gun, Silver thread and sewing machine, Silver edged sheer white ribbon, tiny white flowers from the Bridal dept. in Michael's.

For more inspiration for this challenge, please visit my dt sisters: Candace , Chris , Kathy, Kristine , Linda, Lisa, Peggysue, Randi

If you create a card or project for this challenge, please leave a direct link here. Be sure to include a direct link to Stampin Sisters in Christ. Should you upload your creation to SC or PCP, please use the keyword SSIC37.

Thanks for stopping by and for all your comments! Have a blessed day and I hope to see your take on this challenge soon!