Technique Tuesday-Sort of

Hello there. Please forgive me for not posting a tutorial today while we mourn the loss of a wonderful, sweet friend. I am comforted by knowing she is with the Lord in heaven, but still grieving because we will miss her oh so terribly here on earth.

My heart is burdened as I am reminded that life here on earth is short. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. I pray that should something happen to you, your family would be comforted in knowing you are safe in the arms of Jesus.

Unfortunately, so many are believing on their good works to get them there. "I go to church", "I'm a good person", "God is a loving god, He wouldn't condemn me to hell". The Bible teaches that God is a loving god, but He's also a just god and that there is no way to work our way into heaven. We can never be good enough. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23 But, as I said, He is a loving god. In fact, He is love. Love doesn't exist without Him. He loves us so much He sent His Son to pay our penalty for sin. "For God so loved the world (that means you!), that He sent His only Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16.

Belief, that's all it takes. Believing that Jesus was God, born here on earth to take our place on the cross. Believing that He overcame death and rose from the grave. Believing that we don't deserve the grace He offers us and repenting and turning away from the sin in our life. So, I guess it does take more than belief, after all, Satan believes who Christ is, yet he isn't going to spend any time in heaven. We must also be sorry for our sin, no matter how "little" we may believe it is, it's still sin and God won't allow it into heaven. We can't work our way into heaven. No matter what church we belong to, what ceremonies or rituals we are careful to do, no matter how much money we give or good deeds we do, we can't erase our sin. Only Christ can do that. "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should boast." Ephesians 2:8-9. Did you read that? A gift. All you have to do is believe and accept it. I'm so glad my friend had accepted that gift long ago and I know she is in heaven now rejoicing with her Savior.

If you have questions, if you're not sure what will happen to you when you die, please feel free to leave me a message and I will do my best to help.

Lord willing, I will be back next week with a tutorial for you. In the meantime please go hug your family close.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.

Technique Tuesday-Watercolor Markers

Hello there, and welcome to my first episode of Technique Tuesday. I even tried doing my first ever video tutorial. The hardest part...figuring out how to get the camera in the right place so that it would see the project and not the top of my head-oh, and not saying "and" a bazillion times. ;o)

I thought I would start Technique Tuesday with a simple technique I learned as a new Stampin' Up! demonstrator several years ago called Watercolor Markers. Anyway, here's my little tutorial. Please comment and let me know what you think.

I realized too late that I should have either zoomed in so you could see the project better, or hold up the finished ones to the camera, but after all the work it took to upload this, I don't really want to re-do it. I'll have to remember that for next time. Here's a close-up photo of the technique done on the two different papers. The left is Whisper White cardstock, the right is watercolor paper.

And here's the finished card.

I mention in the tutorial that you can get the In Color markers for free till the end of this month (March 2014). You can check out all the details for that at the Paper Pumpkin website.

Here's a list of the products I used:
Whisper White Cardstock
Stampin' Write Markers
Aqua Painters
Watercolor Paper
Simply Sketched Stamp Set (You can earn this set for free by hostessing a workshop.)

Whew! I did it! Not sure if I will do a video tutorial every week as it took over an hour to upload this 4 minute video to youtube, but I will do my best to continue Technique Tuesday, it just may be in photos instead of video. :o)

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

3D Blossom Punch Flower Tutorial

Hello, hello! How are you on this fine day? I am currently enjoying a VERY quiet house as my little one is out with her Daddy today and my son is spending time with his fiance. (I have no idea how to get that little mark over the "e" in fiance.)

Some of you may not know, but one of my other hobbies is cake decorating, and recently I was introduced to wafer paper. Edible paper. Yeah, you can see my brain going can't you? Paper I can put on my cakes? Paper I can use my punches with? Yes, please. I took a class on Craftsy to help get familiar with it and then just played around with different things to see how it worked.

Last night I got out one of my favorite punches and made a cardstock flower and then this morning I used similar techniques with wafer paper to make the same flower. What do you think? The flower on the left is card stock, the one on the right is wafer paper. And guess what? I took pictures making both of them so I could share with you how to make them. If you'd like to make the wafer paper flower, check out my cake blog for the tutorial.

So, let's get started.

Start by punching 6 flowers with the Stampin' Up! Blossom punch. Then use Paper Snips to cut in a little ways between each petal. In this photo I've only cut 4 of the 6 so you could see how far in to go.

This next step is optional and can actually be done before the petals are snipped. I used a sponge and some Primrose Petal ink to add some color to the edges of the petals. You'll want to do this to both sides of your flowers.

Next, take something rather narrow, I used a thin paintbrush and roll the petals of two of your flowers.

Do the rest of the flowers the same way, but with something a bit fatter. I just used a paintbrush with a wider handle.

You should have two flowers with tightly rolled petals, and 4 that are not so tight. (Pretend there's another flower in this photo. ;o)

Take one of your tightly rolled petals and glue the sides together. It might help to wrap it around your paintbrush handle for this step.

Now bring up the opposite petal and glue it to the first one. I just glued the edges, and I may have gotten it a bit tighter than it needed to be.

Bring up two more petals that are opposite of each other. Apply glue to the edges of one of the petals and glue them to the other petal.

Do the same with the remaining two petals, but you may need to put glue on both petals as they may not be able to stretch to each other and may need to be glued to the previous petals. (Does that make sense?) This is the center of the flower.

Guess what? That was the hardest part of this flower. Now you just glue the center of each of the remaining flowers to the center of another, staggering the petals as you stack and make sure the other tightly rolled flower is on top. Sorry I didn't get a photo of this stacked flowers, but if you're confused, check out my wafer paper tutorial where I did remember to take a picture of this step. Glue your finished center in the middle and take all the petals and pull them up and give the whole flower a gentle squeeze to help the petals stand up.

 This is how it looks when you let go. Just gently pull down some of the petals to open the flower up a bit.

And, voila! (There's another one of those words that needs a doohicky on top.) You have a beautiful 3D flower embellishment. I think I may glue this one onto a magnet or clothespin. 

As much as I'd love to sit in my craft room and play with paper some more, I have 3 cakes that need to be worked on, so I will close for now. Hope you enjoyed the tutorial.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!