I know I say this every month, but I am especially loving the devotional from By the Well 4 God this month. Reading all of the words of my sisters on the creative team has been so touching and inspiring. Their faith and heart really shine through. If you have not had a chance to pick up this devotional, keep checking back over at the By the Well 4 God Etsy shop…it’ll be restocked in February! For this week, I journaled day 6 by Lori called “Treasured Trials”:
This devotional really had me thinking about how I look at trials in my life. I’ve always heard that we are a compilation of what happens to us. How sad does that sound? We are made up of things that are completely outside of our control? No thank you! Lori had us reflecting on the trials in our lives and not dwelling on the sadness or difficulty but seeing how those trials shaped us, especially how they shaped our faith. Going through a trial of any kind has the potential to test your faith. And faith that is tested and comes out on the other side is ALWAYS stronger. So, I will embrace all the trials I have been through, not because they have made me who I am, but because they have deepened my faith!
“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” -2 Corinthians 4:7-10
For this journal entry, I was anxious to use the new stamp set “Assembled in His Image”. Just the name of the set had me thinking about how God designs us and uses everything in our lives and in this world to shape us. He never makes a mistake! So, I may be assembled by trials, but it is never in error! For these sweet robots, I wanted to make some custom die-cut pieces that I pieced together using the various papers that BTW4G offers to compliment the kit.
I began with a piece of solid gray card stock, and then I generously sprayed the Ranger metallic mica sprays on it to create the look of metal. Perfect for robots! After that, I simply stamped the robots on the “metal” look paper and on a variety of scraps that I had left over from working with this kit. The great thing about paper piecing is that you don’t always need enough paper to stamp a full image. Even if you can only get the head or the body on a small piece, it still gives you enough to work with to combine.
After all the stamping was done, I fussy cut out bits and pieces from the robots on the colorful paper. Using liquid adhesive, I pieced together the colorful pieces on top of the “metal” cardstock. When I was happy with the images, I fussy cut out each robot. Ta-da! I was left with custom die-cuts, completely unique to my page, and perfectly coordinating with the kit.
The whole kit has a mixed-media feeling to it, which is right up my ally! The next step was to create a background for the page, a place where my robots could feel nestled and grounded. I grabbed a polka-dot stencil from Tim Holtz and my Pixie Spray to make sure the stencil stayed in place. Here comes the fun part…I went splatter paint crazy! Does anyone else remember splatter paint from the late 80s early 90s? I had many a splatter painted t-shirt, and even a pair of splatter painted Keds! After covering up the parts of my page that I didn’t want to splatter on, I used NeoColor 2 crayons, a water brush, and some old packaging to go splatter happy. Doing the splatter paint over the top of the stencil made for such a fun effect! I added a black outline around each polka dot, just to emphasize the pattern even more.
The next step for this page was a few sprays of Ranger mica spray across the whole layout, just to bring in more of that rustic metallic look. I used the Elemental Alpha Set to stamp out key words in my page title onto the “metal” looking card stock that I created earlier. After trimming these words out and combining them with a series of colorful alpha tiles, my title was complete!
Have you ever created custom die-cut pieces? What is your favorite method? Do you use them for specific projects or just make them for fun? Let me know in the comments below!
Keep it Creative,
-The Scrappy Wife
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