Are we there yet?

"the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness to humble you and to test you, to know what was in your heart.” Deut. 8:2

 Just reading this passage and was deeply reminded of a lesson that I needed learning; this is from the passage of today’s Our Daily Bread:

“In life it sometimes seems as if we are wandering in circles. We feel lost. We want to ask God:

“Are we there yet?

How much longer?”

At such times, it helps to remember that the journey, not just the destination, is important to God. He uses it to humble us to test us, and to show us what is in our hearts.                                                                           ( Julie Akerman Link)

All God’s testings have a purpose-

Someday you will see the light:

All he asks is that you will trust Him,

Walk by faith and not by sight.”

“O dear patient LORD, help me to remember this and serve Thee aright in all ways each day that You bring!”

Love Shaz in Oz.x

PS Photo is a morning sunrise here in Oz, notice the moon still visible high above our very large frangipani tree at about 6am one stunning morning..

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Ps. 19:1

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 92

Well, here we are it is another WOYWW on the way!

Another Wednesday, the middle of our week.. the highlight of our week, to see what fun we get up to each week don’t forget to pop over to our royal hostess, Queen Julia and to join in the fun of WOYWW, at Julia's Stamping Ground!

My desk is looking amazingly tidy.. the reason for this is you always see it the day after cleaning day. NOT the day before cleaning day!! Believe you me, there was barely a clear space on it.

I have not been the best, but think it is progress being made there thankfully. I want to say a very big thank you for all the greetings of cheer from blogland. They do help!

I was rather late with my promised calligraphy post, but if you want to check it out please look here!

As you can see I have two little craft muses who sometimes appear on my work desk. Mainly because this is where they live, they are Avon breast cancer bears, you see and I rather like them. They are in front of my bag which has all my bibs and bobs in it, scissors, pens, glues, tapes, glimmer mists all those essentials you need and I love being able to pick it up in one hand from the cupboard behind, and put it all out there on the desk. It has a little rotator goes underneath which is great too. And my favourite green bug is here, plus two new arrivals in front of the muses. One is the Aspire flower stamp and Ink pad in Sepia which arrived yesterday from Simon Says (see Shazsilverwolf ! my stamp has come – see one of her many amazing creations with this stamp here. I can’t wait to play).

The Christmas (blue) card was done for Challenges (brayering on a cuttlebug folder – really fun!) and described in full here.

I did finish the two lily cards and will do them in detail on another post, hopefully. There is a rather sad tale about the lilies I did on my last week’s post as these are not them!!

I did last weeks in Promarkers and after had them all assembled I had the bright idea of adding a bit of perfect pearls to the stamens. A great idea, except I then immediately forgot I had done it (of course and working when I should have been resting) and promptly put things on both of them and squashed the wet pearls all over the lilies, NOW they did have a pearly sheen!!

I was able to rescue the cards. I re-stamped the lilies, and I decided to colour them this time with the pencils pictured here. Water colour Prismacolour pencils, borrowed from my sister to try them out. I was not happy with the first ones which is why I had used the pearls. If you are curious? YES! I did love the pencils they are great to use blend beautifully and so now to look around for some, and also try out the baby oil method (see my sidebar there is tutorial on it) and want to try that one!

.

Anyway that is enough rambling from me.. I am going off to peek...

 May God bless you wherever you might be..

Shaz in Oz.x

PS here managed to take a close up later today.. I will give recipe tomorrow God willing. Want to enter one in a challenge.

Background/ History of Calligraphy + Earliest Works

Well today I am at last posting my earliest work in calligraphy and text. ie. the earliest pieces of work that I have in my collection which I did so many years ago now..

The first piece was done over forty years ago, when I was in Year 11 or second last year of high school and it was the cover for my big high school  folder. I did one for my sister Diane also. It is done in the Gothic (or as I knew it then) Old English script. I had a battered old lettering book of my dad's which I used to copy the script. Why this amazes me today is because the only tools I had to execute it were a mapping pen and India ink, I don’t know if you have ever used a mapping pen but they are incredibly fine and very scratchy to work with and this lettering is 3cm high. So with the fine pen it would have taken me a fair bit of time, especially as I did one for my sister as well... and guess what? nothing has changed - it takes a great deal of time even now when one does calligraphy.

I just thought I would give a little history on it too. So if not interested skip this bit. Or if you want more look HERE. You can see the difference between eastern and western styles etc if you like.

Calligraphy (from Greek κάλλος kallos "beauty" + γραφή graphẽ "writing") is a type of visual art..So Calligraphy means quite literally beautiful writing. 

When I study and pray over a piece of work (usually a Bible verse but not always) almost half the time is given over to satisfactorily working out the layout. It is important to give the key words the correct emphasis, and to balance the work properly 

The decoration should not dictate the layout; the layout should dictate the decoration. Sadly many folk miss this point.

The second piece of work was done in 1988, and is the other of the two texts that hang in my bed room. I only own three of my texts.

In Chronological order this text (done in my Yorkshire {born In Wombwell, near Barnsley} grandmother’s silver frame – a great treasure in itself) is very early. It is the second one which I have done in my bedroom, as well as the vellum one (see here) is the most recent one which I own, done in 2009.

This one in the lounge room was done in 2006, but I have done it at least five times..I cant remember how many really, I only have photograph records from March 1990 ad there were many texts done before then.

Two points to note with this verse of Psalm 18:30 “As for God, His way is perfect” are that:

 1. It is done watercolours. I now work mainly in Gouache as I found watercolour was not colour-fast enough even if I used good paint. The Gouache is in Windsor and Newton is really great. It is opaque, and it sits on the surface of the paper. Watercolour is translucent, and soaks into the surface of the paper. Both are waterbased paints. Other works linked onto this post are done in Gouache.

 

2. It is a copy from another original design, and is not my design at all. I now mainly do my own designs, but then (1988) I mainly copied. If you want to learn how to do these and IF you can ever find the text which I took this from, do BUY IT – it s the best calligraphy text I have ever seen, and of course it is now out of print. It was printed by the Hong Kong Christian Book Room. “Illuminated Texts and How to Make them” by G. Christopher Willis & G.C. Houghton. 

I will put a pickie of the frontispiece in so you can see it. I put this month's verse from their calendar here.

This Psalm 18 verse first appeared in their calendar in 1942, printed in in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation (according to page 52 of the book).

Very appropriate verse for the times - and still so today, don’t you think?

Well, I hope I have not bored you too much. You will notice the gold leaf on this early text is quite flat as I only learned the raised gold leaf about ten years ago from another text which I will share at another time.

Till the may God bless and keep you and those you love,

Shaz in Oz. x

Three Challenges -> Brayer On Cuttlebug Folders!

This card is going to cover two challenges hopefully both the Our Daily Bread, and also one for the ABC Christmas Challenge.

Components & Method of card:

Silver Vellum base on Ivory cardstock was topped with a brayered folder- extra large Snowflake folder from the Winter Wonderland set.

I brayered the folder with blue dye ink, to do it on the embossed side - not the debossed side.You brayer it on the side which has Cuttlebug printed on it and it should come out embossed.

It does look nice on debossed as well so don’t stress if you get it wrong, a couple of mine work back the front I found. Make sure it is brayered smoothly and evenly before putting the cardstock through the cuttlebug. Allow to dry, and then I sprayed it with Silver Cosmic shimmer spray.This softens the effect beautifully and makes it very snow-like.

Allowed this to dry then it was mounted on black card stock. For the mesh under the Christmas  ODB Greeting I only had white mesh, and I wanted it to be silvered also. So I sprayed it with the shimmer mist as well. Stamped the greeting on Labels 4, I embossed it whilst still in Nestie in powder blue and mounted on black; also mounted it on the Glitter cardstock in Ivory as needed Blue and Ivory for the first challenge. 

I then mounted these on the card and cut out a Nestie Create a flake in similar toned Mirri card and topped this with some snowflake brads and sprinkled around some Bling on the snowflakes!! 

If you want to see a lot more explaining about how to brayer on cuttlebug folders check out the full details on a previous post I did HERE!
The two Daily Bread challenges are: 

1.Challenge ODBDSLC51 - see here  Use at least two of the colours pink, blue, ivory or yellow. There can be other colours but these must be the main. (I chose Blue and Ivory)

2.Stamping In Time: On Assignment Challenge(SNTODBD29)! The assignment is Our Daily Bread Design stamps.  The challenge this time is "Christmas!"  No, we are not celebrating Christmas in February, but we are going to start working on our Christmas 2011 cards. 

3.The third challenge is for the ABC Christmas Challenge 

This fortnight we have come to the letter E, and the theme chosen is:
Embossing and use 3 different Embellishments.You can go for dry embossing or heat embossing. The choice is yours.
I used brads, bling, and create a flake Nesties, plus the silvered mesh so guess that makes four, hope that's okay!

Was quite happy in the end but chopped and change my mind so many times in the creating, as I did not want to hide the brayered effect too much. I do love it!

May God bless your day in every way,

Shaz in Oz.x

PS as per Hazel's suggested comment below I have taken up her kind offer have also entered this card in her Challenge.
See:
"Hazel said...This is a beautiful, very classy card. You might like to also enter it into my CHNC challenge 10 which this week is also asking for the use of embossing - and there's a random prize this week x"

Sorry for delay.. Gumblossoms instead!!

To all who I promised a text post for today  - I am very sorry - it will be delayed! I'm still not that well (but I am on the mend) so can't post it yet, I will, God willing tomorrow....I have take some decent pickies of the items first.

In the interim, here is a photo I took recently of very large Gumblossoms near here..aren't they gorgeous? Steph, one of my very good friends, calls me Gumnut - these gumnuts are the flower shell after the flower has finished and you can see a few on the back portion of this blossom.

Her card (which I made SEE here) for her birthday has gumnuts on it and as it is her birthday I was thinking of her..HAPPY birthday Steph.

This is Western Australian Native but now with propagating they are able to grow this west coast plant over here on the east coast due to improved grafting procedures..

So today instead of admiring my (rather unworthy) handiwork - let us admire the handiwork of our marvellous God and Creator.. 

Colossians 1

[Vs 12] "Giving thanks unto the Father,..and.. of his dear Son:
[Vs14] In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins:  

[16] For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him:"

Be back soooon!

God bless,

Shaz in Oz.x

What's On Your Workdesk? Wednesday 91 + Freebies, folks!

Well, I will post a picture of my work desk, but nothing has happened in the past week. Basically I have been what we Aussies call "feeling crook" for the better part of the week and for me not to have crafted or something is pretty evident I am not myself! I have done one or two small things like a colour a picture and shopped a little online (crafty variety of course -that always cheers ones heart)!

 For fun I thought I would show you a cartouche for WOYWW  - for the curious ~ according to the final judge on all things ~ Wikipedia: cartouche:

"In Egyptian hieroglyphs, a cartouche is a rectangle with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name."

 Howzat?? we are royals ~ folks of WOYWW!! 
Ah - a Christian is a child of the King of Kings, & our God anyway : )

 I mentioned last week we are doing Egyptian script this term at Calligraphy and we had to design our our own cartouche.. now there are handy little links that will do this for you without too much brain drain; IF you want the one I have used is  HERE.

I will have to do my own name and hand draw it but this is just for fun! 

Hope to do a Calligraphic post at the weekend (see previous post for reason here).

   I have seen the Rosetta stone in the British Museum in London ~ it was truly beautiful. It was this stone that enabled them to decipher the meanings of these Egyptian hieroglyphs. In 196 BC on behalf of King Ptolemy V, the decree appears in 3 scripts: the upper text hieroglyphs, the middle portion demotic script, and the lowest Greek. Because it presents essentially the same text in all three it provided the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

On the table you can see two of the pictures of lilies I have coloured. If you want to see an amazing card made with a stamp similar to this check it out on the "Instead of Ironing Blogspot" by Jocelyn here  -it was one of the favourites that week on Splitcoast Stampers; I do love it so! And Jocelyn is great fun too, she is a fellow Aussie! I have no idea what I am going to do with my lilies, as I dont have her DP but going to have some fun - any ideas anyone?

Also you can see my print out of my latest freebie there and I was playing with Nesties to work out uses for it. It is the second of Glenda Waterworth’s freebies, I just adore her papers and they are here - under downloads tab, if you want to follow her on Chocolate Baroque, her new blog - cool name eh? and then you can get her freebies too!
Oh, and if you want another freebie link here is one for some extra cool digi stamps just pop here!

 And in case you dont know what WOYWW is drop over to our royal hostess, Queen Julia and join in the fun of WOYWW, drop by Julia's Stamping Ground!

Ah well off to do some looking at other desks...

May God bless and keep you this day through and in all that you do,

love Shaz in Oz.x 

1st March 2011- Encouraging Calligraphic Verse from my Calendar

Hi there everyone ~ where is our year going?

Well, this is the first day of autumn Downunder.. And certainly our weather was not autumnal, at all!  the storm and cool change this evening was a very welcome relief after the warmth of the day.

The main reason for this post is twofold.

First reason I was looking at this gorgeous verse hanging on my bedroom wall this evening and I wanted to share the joy of the word of God with you! it is on my calendar from the Christian Book Room in Kowloon Hong Kong.

And secondly to reassure you I do intend a new post calligraphically speaking within the next week all being well. The problem is I have loaned one part of the two things I wish to put on my next calligraphic post and I wont get it back till after the weekend, I was hoping to have had it earlier but it cant be helped. But God willing, by next Monday I will have my next post done.

Now had better hit the hay!

God bless you all and may this, His Word, bless your heart as richly as it did mine.

I pray for everyone who reads this. Our God is Omniscient you know (all knowing) and He knows and cares like No-one else,

Love Shaz in Oz. x