Anniversary Invitations

I recently completed invitations for a friend's 40th Anniversary and vow renewal celebration. I was inspired to make this invite after I saw Becca Feeken's Gent's and Ladies shoe from Spellbinders. The card panel was made using a design I found in Cricut Design Space. It required me purchasing 11x17 paper from Envelopes.com (based on the color combination from my friend's party and the size of the card, which was 6x5).

I cut the background panel and embossed it using my Cuttlebug and the Darice 5x7 Damask embossing folder. I cut the men's shoe from black cardstock and used scraps from the background panel (Paper Source's Stardream Quartz cardstock. This is one of my favorite stores to shop for quality invitation paper and coverstock) for the top layer of the shoe and using a needle inserted black ribbon as laces. For the woman's shoe, I used the Stardream Quartz paper as the bottom and top layer, cut the insole and bow from the red cardstock used for the card base and embellished it with a pearl. I finished the card by adding a strip of silver rhinestone bling. The inside of the card was preprinted and cut to fit inside the panel.

Clothespins have many uses!

Adding ribbon to the top panel of the men's shoe

Grateful I had a needle with an eye big enough to string the ribbon!

I love an assembly line!

Here's the final card

Finding Joy

As I read today's entry in one of my devotionals, God Calling: by Two Listeners, I was led to write the following in my journal: "Finding joy in doing my will means listening obediently for your call to step out on faith. It means reaching out to those in need even if you don't know how you're called to help them; it means speaking truth even if that truth hurts; it means hugging and loving the unlovable. Finding joy in your life can only happen when you find joy in me".

God does not call us to find joy in our own self-serving efforts, but in reaching out to others and building a relationship based on the love that he is calling us to offer the world (even those who hurt and persecute us). Remember John 3:16? Yes, that is the kind of love the God of love is calling us to give: sacrificial, limitless, brimming over -- love for the unlovable, the marginalized, the broken, the sick... the list goes on.

How do we carry out His will to love as he loved? By finding joy in doing all he has called us to do for all, even those we think are not worthy of love. How can this be achieved? When we spend time in His presence loving and listening; allowing him to cleanse us from the inside out, showing us who we are in him, and healing from our past sins, from the chains that have kept us bound and chained to our past and the lie the enemy wants us to keep believing. Once we own up and accept our past for what it is -- the past -- and we discover who and whose we are, God will use us and guide us into obedience, and once we obey, we will be willing (and able) to act. Abiding in God's presence will lead us on a path to finding joy in our lives.

Embossed With Sympathy message on metallic cardstock