Unmerited Favor in a Card

Hello there! I hope your day is going well and thank you for visiting my blog!! I hope you'll leave a comment!

I found a stamp I hadn't used for a long time so I thought I'd use it for a "quick" card of encouragement for a friend. Well, let me tell you... Do you believe God can use card making to teach Biblical truths? Well, I found out that He can! To be perfectly honest, I know God can use anything to teach a lesson, but we must have willing hearts as students to learn.

I'll try to be brief (ha!) Here's the lesson, it's about grace, it's about God being the Potter, and I am the clay! Or in this case I am the flower on the card. This flower did not start out well, the paint I used (instead of ink) was not applied evenly(as I thought) so there was a lot of gaps and missing color. (kinda like my life before I received Jesus Christ as my Savior) What I thought would be an easy fix ended up not being easy and downright frustrating. So with a cry for help in the form of a prayer, I persevered and God delivered the patience I needed to continue on. I took small steps at first, afraid to make a total mess, and I didn't have the tools I needed to do the distressing, so I had to improvise. As I was finishing up the flower, what I had wanted to do was throw it away and start over but God impressed upon me to not give up. He hadn't given up on me and extended His grace (unmerited favor) to me. Thus the name on the card, it originally was going to be stamped, "A Friend Loves At All Times." Well the Lord definitely extended His grace to me so that I could finish the card and reminded me about His loving patience with this growing in grace "bloomster." I know bloomster isn't a word, matter a fact the spell check wanted me to use the word blister or bloomers but I like to think of myself as "blooming where I'm planted" and I definitely don't want to be thought of as a blister, (ha!) Well, this has gotten a bit too wordy, which seems to be the norm for me lately... but I hope you get the big picture of God's grace extended to us, what a Friend We Have In Jesus!

The supplies I used:
Pattern paper : Basic Grey; Bazzill cardstock; American Craft ribbon; Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber: Lettuce, Watermelon, Mountain Rose, Sunshine Yellow; Stamps: Hero Arts, Showy Blossom, unknown yellow painted flower center; Ink: Ranger, Peeled Paint; Cuddlebug: Embossing folder, Dotted Swiss; Grace: transparency from Staples brand, font: Wanda's Write; an emery board, my fingernail & water for distressing!

(I did paint on the back of the transparency with the Mountain Rose, then scratched some off and repainted with the Watermelon) if you click to enlarge I think you'll be able to see that.

The finished card is 5" x 5.75"