Life is good in the country!  Country life is really great, and that is the sentiment I used inside this beautiful water colored card I made for our monthly swap in Maine.  The theme was Landscape.  I really like this card and had fun making it..  The set is from Close to my Heart rubber stamps.  It is called Country Born Seasons & Nature D1543.  It is a great stamp set.  I am looking forward to playing with the rest of the stamp set when I get time.  Enjoy!

Got my new Layers of Love stamps for June from Unity Stamp Company.  A special thanks to Angela for making a subscription stamp that is affordable.  Once a month, for $11.79, we get a really fabulous set of stamps.  Can't beat that.

I love the collage butterfly in June's kit so I worked with that one.

The sight of a bride or a wedding party always brings feelings of hope and joy to my heart.  This month's card swap was for wedding cards.   I am of the age that most people are already married.  Despite having many "love" stamps and "heart" stamps, I had no wedding stamps per se.  I chose the dress from "shop.lunch.chat.repeat." from Unity's SOTW collection and "Love, Cherish, Embrace" from Unity's LOL collection and made this beautiful wedding card.  I will credit Sheryl Kemper, another Unity stamper, whose inspiring scrapbook page helped me with this process.  Enjoy!

I hope that all of the recipients of these cards will live happily ever after and share much joy and happiness always!

"Imagine" if we all picked up our paint brushes, pens, and pencils and crayons instead of picking up weapons.  What a different that would make in the world.  Imagine if we dropped love on

everyone.  Go into a public place, and pray for blessings, healing, and peace for everyone you see walking in and out of a store.  Imagine the changes we could make in the world if we spread love around!  God is love.  I call this collage "Imagine Heart."  Enjoy!  Spread some love around today, tomorrow and the next day!  Love is always there for us!

Please double click on all images to see larger picture.

We needed to do a collage for the Wings Class and find an image on line.  Finding an image was much harder than I thought.   I liked this one, and the first thought that came into my head was "my faith looks up to thee."  I googled it and found out the phrase is from an old hymn.  We all need an extra dose of faith!
Enjoy!

I have been using my wings, and flying as high as I can in my "Wings" art class.  I got behind after I had my lupus infusion this month, which was a little bit gruelling.  We could not find a vein to put the infusion in, and once we did, each one of them kept blowing up.  The infusion that was supposed to take two hours took two days and many hours.  I was black and blue all over, and it hurt.  It feels like shards of glass are in my arm when I touch it after getting so bruised up.  I gave myself a bit of time to heal.

This is a collage using "Wings."  I really like this one a lot.  I used a Navejo Prayer where the seeker requests from the Great Spirit to walk in beauty all the days of their life.  It is very similar to Psalm 23.
There are various versions of this.  Being in a hurry to create the art, I did not copy down the version I used but here is the idea:

Walking In Beauty (Blessing)

Today I will walk out, today everything unnecessary will leave me,
I will be as I was before, I will have a cool breeze over my body.
I will have a light body, I will be happy forever,
nothing will hinder me.
I walk with beauty before me. I walk with beauty behind me.
I walk with beauty below me. I walk with beauty above me.
I walk with beauty around me. My words will be beautiful.

In beauty all day long may I walk.
Through the returning seasons, may I walk.
On the trail marked with pollen may I walk.
With dew about my feet, may I walk.

With beauty before me may I walk.
With beauty behind me may I walk.
With beauty below me may I walk.
With beauty above me may I walk.
With beauty all around me may I walk.

In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, lively, may I walk.
In old age wandering on a trail of beauty, living again, may I walk.
My words will be beautiful.

Here is the collage I made to go with it.  Feathers are sacred in Native American medicine.  The medicine people will use them to fan incense with and to send away evil spirits. 

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach – waiting for a gift from the sea.”
– Anne Morrow Lindberg from “Gift from the Sea”