Thursday, February 02, 2012

Elementary Elegance Love Card

Today's Lesson From The Craft Room:  You Never Know What You Don't Know
Just over a year ago I shared with you the news that a man I knew from the park (he used to bring his dogs there) had committed suicide.  Our interactions were always enjoyable and I never got a sense that underneath those perfectly simple and happy interactions there was so much pain he was experiencing.  I believed, or at least tried to convince myself, that if I knew him better I would have known something was wrong.  Well, I am continually reminded that that is not the case.  That we never know what we don't know.  Today a friend shared some information with me about illness in her family that she had known about for over 2 years.  I am still in a bit of shock about the news.  This is someone I know very well - someone I interact with a lot and share quite a bit with.  I interact almost as frequently with her family member who has been dealing with this for the past 2 years.  And yet, even in this case, I did not know what I didn't know.  Learning this information from my friend changes how I have viewed the last few years - thoughts I had about why she and her family did or did not do certain things (another lesson that continues to pop up in my life - how we jump to conclusions or judgments so quickly and feel so right and that what we really need to do is to recognize our conclusions are based on very limited information).  So the next time you find yourself making a judgment or thinking you know it all - recognize that you only know what you know...and what you know can never be everything that is going on for someone else.
It's February (can you believe it?!), so Valentine's Day is right around the corner!  Get ready for a series of cards and items that can be created to express your love for those special people in your life! :)  Today's card began with a piece of Pear Pizzazz card stock.  I took a small strip of River Rock card stock and used some metal stamps to deboss the word "love" multiple times.  I sponged the edges with Chocolate Chip ink and adhered the strip to the card base.  The focal image from the beautiful Elementary Elegance Sale-a-bration stamp set was stamped onto River Rock using Early Espresso ink.  I then cut the image out with my paper snips.  I then used my curly label punch to punch out another piece of River Rock card stock and sponged the edges.  I stamped the label with the greeting from Three Little Words and the little images (key, crown & butterfly) from Elementary Elegance).  The label was popped up using dimesionals and the whole piece was attached to the card with dimensionals.  Finally I added a bow made from Crumb Cake seam binding.  It was attached with two mini glue dots.

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