Nature Walk and the Pleasure of God

I LOVE the new occasions mini catalogue which is going live in just a couple days. (this also means this is your last chance to pick up things from the holiday mini catalogue). I was instinctively drawn to this stamp set: Nature Walk. I don't know whether it was the butterfly or whether it was just the intricate detail in the images that grabbed my attention. I made these two cards using crumb cake cardstock and early espresso cardstock. The designer series paper is the co-ordinating paper which is called botanical gazette.

The ink colours are not quite navy, early espresso and so saffron.

I hope everyone had a lovely holiday. I was generally lazy but also got together with some friends and family. During one evening with a friend, we were talking. I knew she had been taking power skating lessons. (she only learned to skate fairly recently) When talking about her skating her eyes lit up and she told me all about the various skills she is learning. She is even playing hockey and is hoping to become good enough to join a local woman's hockey team. All this when she just learned how to skate! She knows my passion for papercrafting and we joked about how disappointed we feel when circumstances occur that interfere with our passions (e.g. the kids are sick and she misses her skating class or I miss out on my solitary stamping time). I then started talking about what I've been making and I'm sure my eyes lit up and I was probably talking a mile a minute about paper and ink and colour. She exclaimed: "I understand! You feel the pleasure of God!" I've never heard it expressed just like that before but I believe it to be true. The enjoyment I feel when the finished card emerges or when I stamp a few beautiful stamp images, is just a taste of the divine...a gift from my Creator. We probably all have activities that make us "feel the pleasure of God". For my friend she loves the feeling of power yet peace while gliding on ice, for others it could be gardening, running a marathon. Happy New Year! Enjoy good things this year, guilt-free, because it's an opportunity to feel the pleasure of God!