Stop and Smell the Coffee!!!

Good Friday ALLLLL my crafty friends!!! It's a great day to be alive!! It's Friday, it's  beautiful outside, I'm healthy and God surrounds me with His amazing love!!! What more could I ask for??? Ok, well maybe a Hobby Lobby gift card, but that's beside the point!!! LOL I'm truly blessed to have woken in a comfortable bed this morning in my beautiful home surrounded by my loving family! A day doesn't go by that I am not SO VERY THANKFUL for ALL that my Father in Heaven has given me!! Thank you Lord!

Today, I want to share a cutsie page! I like to do them every now and again!! It takes the edge off, you know what I mean?? I have had this journal spread in my mind for a bit because of a digital photo I had downloaded quite a long while ago and was waiting for the right moment to use it in my journal and this week was the time! I had so much fun making this spread!

This spread was inspired by an AWESOME artist, Vicky Papaioannou, whose blog I follow and love! She has such an eye for detail and I love her techniques and art journal style! She has one technique in particular that I love and use from time to time. It's time consuming, but effective! She will cut up tiny pieces of paper in various sizes and make a patchwork collage for her background. It ALWAYS turns out lovely in her journals! Mine is similar at best!! LOL So I knew I wanted to do it with this particular spread.

I am very fortunate to work for a municipality who has their own engineering department. Engineering, like many other skills, have turned pretty much digital. So, the old days of physically drawing engineering plans out have been replaced by the computer! A whole lot easier for them, I am sure. That being said our engineering department did a spring cleaning and got rid of a lot of "ancient" things that they don't use anymore and one was architectural drawing paper. A WHOLE box to be exact!!! I jumped on it like hot coals under my feet. That paper is simply AMAZING. It's something like heavy rice paper if you can imagine. I got it thinking of using it with my jelly plate. It doesn't work so well, with that, but it does great with sprays and stencils and stamping! SCORE!!!

All that said, I stamped all over a sheet of it with one of my new Judikins Bollio stamps that I got from my friend Peg Robinson's over on Google+'s craft room sale! I think she still has some cool stuff available if you want to go have a look see! I haven't used these AWESOME stamps yet for what I intended them for, but I used it for this background in the interim and it worked great! I then just sprayed various ink sprays around until I got the effect I was looking for. I then just set about cutting strips and pieces to do my background. I glued them all down using Mod Podge.

When I was done I distressed the edges with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo and then because I knew I was going to be doing some things on top, I obviously had to spray a fixative over so that all that yumminess in the background wouldn't move. After I did so, I then took my Faber Castell Big Brush Pen in Cobalt Blue and shaded the pieces for a more vivid effect. I then fussy cut the digital image and adhered with Mod Podge and then shaded with my Big Brush Pen in Nougat. On the opposite side I knew I wanted to do tiny coffee cup balloons to complement the big one, so I just drew some out, colored them with some Sharpies, fussy cut them and then added them to the page. I drew the basket and cable lines afterwards because that would have been too hard to cut out. I then added my sentiment and some fluffy clouds with some heavy gesso through a stencil. Voila! 

Coffee is one of my all time FAVORITE things so I loved using this "theme" to express my thoughts out of Genesis 1:31 that says "And God saw everything that he made, and, behold, it was very good." In today's society and world we have all become so preoccupied with what is going on around us that we don't take the time to be thankful for TODAY! Just to be alive in the Creator of the Universe's awesome creation! Each day is filled with so many amazing blessings that God has provided for us to enjoy! But often, people miss the every day blessings that are right before their eyes because they are "too busy!"

Today, STOP and take the time to give reverence to the Creator and His creation and all the many blessings they afford! We aren't assured another day, EVER, therefore offering up your thanks for TODAY is a wise thing! Our Father in Heaven is the Master Craftsman so we should take the time to mindful and consider His workmanship in our lives and around us and be grateful!!

Blessings for a glorious weekend! :)