gifts and talents - scrapbooking your faith

Wow, I can't believe I let the time slip by me. I didn't realize it had been since Monday since I last posted. This week has flown by. We had something every night this week. A lot of the week was taken up with school tours. You would think picking a middle school would be easy, but each one is different and offers different items depending on your child's interest. My child has several interests so we get to tour several schools and we aren't done yet. It's very overwhelming some days, but I know God will see us through it.

I also hadn't realized until just recently that I hadn't posted my last scrapbooking your faith pages that we did last month. Our theme last month was gifts and talents. I saw an idea in our Stampin' Success magazine and I modified it some to make two pages out of the design. I thought they came out kind of fun and different. It was a little out of my comfort zone, but I like them. I actually found several pictures for my pages and it was really cool to see the progression of how my talents and gifts have evolved over the years. My evolution started with me thinking I had very little to offer, so I worked mainly behind the scenes or behind the stage. The next thing you know I was performing, then leading, then mission teams, then actually planning and helping lead ministry work. It was cool looking back on it seeing the transitions and where we were at the times and what what we were doing. God can work that way though if you let him and are open to His will.
In our study we basically talked about various gifts and talents mentioned in the bible. We also talked about some different bible characters and their gifts and talents, like Moses for example. We talked about what he did, but also how he felt - inadequate. Even he questioned his abilities, but with God's help he made it through and God gave him the resources to get what he needed done. I asked the ladies to think about their respective gifts and talents - from small to big. I reminded them that not all talents are performance oriented or big. Even something like sending cards to people to encourage them is even a gift or fixing a sick family a meal, etc. I then challenged them to figure out what their gifts were and look for ways they could use their gifts. It ended up being a good lesson time.
So now on to the info about the pages:
One thing I did differently on these pages was on the Soft Suede but it's a little hard to see. SU's paper is solid all the way through. I found if I rip a side of my paper and then ever so gently take my paper piercer and pick at it a little I can actually separate the sections of the paper. I then ever so gently pulled back a little of the top layer (once it starts it's easy to keep it going) and rolled it a bit. To highlight it I just rubbed it over the ink pad to make it darker. You can see it a little better in the top picture. I then used my Extreme Elements and Extreme Guitar to stamp my images. I actually let the ladies pick other items beside the guitarist if they wanted too to represent their talent, but this was my page, so I picked the guitar because I liked him. Not that I have musical ability, but I thought he went well with - you rock. The words are stamped using the Just Perfect Alphabet in Crushed Curry. The guitarist is also popped up on dimensionals too, so you can slide pictures under it if you needed too. So I hope you enjoy them and it encourages you to scrap about your gifts and talents too. We focus so much of our scrapbooking on others or events, so I like being able to share parts of me with my family too. So that's why we are doing them.
Here is what I used for these pages:
stamps: Extreme Elements, Extreme guitar, just perfect alphabet.
inks: Brilliant blue, crushed curry, soft suede, garden green
paper, kraft, whisper white, crushed curry, garden green, brilliant blue, soft suede
accessories: both star punches, circle pundhes, dimensionals, silver brad, paper piercer, snips, Crushed curry polka dotted ribbon