Sunday Scripture Challenge: 52 Weeks of Gratitude: Week 1

Hello Scripture Sunday Challenge Participants and all who have stopped by today!!

Today we BEGIN our 52 Weeks of Gratitude using ALL forms of art from simply making a list of all you are grateful for each week to scrapbooking, art journaling, and even card-making or painting!  Whatever YOUR preferred form of expression....You are invited to join us!

If this is your first time here, please click on the LINK HERE to go to our information blog post about what we are doing!  Here are the Inspired Stamps Scripture Stamps we are using in January (February's list will be up next weekend along with a special if you purchase them as a set).  We have under 20 of each of the January stamp sets left in stock if you are interested in purchasing them, please head over to the online store soon:
January Scriptures ($3.99 at www.inspiredstamps.com)
Jan 6:  Psalm 118:24
Jan 13 Psalm 92:4
Jan 20 Psalm 47:1 (down to 8 left in stock for this set!)
Jan 27 Psalm 28:7 

I am making my pages to use during the week and will share the finished journaled in photos of each of my projects next week. I want to share Belinda's beautiful card for this week, as she is focusing on card-making this year to celebrate gratitude:
Visit Belinda's blog by clicking HERE:

Here is my Scrapbook Journal using our verse for this week and the following products:

 Here is page ONE, which will have one day's GRATEFUL notes on it during.  I will always leave room in case I want to add a photo or other item that will help me remember or describe the gratefulness for that day during the week.

This is page two and I will jot down what I'm grateful for in each box throughout the week (so this will cover the other 6 days; page one will focus on 1 day).  I used Psalm 118:24 and for the lines I used Journaling Shapes for stamp sets.

Here is an art journaling page I also did this week as a sample for you to see an Art Journaling page.  Art journaling can involve any medium, but differs from collage (which can be part of art journaling) and scrapbooking (papers can be part of art journaling) in that there is usually more paint/ink/techniques in an art journaling page than a scrapbook page or a strictly collaged piece (but, of course, not always).  I used glimmer mists, stencils, white paint, white mixed medium paper as based and matted with card stock.  I also use a Bic White Out pen for my white dots over the black (a great option and not expensive) and a black sharpie marker for the edges and pen work.  Here are the 2 pages side by side:

 The first page is done, but there's still room for me to journal around if I felt the need later this week :o)  I used Art Journal Words and Faces stamp set for the word 'thankful' around the edges.

 This page has glimmer mists and white paint, and I got that great light blue color from using a little bleach on the dark blue glimmer mist using a paper towel.  Loved that!  I drew squiggly lines that I will journal on this week.  I wanted you to see a watercolor page I did before with this journal technique so you can see where this is headed:

I used pencil lines on this instead of the obvious black lines I'm doing on my Art Journaling pages above.  The key to making this look good is to make EVERY letter start at the TOP line and end at the bottom line.  Yes, even LOWER Case letters.  If you haven't tried this, I highly recommend it.  It always looks good when you are finished!  And you can HIGHLIGHT some words by using a thicker marker (see REJOICE and TRIALS above in the sample I provided).

We have several of our Design Team that are joining us on their blogs with inspiration for you each week so be sure to click on the Design Team members names to the left of this blog post (Jamie and DeNetra are just 2)

Please leave us a comment and let us know what you think, if you are joining us, or just that you stopped by to see us today!!  

CHALLENGE for week 1:  Create your first week GRATEFUL artwork right along with us and LINK YOUR POST below on Mr Linky (not a general blog address, but a link to your actual post or photo if you are using a photo sharing album: like flickr).  We will be choosing at least one winner this month, to get a stamp set of YOUR choice sent to you FREE from the Inspired Stamps online store (we'll even pay shipping!).  We'd love for you to use our stamps, but it's not required to win!

Tuesday and Thursday we will have our Design Team here with some GORGEOUS CARD ARTWORK to share, so be sure to stop back by to see us! 
Blessings and thanks so much for joining us today!
May you be ever aware of each day's blessings,
~Antoinette and the Design Team

www.inspiredstamps.com