Atlanta Snow

It snowed in Atlanta a couple of days ago, settling into our world and studio garden with a shimmering, white drape that lounged over tree limbs, moss, and fences.

                                                           

                                                                      

Even our bird houses slipped under snowy embellishments.

And tree boughs cradled the white wonder with gentle embraces.

                                                                

It was a silent, serene covering of grace that seemed to soften everything that was hard, ugly and beat-up underneath.

Outside our studio garden though, the world was seeing a different picture of Atlanta.

This snowfall ushered in one of the biggest traffic jams in history for our city and tales of unimaginable challenges have sifted in today in a steady stream. Cars, stalled for hours, filled with mothers, fathers, children, babies, elderly, handicapped, sick and hungry have shivered along the roadways throughout the night and into this day. The 7 hour drive home, normally 15 minutes, by one of our own, pales in comparison to what others endured last night. 

And yet, in the midst of all this misery, we've heard reports of grace that, like this snow, seem to soften some of the hard moments people have endured. Stories of people bringing water, food, and supplies to stranded drivers, of others opening up their homes to strangers for a place to rest and warm up, of restaurants closing their cash registers and serving food to the hungry, of Dads and Moms walking miles to be with their children stranded at schools overnight, of devoted teachers staying with students throughout the night, and of a gentle soul who created a facebook page that helped so many. You just have to read the stories @ Snowed Out Atlanta 

The list goes on an on with these random acts of kindness that settled in between some of the very hard spots, and very hard moments that have occurred in Atlanta these last two days.

It's as if GRACE has just wrapped itself around our city through these acts of kindness. Softening some of the rough, hard edges of the lives stretched out on these roads. And right smack in the middle of it, as if to remind us all of how powerful GRACE can be, a baby was born, on one of these treacherous stretches of road. In harsh, cold conditions, the grace of God came down, covering all the things that weren't perfect, and allowed a beautiful, tender, little baby girl to be born. Perfectly.

And her name? Why, it's Grace, of course.  

To remind us of God's grace, that softly falls and covers hard places with unexpected beauty. 
Read more about little Grace here:

http://t.today.com/moms/it-was-beautiful-baby-born-atlanta-area-roadside-during-snowstorm-2D12014602

Praying for those affected by the snow,

Grateful for those who made it home,

The Velvet Lime Girls

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”  2 Corinthians 12:9

Iris Inspiration

Dutch irises have been dancing around our studio this week. These purple-hued ballerinas, twirling and stretching, with demi-pliés, pirouettes and artful arabesques, have been gently spilling out of our studio vases. It's enough to cause us to start executing a perfect glissade across our studio drawing tables! 

These petite irises really know who they are, they know the hands, the "fingers" that have made them, and they bear the unmistakable mark of their creator. 

You'll never find one of these creations displaying a poor self image, feeling worthless or giving-in to a bad day. They have the very life of God in them. His hands have made them, shaped them, and they bear the mark of their creator, right down to the very last, tiny detail.

 How could they not celebrate, with the value, the worth, the love that's been given to them?

Their exquisite display of beauty is a mere shadow of the value, the worth, the love that God has showered on each of us.  He tells us we are "wonderfully created" and that His thoughts about us are so vast, that if we counted them, they'd "outnumber the grains of sand".

You really should just jump up right now and do a little pirouette, as you read this love letter excerpt that is written to you.  He's totally smitten with you.  When you're loved like this, (and you really know it, and receive it), ... you can dance everyday, regardless of your surroundings.

So, take a cue from these irises. Lift your head up, stretch your arms out wide and let that "crown of glory and honor" you've been given shine in your world today.

Inspired by the irises,
The Velvet Lime Girls

BOUQUET OF FAVOR

FAVOR. 

It’s a sweep-you-off-your-feet, love expression from God, catching your breath with His extravagant fragrance of grace, and filling your heart with such gratitude, that you just bury your head in God’s embrace at the end of the day, and say...“Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And the familiar words, “He-can-do-over-and-above-more-than-we-can-ask-or-think,” pounds loudly in your spirit with each thrilled heartbeat. Oh, don’t you just love it when God sweeps you off your feet with a beautiful bouquet of favor?

We do. 

It's brought us to our knees in gratitude and stilled anticipation about the creative journeys ahead. May we share a little of our joy with you today? A few of the “petals” from this bouquet of favor we've been given?

Thanks to the work of Jan Draheim, Rebecca Hubert and Leah Cochran of Painted Planet Licensing, we met some wonderful new companies last year and created artwork and sentiments for products that they launched last week at the Atlanta International Gift and Home Furnishings Market.

Here’s a peek of a few favorites…

We’ll have more photos to come of journals, stationery items, garden flags, and other home accents that also launched.

Here’s a glimpse of one of the creative teams we’ve been blessed to work with. The talented team at Divinity, pictured below with us.

Laura, Marybeth, Keith Schwartz, Nicole McMaster

Keith Schwartz, President of Nicole Brayden Gifts and Divinity Boutique, and Nicole McMaster, Purchasing and Logistics Manager, are a creative team who spin out ideas, concepts, and visions so fast, that we’re inspired to get back in the studio to start sketching and writing! And our hearts were touched to see that the man at the helm of this great company, Keith Schwartz, has connected their company to an endeavor that certainly must touch the heart of God, the Production with Purpose program. See below. 

Divinity’s Facebook page gave us an informative read on the difference between Fair Trade and Free Trade. Read about it here at Huffington Post.

We’ll look forward to being involved with such a noble cause through our artwork and sentiments for Divinity.

During last week’s product launches, we made a quick stop by the Gregg Gift showroom, a division of Enesco Gifts, to see the totes, Bible covers, ceramic crosses and coin purses we designed for them. Although we were missing the third member of our team, Rebecca, her color inspirations can be seen in many of the products.

Laura and Marybeth with Gregg Gift products featuring Velvet Lime Girls' artwork.

We also stopped by the Carson Home Accents showroom to see the lovely display of placemats, table runners, napkins, tea towels, pot holders and aprons we designed for them. It almost makes you want to pull out the pumpkins and get ready for fall again!

We’ll share more product launches this week and you can look for these items in the spring at gift stores nationwide. 

For those of you who are retailers and would like to carry these products in your stores, please visit the company websites at: Divinity Boutique,  Carson Home Accents and Enesco/Gregg Gift.

Grateful Girls surrounded with favor,

Marybeth, Rebecca and Laura

The Velvet Lime Girls

“God can do anything, you know – far more than you could ever imagine or guess or request in your wildest dreams! He does it not by pushing us around but by working within us, his Spirit deeply and gently within us.”  

Ephesian 3:20 - The Message

The King Who Came for You.

It’s Christmas Eve and we’ve put up our trees, wrapped our packages and stilled ourselves in front of the nativity scenes that grace our homes. These nativity scenes seem to cradle the very essence of what Christmas is really all about ... the birth of Jesus Christ, our Savior. And as our spirits settle down and sink into the presence of God that fills our homes, our hearts seem to swell, as if we could somehow hold the love that has been showered on us, in the story of Christmas.

Christmas is really a love story.  A real, love story of a King, the King of Kings, setting aside His throne, His grandeur, His royal garments, and then, clothing himself in ordinary flesh and blood. The Bible says He came down to us and “moved into the neighborhood.”

He came down to us. 

He became Emmanuel, God WITH us.  

He could have stayed in Heaven, but He loved us enough to lay everything aside and become like us… become a baby. Then live a life on this earth, listening to His Father, as He taught us, healed us, encouraged us, and eventually saved us for eternity by His death on a cross.*

Oh, how He loves us. And Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, because we remember just how very much we are loved. Every single one of us … just as we are.

At Christmas ... a King came down to earth for you. 

Blessings to you on Christmas Eve,

The Velvet Lime Girls

* Philippians 2:6-8

Christmas Eyes

It's almost Christmas time and I'm thinking about what the celebration to come is really all about. The birth DAY of Jesus, the Savior.            The-coming-to-earth-day of Emmanuel, a name that actually means, "God-with-us". A day we pause to remember that God came down to us and "moved into the neighborhood". John 1:14

And it occurred to me, that I don't have a gift for Him, for Jesus, the One who we'll be celebrating. I have other gifts under the Christmas tree for loved ones, but not one for Jesus.

So, I whisper to Him in a prayer moment, "Oh, I want to give you something! I am so grateful, so thankful, so surrounded by love from You...and I just want to do something, give something...just for you. What can I give you?"

The answer comes through a granddaughter. These eyes of Lilly, just 4 years old, looking up in my face with a heart full of love, and an expression that seems to say, 

"Oh, LaLa, what can I give you? I just love you so much!"

There's really nothing a granddaughter can give or do to show me how much she loves me.  I already know. 

It's felt in the way she justs wants to be with me, the way she runs with arms open wide to me, the way she holds on tight when she hugs, and looks deep into my eyes with her tiny blue ones.  Her gift is just her. Just her being with me. There's not a thing, a gift, a "doing" that needs to be done, to show me her love.  I feel it.

My heart seems to hear God say He feels the same way I do.

There's really nothing I can give or do to show how much I love Him.  He already knows. It's felt in the way I just want to be with Him, the way I run to him with arms open wide, the way I hold on to him tight, the way I look deep into his eyes with my tiny blue ones. My gift is just me.  My being with him.  There's not a thing, a gift, a "doing" that needs to be done to show him my love.  He feels it.

He just wants to be with me...to hold me...to love me. 

And I sense His heart swell with joy, as I move with child-like faith into His embrace, bringing Him the gift of just me.

Spending time with Him,

A Velvet Lime Girl

Petite Nativity

We slipped into a quaint little gift shop in historic downtown Duluth, Georgia recently and had the real spirit of Christmas wrap itself around us. This petite little painting by Karen Markum ushered in the tender moment, holding our eyes captive to the gentle reminder of the real meaning of Christmas.

We hope the tender simplicity of this artwork touches your heart as it did ours.

“The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood”  John 1:14

Christmas Blessings,
The Velvet Lime Girls

P.S. Karen's artwork can be found at The Farmhouse @ https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Farmhouse/355964181176795?sk=infoAdditional artwork can be viewed @ https://www.facebook.com/KarenMarcumArt 

Storyteller

What a treasure this day was!  Here are a few glimpses of the day that Laura spent learning to, in the words of the teacher,  "capture the beautiful details of our life and become the curator of our own story."

The studio brims with creativity and I have to resist the urge to snap photos of everything that surrounds me!  I nestle into the corner of a long u-shaped art table wrapped with five, fresh-as-the-morning-faced-young women...and sink into the creativity that surrounds me.

We'll be creating ten pages that will become the canvases to capture the beauty, the art, of our lives.

 The journey unfolds, not at the beginning of the first blank-stare-you-in-the-face-white page of each journal, but in the safe, comfortable middle.  Oh, I'm going to like this approach...

Phrases worth framing pour out of the teacher the moment she begins to speak.  We're encouraged to "sink into our own story" and "engage with the pages"

and there seems to be a soft exhale when she says ...

"pages slow you down to the speed of listening".

We learn to "wrap language around our pages"

create envelopes to collect things and shelter things

and play with background pages on which we'll curate sprinklings of our story

We are challenged to ask ourselves a question in our journals

And then we answer it...right on the same page.

We pause for a lovely lunch, gather around a rustic, elegant table, flanked with an antique church pew, easy conversation and beautiful box lunches from 3 Blind Mice. Yum! http://www.tbmrestaurant.com

After lunch, we paint backgrounds, landing places, spilling spots in our journals for thoughts, dreams, lists, calendars, emotions and heart whispers.  You can almost hear the sounds of life stories being nurtured, tended to, noticed..."curated".

Our teacher unwraps a treasured photo and with grace-filled transparency shares the significance of this blue, venetian-blind filled photo from her grandparents home. It holds the sweet memories of summer, a screen door she can still hear snapping shut in the background and a favorite pecan tree, now gone, but living forever in her heart and on this little slip of paper.

Her transparency in sharing this story compels us all to think of creative ways to capture our own stories.

Real storytellers do that ... they inspire others.

 Betsy Cañas Garmon,  our teacher, in center, with two of the fresh faced young women who participated. @ http://www.wildthymecreative.com

I end the day thinking that these journal pages we've created are like rooms filled with rare and precious treasures. The lives they represent are like houses. And the passage from Proverbs 24:3 rises up from my heart.

"By wisdom a house (a life?) is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms (its "pages"?) are filled with rare and beautiful treasures."

Grateful for a day to fill my rooms, my pages, with treasures,

A Velvet Lime Girl  

Classes and workshops are ongoing for those of you who are interested @ http://www.wildthymecreative.com