Power & Sparklette: Mini Challenge Week 1

Always take the scenic route. :)

Hey guys! If you’ve been hanging around us for any length of time, you’ve gazed upon, participated in, or maybe even WON one of our monthly cardmaking challenges. Power & Spark is hosted by the Bloom Brigade, and the themes are designed to get you excited to use your stamps in a fresh arrangement, to give you an inspiring push, and to focus your design in a direction that may not have occurred to you.

We love seeing the efforts you all share with us each month, they range from charming beginners to the exquisitely advanced, and I have to say, I am always impressed by what I see. It’s hard to color inside the lines of those tiny drawings, much less bring them together with other design elements to create a really cool card. And you guys are improving your skills and broadening your range of talents. You’re getting SO GOOD!

In fact, I would say we’re getting to the point where we can push your creativity even further, and maybe even deeper.

We’re going to take a quick hiatus from our monthly challenges to bring you something new. Each Saturday in September I’ll be sharing a challenge — and it will only last for a few days! Then we’ll throw out another idea. Short n’ snappy-like. Then another. You get the picture. My goal is get you into a zone of open-mindedness and fresh thinking before you even sit down to make a card. We’re just doing some creative re-calibration, and I hope that as many of you as possible will join us on this ride. Oh, and there will be prizes. ’Cause who doesn’t love prizes? Introducing:

For the first mini challenge, get this — we’re not even going to color or stamp.

Power & Sparklette: Week 1

Share a favorite quote, saying, or verse that inspires you in the comments section of this blog post.

It can be a jaw-dropper with huge insights. It can state the obvious, but in a way that’s clever. Maybe it helps shift you into another state of mind. Whatever it is, it speaks to you. It makes you go “hmm” or “wow!”, feel relief, deepen your faith, or bust out laughing. I would love if you would explain what it means to you, why you return to it again and again. Or if it’s new to you, why it has captured your spirit.

I’ll get us started with a quote that seems to do this for me without fail:

Talk about a perspective-changer! “You are not just a drop in the ocean, you are the mighty ocean in the drop.” The 13th-century poet Rumi wrote this observation, and I have scrawled it on more than a few Post-Its to remind myself that we are so much more powerful than we may think. We have all the tools already within us to do whatever we need to do.

Now, you try. I am hoping that we can fill up pages of inspiring quotes. That is my goal with Power & Sparklette Week 1. So that when you share your meaningful quote, you may also see other folks’ favorites, be it a Bible verse or one of Ben Franklin’s witty quips, or that funny thing that somebody’s Grandma used to always say. We’re going to do something with these, but I’m not ready to spill the beans on that yet. For now, let’s think about words that inspire us.

Next week, I’m going to choose one of the submitted quotes to illustrate (more neatly than the one I showcased above!) as a drawing that can be colored in, and I will share it as a free download on the Power Poppy blog!

So here we go, folks, what is one of your favorite inspiring quotes?