First Wow Inspiration challenge

My friend schirmcat on SCS recently started a blog and she already has issued a challenge. She is going to do a weekly word challenge and since this is her first week, I thought I'd play along. You can find her blog here.

The word for inspiration this week is 'new.'

The story behind my card creation is kind of long, so you can skip this part if you're busy.

The first thought for the word 'new' that came to my mind was an event years ago (I have no idea why I thought of this particular event today) when I bought myself a bouquet of flowers not long after a divorce. It was the first bouquet of flowers I'd ever treated myself to and it was just sort of symbolic of the new life I was starting, so I wanted to use a set with a flower image.

This is a new set sent to me by the lovely ladies at Flourishes called Beauty in Nature, a set that I won in their Fit for Royalty card contest. I have won stamps in the past in a random blog candy draw, but this was the first time someone gave me a prize based upon their opinion of the card I created. That sort of validation was new to me too. Thank you ladies so much.

I had three small children at the time I bought the bouquet and they are represented by the three ribbons crossing the washi paper in the background. That paper is lovely and was a gift from Siobhan! Thank you Siobhan. I have never used that style paper, that was new to me too.

And the four butterflies are myself and my three children flying into our new lives. They are gold to help highlight the gold in the washi paper and gold because they are so precious to me. At that time when I bought the bouquet, my children were all age seven and younger. I had no idea how the years would go. Today they are healthy, in college or almost in college and I am just so proud of them.

The butterflies also are gold because of the verse in Job 23:10, "But He knows the way that I take and when He has tried me, I shall come forth as gold." We had so many trying times fluttering about in our little family, but we are fine today and thankful to the Lord for the many, many times He provided for us, protected us, and helped us come forth out of trials into new beginnings. Thanks for looking.