jamie pate: How To Find Gratitude

grateful for...

If you follow along here at all, first of all, would love for you to say hello in the comments. This girl has an odd opinion that blogs still have a place in the fast pace of the social media world. Blogs are 'slow' and I'm here for it.

Second, if you follow along here you know that I am a promoter of gratitude. Gratitude is everything. As gratitude has been cultivated intentionally these past few years, it has become even that much more of an important attribute in one's life.

The more one seeks gratitude, the more one finds it.

With that, this creative's desire is to make layouts and cards and journals that resonate with my approach to life. Gratitude.

So when a blatant 'gratitude' craft tool becomes available, I'm all over it.

Like this layout here:

This Grateful Layout incorporates so much of what contains my creativity and outlook at present. Don't you love when your creativity does just that?

Of course, the gratitude part as spelled out there with that title size 'grateful' stamp? Awesome.

Then of course the focus of my gratitude: that baby girl and her story and all that she means to us.

Then those Brushstroke Mini Flowers from Sizzix. More on those coming soon.

It's important, I believe, that our making reflects what is going on with us in our life presently.

Sometimes that can mean heartbreak But then in heartbreak, sometimes that can mean we need to make something celebratory, or full of gratitude, to help us walk through a difficult time. Sometimes it means we need to document the heartbreak as well.

It can go both ways, wouldn't you agree?

When I shared this Gratitude Stamp set at first, it was not currently available. I'm afraid I disappointed a lot of friends as there was much interest in said stamp set but it was not available ... yet.

Alas. It is now in the shop and making for happy.

Part of this layout included this new Sizzix Brushstroke Mini Flowers set. I literally had these flowers left over from a previous making session. I just put them to work. This is one of those die sets that you wanna have pre made and at the ready for whenever your heart is in the making mode. Just good to be able to grab them and put them to beautiful use.

I have a video coming out soon that details how to put these die cuts together. Be sure to subscribe to my Channel for when that is available.

Part of this stamp set includes this prompt (big fan of our scrapbook stash providing prompts for the writing): today my heart is grateful for... I simply wrote in You. But there is so much more to this story that I am eager to slow it down again and write that. What a beautiful pastime we enjoy no? Making beautiful stuff. Then telling our story right along side the stuff and photo.

So. That wraps up this How To Find the Gratitude post. And did we really even answer that? Well. It's a bit complicated, no? Do we find the gratitude then tell it's story? OR do we tell the story and then discover the gratitude? The answer? Yes. It's all encompassing. One leads to the other. But the work has to be put in. The work of writing the story. Printing the photo. Formatting a page. Yet, it's a beautiful exercise. Which in and of itself, helps us to find gratitude.

You can watch how this page came together in THIS video tutorial: