Prize...31 Days of Creating with Meaning

When I listened to the talk What I Hope My Granddaughters and Grandsons will Understand about Relief Society given by Julie Beck at last month's Relief Society Conference, one of the lines that really jumped out at me was this:

I hope my granddaughters value the temple as did the sisters of the first Relief Society, who believed that temple blessings were the grand prize and great goal of every Latter-day Saint woman.

It's like the words were lit up on a marquee.  I knew I had to do something with it!  So here's what I came up with: a mixed media, re-purposed canvas.

Here is some more from that paragraph:

I hope that, like early Relief Society sisters, my granddaughters will strive daily to become sufficiently mature to make and keep sacred temple covenants and that when they do go to the temple, they will pay attention to all that is said and done. Through the blessings of the temple, they will be armed with power and blessed to receive “the key of the knowledge of God.”  Through the ordinances of the priesthood found only in temples, they will be blessed to fulfill their divine, eternal responsibilities, and they will promise to live as committed disciples. I am grateful that one of the Lord’s primary purposes in organizing Relief Society was to give the women the responsibility to help each other prepare “for the greater blessings of the priesthood found in the ordinances and covenants of the temple.”

This is what the canvas looked like.  I picked it up, with its yellow frame, at a garage sale a while back for $3.00!

 With some paint, paper, and the oh-so-fabulous mod podge, a temple scene was born.  To make the tree look 3-D-

 I just stacked up some paper punches and glued them together to make extra large pop dots.

 The temple, cloud and sun were cut freeform because I like the imperfect look.  Then I thought it was a little bit too much blue, so I wadded up a paper towel and pounced some white on the background.

To make the "grand prize" ribbon, I just cut 2 strips of 12x12 inch paper about 2 inches wide and made accordion folds 1/2 inch wide and then glued the strips together on the ends to make a circle, scrunched it together in the middle, and hot glued it to a piece of cardstock cut into a circle.

I know my ribbon is sideways, but I wanted the words "are the" to be going the right way, and I wanted "grand prize" to be on the rosette.  So I took some artistic license.   Instead of Moroni, a simple yellow flag adorns the tallest spire.  The flowers are made like these spiral ribbon flowers, only mine are very loosey goosey  These flowers by Donna Downey, or these on the Studio Calico blog would have been way cute, but I was already done when I found them.  Maybe for the next project...

I used black ink around everything to make it pop off the canvas, and then I even took a black pen and doodled around a bit.  I was a little bit scared to, but got over it quick and started drawing, mainly around the outsides of everything and some scallops on the banner.

For more detail, click on the picture to zoom in.

Even though losing my domain put me into a tailspin, I'm going to try to catch up on my 31 Days of Creating with Meaning.