Christmas Prayer Boxes

Hello friends.  Hard to believe Christmas Day is almost here!  Are you ready or still charging full steam ahead to finish everything?  I'm getting there...shopping done, gifts wrapped, cards made and sent out, and most of my projects completed.  One of my BIG projects this season was to make 10 prayer boxes for my dear, dear lady friends I do Bible study with on Thursday mornings.  When I saw Amy Sheffer's post (HERE) about what prayer boxes were, I knew I had to make them for these 10 special ladies!  Of course it probably would have helped if I had started earlier, but my good friends Birgit and Sue have been pushing me on, and I finally finished them this morning! 

Here they are all cut out (just cutting ALL the pieces was a time consuming task in itself!) and I'm in the process of gluing on all the window and door pieces.  Remember there are 10 church buildings I'm making, and each church has 7 windows and one door, so that's 80 windows and doors to glue on!  I used PTI's Tiny Town: Church dies to make these prayer boxes.

Here they are after all the trim pieces were glued on and all flower swags (7 for each church) were stamped over each window and door using a tiny leaf branch from PTI's Birds & Blooms stamp set.  I also stamped and fussy cut a little wreath from SU!'s Holiday Home and then used re-positional tape to attach them to the top round window. (I wanted the ladies to be able to take the wreath off after Christmas so they could still leave it out and use it year round.)  Next came all the folding, attaching. and assembling.  There's nothing hard about making these prayer boxes, but they are time consuming when you make this many at once!

Once they were all assembled, I decided they still needed something else...so I added the window boxes out of Basic Gray cs to match the roof panels, and then added the flowers from Real Red cs.  These dies are part of the PTI Tiny Town: Sweet Shoppe dies.  Next came all the little cards (2 1/2 X 2 1/2) I stamped using PTI's Choose Joy stamp set so that prayer requests can be written on them.  (I made 10 for each church, so that was 100 little cards I needed to do)  Next I added the cards to the bottom of each church building and then added a clear bag filled with silver, red & green kisses...I was hoping the shiny colored foil would look like stained glass through the windows...not so much but I know the ladies will like the little extra treat.  :0)  After they were all stuffed and tied shut, I kept thinking they still needed something...I know, I know, I make it harder on myself than I need to!  But I decided that the steeples needed to be bright and shiny silver, so I die cut 10 of just the top part of the die and added the silver steeples...PERFECT!

Definitely a lot of work, but a true labor of love as I know the ladies are going to love these and USE them!  I truly believe in the POWER of PRAYER, and these pretty little church boxes will remind each of these special ladies to daily pray for those in need.

I wish each and every one of you a most wonderful and blessed Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!  Merry CHRISTmas!