At our last women's retreat, where the theme was "How Shall We Sail Our Ships?" it was necessary to come up with an idea for our traditional craft making. As always, it had to reflect the theme, as our retreats flow together from beginning to end to relay a message that we can all receive and grow by. Since days of old, ships were known for their treasure chests filled with gold. Therefore, this year we decided on our own treasure chest, where we could decoupage and stamp small oval boxes to give us a place where we could keep our most precious treasure...God's Word.
The following are the instructions we used. Feel free to make use of them at one of your functions.
 First, paint the small oval paper box. You may wish to also decoupage small torn pieces of blue paper as a background color.
- Next using the seashell stamp, stamp two seashell illustrations on the white paper provided. Using the colored pencils or watercolors, color in the shell design.
- Carefully cut out the shell design, which you have colored. Glue the shell design to each side of the oval box. You can embellish the design with the colored sand and small pearls.
- Use the compass stamp on the top of the box. Here you will press the stamp into the clear special embossing pad and sprinkle with the gold embossing powder. Use the heat gun to melt the embossing powder and raise golden compass emblem.
- On the rim of the oval box top, decoupage with the retreat title and date, or the theme scripture verse. Add additional pearl embellishments to the lid.
- Take the small, handmade booklet (decorated with an angel sticker), and place it within the box. As you hide the booklet inside the box, it is to remember the importance of hiding God's Word in our hearts.
Our Theme Scripture:
"...lead us in the way everlasting."
 Psalm 139:24b
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Contributed by Susan Sheehy
