Latter-day Village Square

The Plan of Salvation is a fundamental doctrine that answers life’s most basic questions - it is taught at all levels of gospel instruction - by the missionaries, primary teachers, in Sunday School, Seminary and in our homes.  I have been wanting to have a felt Plan of Salvation product for a long time because of the durability of felt - for this set, I knew, would be used over and over again by anyone who had it.  I have invited several artists to take this on.  I designed a set myself that I wasn’t satisfied with.  Now, thanks to LDS illustrator, Scott Jarrard, we finally have a beautiful felt product - the Plan of Happiness Felt Storyboard.  The set comes with a beautiful galactic star field background upon which 20 colorful cut out figures can be laid out.  The set includes figures for both a girl and a boy in three phases of existence -

• Pre-mortal life
• Mortality
• Resurrected

This set includes a digital download so you can print out the story, a girls journal, a boys journal and wallet cards with the plan image on one side and scripture references on the other.

The process used for printing on felt is dye sublimation.  The dye is printed on special paper and then laid face down on the felt where it is pressure heated to the point where the dye evaporates and infuses itself into the felt.  It is not ink laying on top of felt, it has become a part of the felt, and the colors are brilliant, washable and colorfast and will last generations.

There are two options with the background - it can come unmounted, or for $5 more, it can come pre-mounted on stiff corrugated plastic.

Make this foundational doctrine clear and simple to understand and remember with this beautiful felt set!

~Debra

LDV now has beautiful fine art prints on canvas by LDS artist David Lemmon in our Zazzle Store!  David painted the originals on canvas, and so far we have only been able to offer them as digital collections, but now we have the ability to create gorgeous prints of his beautiful biblical characters -

• Father Abraham
• Enoch, City of Zion
• Rebekah, Mother of Nations
• Elijah and the Chariot of Fire

I added each product at a certain size and material, but you can change the size and the material and add a frame through the Zazzle customize feature.  Now you can have one of David’s beautiful fine art oil painting canvas print in your home for the fraction of the cost of buying an original.

Zazzle allows us to add many original designs that can be printed on a variety of products such as:

• Shirts
• Hats
• bags
• ties
• aprons
• mugs
• pins
• magnets
• posters
• canvas prints
• and more

And with Zazzle, you can customize the products with options of size, color, material and also add your own text and images!

I shopped around the internet for a service that would print one of a kind, or print on demand products, so that we could offer many more designs than if we had to do a long (large) run of one design.  In the printing world, it has always been true that the more you print of a single design, the less each one will cost.  Because of the set-up fees for offset or silk screen printing, doing single prints is very expensive, and therefore it isn’t feasible.  But with the new printing technologies available, doing single prints or short runs of a single design is absolutely possible.  Still, if you check around, it can be pricey.  Zazzle is much more affordable and so we are excited to be able to put our designs on many products!  They only print it up when an order goes through, so there is no initial investment and inventory problem, issues that have kept LDV from doing all the things we’d like to do.

Zazzle uses many different techniques to print, depending on the product, and they can do this because they use the same base materials - shirts - mugs - bags - which they buy in large quantities that bring their prices down.

~Debra

We are pleased to announce that we are now carrying lettering and tile kits from Cozy by Design. Here are a few examples of Jessi Bodell’s fantastic lettering designs.

	As for me and my house.. Vinyl Lettering As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord 6×36 vinyl lettering- Black
	Christ is the Center Vinyl Lettering Overlay Christ is the Center of our home…
	Christ is the Center..Vinyl Lettering Tile Christ is the Center of our home…12×12 (for a tile) without border
	CTR Decal 5×5 CTR Decal
	Family is Everything Vinyl Lettering Family is Everything 13×26

A 25 year veteran elementary school teacher had seen how children learn to read - had seen and used the most effective ways to teach children to read in her many years of teaching.  A proven teaching method was the use of leveled “little books” - (read more about this program developed by Utah State University).  As she witnessed the difference this teaching method made in the lives of children, she again and again thought that “someone ought to write Book of Mormon little books.”

This teacher is Doris Johnson.  And she finally took that leap and did the writing herself.  Personally - Doris is my kind of person - a real “little red hen,” who followed the promptings of the spirit to accomplish something of value.  She has developed a set of 32 little books on six levels, based on the Book of Mormon.  Accompanying the books, is a set of 32 Scripted Lesson Plans - perfect for home school parents, or any parents to use with their own children.  What a tremendous tool - that not only teaches a child to read, but teaches the gospel at the same time!

To reinforce the ideas and story of the Book of Mormon, Doris developed “picture pages” for her own children, with captions from every verse to which family members draw their own illustration.  There are 2,241 captioned pages that come on a CD and can be printed as needed.  Every verse in the Book of Mormon is covered.  Family scripture study becomes so much more personal with the hand drawn pictures.  You can build a family tradition and a beautiful archive of your own Family Illustrated Book of Mormon!

Doris has published all these resources and contacted LDV about linking to her website.  I reviewed her site mormonlittlebooks.com and we added a link in our LDS Links pages, but I felt that we would generate more interest in Doris’ wonderful books if we added them to our store - which she was happy to have us do.  You can find all the Book of Mormon Little Books resources in the Home School Department

Learn more about Doris here

I am excited to have these wonderful resources available to our members and visitors here at LDV.

~Debra

I was recently contacted by LDS Behaviorist and Parent Coach, Tom Dozier of Southern California about the possibility of publishing some of his articles at LDV. I read his sample article and visited his website - LDSParentCoach.org to learn more about his work. Tom, a grandfather, has been providing parenting classes in Southern California since 2003 after several years of research and study, inspired by Dr. Glenn Latham’s seminal work in positive parenting, which they applied in their own family to turn around a troubled teenage son where all other professional interventions, including prescription medications and several rounds of therapy had done nothing to help.

Tom’s simple solutions are definitely in keeping with gospel principles and useful for behavior changes in young children to teens and beyond.

We will be including a series of articles by Tom in upcoming issues of The Villager and archiving them in our Free Sampler in the Family - Parenting category.

Read Tom’s first article here - free registration required.

I especially appreciate that while these principles can be applied in any relationship, and any family, Tom is sensitive and experienced with the unique needs and lifestyle of latter-day saints. Since LDV has a reputation of providing resources for teachers - I also feel that the principles Tom promotes are as effective in the classroom as they are in the home.

Tom is available for personal coaching by phone, in person or by email. Visit his site for more information and some great resources now.

~Debra

We have two new digital Pioneer Collections, and one veteran collection to choose from in our store. This wonderful LDS clipart is from two gifted LDS photographers, Courtney White and Terrell Moffett and our talented illustrator Elsa Remund.

Martin’s Cove Photographic Collection by Terrell Moffett. Terrell and I met at an Adobe Photoshop Seminar sponsored by NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals) in April of 2007. We walked into the Salt Palace together and just stuck together the rest of the day. I don’t know what I was expecting at a Photoshop seminar but still, I was surprised that most folks attending were photographers. I am not a photographer. Terrell told me about his work as a fine art photographer - and when it came time to join NAPP - you know they exert some friendly pressure to join, Terrell said he highly recommended it, and said it was the most valued membership he maintained -their almost monthly magazine alone was worth the subscription. So I took his advice and joined. I haven’t regretted it at all - and believe me, I make plenty of dumb purchases, but this one was terrific. After the seminar I visited Terrell’s website and got a look at his work. I only wish Nampa was not so far from Saratoga Springs, because he’d be worth apprenticing with. I asked if he were LDS and once we established that I asked if he might be interested in doing some photography for LDV. Time passed and along came Pioneer season and I thought I didn’t have a pioneer collection that would be ready. So I contacted Terrell who I knew had gone on a handcart trek and put together a massive slide show for his stake. He sent me some great photos and I practiced some of my acquired Photoshop skills to turn them into an art collection with scrapbook papers. I wanted to frame some of his photos in period frames - so I scanned a bunch of old frames and books I have inherited from my ancestors and created digital frames to go around his photos. All in all it was a lot of fun and the collection turned out very well. If you have been on a trek or are going on a trek or like celebrating Pioneer Day - this is a great collection for you!

Pioneer Photographic Collection by Courtney White

Courtney White went on the big re-enactment Pioneer Trek in 1997 and took wonderful photographs, which she now has turned into a beautiful digital scrapbook collection with artistic effects. The photos come in full color, watermark and sepia tones. Also included is a beautiful set of ready-to-print Pioneer Trail Notecards - featuring the photos with quotes from pioneer songs and journal entries.

At the tail end of a difficult pregnancy, Courtney finished several pending collections one right after another - and despite her discomfort in sitting at the computer, she did a fabulous job as always.

Pioneer Collection by Elsa Remund

And I have to remind everyone of the beautiful illustrated collection by Elsa - this was from our 2007 Club, but it is also available in our store. Elsa has such a gift for capturing emotion with her designs. This beautiful collection includes posters, cards, bookmarks, stationary and scrapbook papers, tags and borders that are perfect for Seminary, Youth Trek, Primary, Ward/Stake Activities, printed Sunday bulletins or personal use.

BTW - Elsa had her first baby this Spring - congratulations Elsa!

I hope you will have a great Pioneer Day this year!

~Debra

A competitor of ours in the LDS resources market makes this claim on their website:

“[domain name] is now the largest collection of helps anywhere online.”

Here’s another one: “Welcome to [domain name]: the largest repository of LDS-related content on the internet.”

We beg to differ. It is a given that lds.org is the single largest collection of LDS helps on the planet. Who can really compare with the resources the church provides; e.g., years and years of magazines, music downloads, images? This is a very good application of our tithing dollars in my estimation.

Who then comes in second? I believe that position probably goes to one of the online LDS libraries; LDS Library or Gospelink, both of whom boast thousands of book titles indexed. LDS Library, my favorite, even indexes much of the lds.org material; Gospelink advertises the same.

Latter-dayVillage.com is not even in the same volume league with those sites; however, we specialize in focused content in certain areas. For those markets, we have some impressive resources (counts as of 7/1/2008):

We continue to expand our online store product line, with the latest additions from our new line of Zazzle products. Our product line includes 885 products now with more on the way. We are working with several new vinyl products vendors and will add their products shortly.

So perhaps we will just claim to be a ‘pretty good LDS resource’.

*General articles are free with a membership registration and include everything from FHE, homeschooling, and Relief Society to Young Women.

** Includes more than just LDS specific clipart. A large majority of our clipart collection comes from open source image repositories that we have formatted in more industry accepted file types.