Monday Meandering 9.21.15

This month's theme for the HKC Take Me Deeper devotions is the promises of God. I had made background pages in advance last month when I was playing with my new 4" round Gelli plate. Doing them all at once created a theme.

September Week 1

September Week 2

September Week 3

Last week, after reading about breathing exercises in The Creative Call, I determined to start taking photo walks in nature. I took two last week and found them to be both relaxing and stimulating. I saw so many types of birds. I wrote about breathing exercises and the birds I saw in my last post. Today I took another photo walk at the park along the river. Today I spotted a Green Heron for the first time. He was in no hurry to go anywhere and didn't seem to mind my getting close to him. The Green Heron is so much smaller than the Blue Heron's I typically see. He was only about 14 inches when he extended his neck.

I only saw water birds today: Blue Heron, Egret, Sandpiper, and female Mallards with their pretty blue stripes. I purchased a Moleskine watercolor notebook to begin keeping notes and pictures from my photo walks. Any excuse to start another journal! I'm even trying some watercolor in this one.!

I hope you have a good week and are able to make time to breathe. :)

Monday Meandering on Tuesday 7.7.15

I meant to write this blog post yesterday, but the day got away from me.... honestly so did the month of June. It flew right by and I didn't even notice. It ended up being much busier than I had planned. In the midst of helping at Vacation Bible School, writing devotions for His Kingdom Come, and meeting a few other deadlines, I ended up with a 10 day visit from bronchitis, who was a very unwelcome guest. Not much I could do about it so I'm just going to move one and enjoy July and August.

We started July off with a visit to my sister to meet the newest member of our family. My niece had her first child in May and it was wonderful to meet him and to watch her being a mother! Here is our little man, Case.

Friday morning my sister and I took a walk and it was like being at a bird sanctuary! I guess the lake draws the birds. We stopped more to take pictures than we actually walked. 

White Breasted Nuthatch

Blue Heron

Cedar Waxwing

Female Red Winged Blackbird

Red Winged Blackbird

Sandhill Crane

Red-bellied Woodpecker

We also saw an Indigo Bunting, Gold Finch, Hummingbird, Swallows and Sparrows. I know, I'm obsessed with birds. I just love how creative God was when He created them. There are so many sizes and varieties, it's never boring.

July begins a new theme for the Take Me Deeper devotions at His Kingdom Come. This month we are exploring what it looks like to have a culture of Honor in the kingdom of God. Our first week looked at being dependent on God and having child-like faith. And while there was a lot to dig into and study, I found myself drawn to the theme verse for the month found in Revelation 4:11. In fact, that verse really connected me with other verses in Revelation that exalt and honor God so it has become my theme for my art this month.

The leaves are scraps from Gelli print papers.

I have been immersed these past few weeks in reading and studying about gratitude for the devotions for August. 

*Sneak peek: our theme in August is about having our mindset shaped by gratitude and it includes some practical stories from our HKC foundation team members. 

I read and studied far more than I could fit into the devotions and I was reconnected with how practicing gratitude was one of the first steps that began my journey out of burnout. So, watch for quotes and posts on gratitude in the coming weeks.

Have a good week and thanks for stopping by my blog and visiting. :)

The Creative Call Art Journal Notebook

Our community at His Kingdom Come is starting a book club in a few weeks. Our first book is The Creative Call: An Artist's Response to the Way of the Spirit by Janice Elsheimer. I decided to make my own notebook after reading a tutorial by Ali Manning at Vintage Page Designs. The cover is made from a single piece of  heavy stock paper and has two signatures attached with a very simple sewing method. I made it a size where my signatures could be 8.5x11 pieces of paper folded in half. I covered the front and back with a variety of pages I had painted on the Gelli Plate and added some deli paper accents. I even make the plant sprig stamp from a foam sheet! I needed a fun project to rejuvenate my creativity and energy and this did the trick!

I used a thinner paper for my pages then I normally use and it puckered on the flip-side when I adhered the accents. So on the next one I'll use watercolor paper. I'm ready to fill the pages with quotes and art! The book club begins in May and anyone can join us. Head over to the His Kingdom Come website and check us out!

We are ending a nice weekend visiting my family in Michigan for my niece's baby shower. We are all housed at my sister's (Bliss Cottage) and it has been a beautiful Spring weekend at the lake. I especially love the lake early in the morning when it is calm and reflecting the world around it.

I hope you all have a good week. It's a busy one around here. We are hosting a conference this week at my church/job and then I head down to Florida for a long weekend where the HKC foundation team is getting together for a retreat. Enjoy your week!

Art Journaling a Song

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a song stuck in my head that we had sung at church and decided to get creative with it. I made an accordion page out of watercolor paper. I buy my watercolor paper in a large 18 x 24 pad in order to have more flexibility in how I use it. So I cut a piece 8 1/4 x 24 and then scored it every 4 inches. Once folded it gave me 6 - 4 x 8 1/4 sections per side. In the previous post I showed my pages in the prep stage:

I spread the verses and the chorus out on the 4" sections on both sides.

This was a fun project. It gave me opportunities to play with my Gelli plate and to experiment with some different colors - such as the navy background behind the earth. It also was fun expressing a song through art journaling. And I enjoyed working with 4 inch panels. I now just need to work out how I will attach it into my journal.

For Take Me Deeper at His Kingdom Come this week we responded with art to Matthew 22:37..."love the Lord your God with all heart, soul and mind."

#TMD2015 Feb week 2

And I worked on some goals for January and February in conjunction with my Logos365 word for the year: Renew. I'm going slow and trying to work toward lasting change that will lead to renewal, so I'm just focusing on one area at a time. Right now it is health.

I don't scrapbook and haven't done Project Life but a friend gave me a package of these graph project life cards and I'm enjoying using them on my art journal pages. Last week I made a little gift of prayer cards out of them: I already posted a picture of them but will do so again since I'm talking about the graph cards.

It was a great way to use up scraps from, Gelli printed papers. I've ended up using one on the current page I'm working on for TMD. I'm hunkering down this weekend and staying inside as much as possible as we get a visit from the Arctic with frigid temperatures. It's a good excuse for playing with art. :) Have a good weekend!