Restoration

Restoration. Transformation. Renewal. Renovation. It's all about change. Heart change. Soul change. Life change. It's a constant throughout life. The season right now is such a wonderful visual example of change. The gray, barren landscape changes each day as flowers bloom and leaves appear and the world becomes a green and colorful place once again. As difficult as it is at times, I actually like change. It's uncomfortable. It's a journey into the previously unknown. But passing years and a faithful God have shown time and time again that change generally brings about something better, something more authentic, something new and more colorful. Change often feels like winter ~ dark, cold, barren, but just around the corner is a fresh, new, colorful season. I'm art journaling as I go.

My Nest, My Heart, My Soul, My House

Back in March (see this post http://mewithmyheadintheclouds.blogspot.com/2013/03/heart-journey.html) I journaled and blogged about the many paths of my journey that are converging. This continues to happen to me and it feels like God is speaking to me and leading me to a place that has the potential to bring healing. Where God leads will always bring healing. I say "potential" because I must be willing to follow where He leads me and to let what He has for me transform me.

What continues to converge?I continue to read Dallas Willard's "Renovation of the Heart". Our current staff book study is an excellent book by Ruth Haley Barton called "Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership". In the online art journaling course I am working through, Soul Restoration, the metaphor for our soul is a house. This month's theme for "The Art Journaler" community is nest. What God is showing me through all of this is that I have allowed the state of my heart and soul to become cluttered and messy by not paying attention to some areas. To continue the metaphor, I've swept some things under the rug rather than fully dealing with the mess. The above things are all serving to open my eyes to see the state of my house/nest.

I love God's humor and that He knows us so well. Using metaphors such as house and nest resonate with me and draw me in to what He wants to show me. I have always loved houses, even as a very young girl I was drawn to architecture. Restoring old houses and decorating have been life long hobbies of mine. I have also been fascinated by birds for most of my life. so these themes of house and nest serve to nurture me rather than push me away, and enable me to hear God.

Right now it seems safer to continue to speak of this journey through the use of these metaphors, but I want to continue to blog about them and share my art journaling. It seems to be a part of the journey; a part of the healing.

As usual, to feed my love of making books, I have made a little book to collect parts of this journey...actually two books (cuz two is better than one, right?).

Restoration Altered Book Journal

Journey Art Journal Binder

Just a Bit of Art

Our "Secret Garden" has been the theme this month in The Art Journaler Community. Some garden art journal pages:

Mini Book Journal - Find Myself in Him

Gratitude Journal - A Moment of Understanding

Gratitude Journal - Live Gratitude

Making Books

I like making books. Altered books and three ring binder books and mini travel books. I like making books A LOT! In fact, so much so that I don't necessarily finish the books that I begin ...hmmmm, finishing what I begin ...that's a topic for another post! Anyway, back to making books ...
I have multiple art journal books that I work in at the same time. I think, for me, there are two main reasons that I work in multiple journals: 

1.) I usually have so many things  running around in my head and for some reason I feel the need to categorize them into themes or topics. Thus, multiple journals. I have one for making art and recording thoughts about my "One Word" for the year ~ my Gratitude Journal.  

I have another where I am making art for prompts from The Art Journaler community that I belong to, as well as some random journaling about my journey of self-discovery. I found a book appropriately named "The Examined Life"

2.) I find that I enjoy working in different sizes of journals. My Gratitude journal is 6x9 landscape. The Examined Life altered book is 5x8. When I made my Reverb 2012 album I had found a perfect little book that was 4x7 and I loved the smaller pages.

So I found another small book and started another art journal in it for this year. This one is 4.5x7. So far it just contains random art journal pages.

But probably my favorite size; the one I keep returning to is 7x9. I have done quite a few of this size:

2011 Advent Art Journal

SLJ Class Art Journal

Montana Road Trip from 2011

Because it's my favorite size to work in I have a new 7x9 art journal book in progress.

The beginning of the cover. The watercolor paper I buy has wonderfully heavy cardboard/chipboard back pages. I cut one down for the cover of my new 7x9 art journal binder, then sprayed on some inks and splattered on paint on a piece of patterned card stock. I glued it on the chipboard cover and will decorate it as I am inspired.

Like I said, I like making books and I love spending time filling them with the musings of my heart, one art journal page at a time. It keeps me sane!

Advent Journal

This year I did something a little different for my Advent art journal. I participated in Mandy Steward's Advent project which gave us 25 words to randomly select from and then journal about. Some completed pages:

4. Envision

5. Permit

6. Play

7, Eliminate

8. Invite

9 Read

Advent 2012

This year for my Advent art project I am using an Advent guide by Mandy Steward of The Messy Canvas who is the co-founder of an art journaling community I am a part of. Mandy wrote an e-book with Advent journaling prompts called "Come Thou Long Expected". The theme of the book is based on the Advent calendars many of us had as children where you would open a little window each day to see what treasure hid behind it. We are given 25 words to randomly select as our journaling theme for each day. As we journal about those words we "are able to open a daily window for ourselves. Letting in Fresh air, new perspective and wonder." (Mandy Steward)

Advent practices are a relatively new practice for me as an adult. I spent over 30 years in the hospitality and retail fields and the Christmas season became an exhausting whirlwind of busy-ness and materialism. It took me many years to recover (somewhat recover). Participating in Advent observance over the past three years has helped me slow down and really participate in the true reason for this season ~ the coming of Christ.

My progress so far in my Advent Journal:

Altered Book Advent Journal

Gessoed pages ready to fill!

Day 1 ~ Believe

Day 2 ~ Create

Day 3 ~ Give

 



Art From Study Notes

One of the members of an online art journaling group I belong to posted a picture of how she was using art with her research proposal notes. She posted this picture on our community group page:

 

Thanks, Anna Tapp (Anna's blog: notknowingwhere.com), for the inspiration!

We have just started a series called "Images of the Incarnation" at church. So, while studying last week in prep for our Creative Team planning meeting, I was reading in Matthew about how Jesus tells John the Baptist's disciples who He is.

^"When John heard in prison what Christ was doing, he sent his disciples to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”

Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. ⁶ Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me.” (Matthew 11:2-6)

I got off on a rabbit trail as I started thinking about what Jesus says to them. Quoting from the prophet Isaiah, He says that His identity is evident by what they have SEEN and HEARD. So I started looking back through the first 11 chapters of Matthew to see exactly what it is that these men has seen and what they had heard.

First, what they HEARD:
Jesus' ministry begins in chapter 4 verse 17: "From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near.”
4:23 says that, "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people." (Also repeated in 9:35)
In 10:7, when Jesus sends out the 12 disciples, He tells them to "As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’"
In fact, in the book of Matthew, the word "kingdom" is used 53 times, 48 of those times referring to God's kingdom. 7 times Jesus mentions the kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount; 15 times Jesus mentions the kingdom in His parables, 10 of those times He starts the parable out saying, "The kingdom of heaven is like.."; 21 times outside of the Sermon on the Mount and parables the kingdom is the illustration or point of Jesus' teachings.

So, John's disciples heard from Jesus all about the kingdom of God (heaven). In the Lord's prayer He calls His followers to pray, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." (Matt. 5:10). They heard that the kingdom was now near to them...THIS is the incarnation - the Kingdom of God coming near to us in the person of Jesus Christ!

So, then, what did they SEE?
They saw the very things the prophet Isaiah had foretold:

• the blind receive sight (Matthew 9:27-31)
• the lame walk (Matthew 8:5-13, 14-17; 9:1-8)
• those who have leprosy are cured (Matthew 4:23-25; 8:1-4, 14-17; 9:20-21)
• the dead are raised (Matthew 9:18-26)

Jesus pointed to himself as the Messiah ~the Savior of the world~ and told them that they had already received the evidence of this through what He taught and preached and by what He did. The kingdom of God draws near to us and points us to the Savior. We see and hear evidence of His identity all around us. We too are called to declare who He Jesus is and then show those around us the evidence of Christ in us by what we say and do.

So, like I said at the beginning of this post, I was inspired by Anna Tapp's artistic notes and while I watched TV yesterday put my study notes on paper artistically.

I love rabbit trails when I'm in God's Word...and it's a bonus when art comes out of it!

My Style

This month the theme for The Art Journaler Community (TAJ) is "I am an Artist". I finally got around to making an art journal page for the theme:

I've been wrestling since I read the theme with actually calling myself an artist. My husband had no problem calling me this and encouraged me to accept it. {Thanks honey!} I don''t struggle with calling myself creative or a hobbyist (if that's even a word). I guess I just think of artists as those who can draw and paint images even though I know it includes other categories such as photography and collage. So I took the plunge and said "I am an Artist" on my art journal page. It is now forever recorded in my art journal binder.

What I then wrestled with is what my own unique style is...my artistic voice. The problem is that I am eclectic in my taste and in what I am drawn to. I have always had multiple interests and I find that it is no different in art and hobbies. I love the artsy, messy, painterly collage style. But I am also drawn to the minimalist, clean, neat style. I love typography and fonts but also like hand lettering. I love making digital art and love making physical art on paper. I enjoy art journaling single pages and have got hooked on making travel journals. I enjoy making my own mini books and altering old books.
So I continue on my journey, make art, and search within for my own artistic voice. This morning I ran across a great quote on Pinterest that really spoke to me about this journey:

The quote is by Promise Tangeman, a graphic artist {promisetangemanblog.com} and the lettering was done by Lindsey Letters {lindseyletters.com}.

"Don't waste time looking for your style. The truth is you already have it, you may just need to create more in order to see it."

Love this! It fits with the "Be Who You Are" self-discovery journey I am on.