A Time to Pause

Our theme this month in the Everyday Journals group is A Time For... Valerie Sjodin asked us to think about what it is time for in our current season of life. For me, this month it is a time to pause, even as the school year begins and my schedule picks up the pace. My hubby and I generally take a vacation in September or early October and rent a cottage east of us on Lake Erie. We love these fall vacations. The summer season is done and school is back in session so the lake area is quiet and uncrowded. We can relax and enjoy peaceful surroundings.

We started our week visiting our area's newest Metropark. Howard Marsh just opened in May and we have not had a chance to visit it yet. Since it is on the way to the cottage we decided to head over early and spend some time there. We were not disappointed! Toledo has incredible Metroparks. The new one was formerly a large working farm that the park system in conjunction with ODNR has returned to wetlands - 1000 acres! We saw many types of birds and other wildlife and enjoyed walking the trails and boardwalks.

This morning I went for a sunrise walk, which is a habit of mine when on vacation. I love how calm the beach and lake are in early morning, and the light is incredible as the sun climbs. Early morning walks in the city just don't have the same feeling of peace.

The clouds last night looked like they had been painted.

I photograph this old dock every time. I just love it!

I also enjoy creative time while on vacation. Creating with limited supplies tends to stretch me creatively. I have found that I have been in a bit of a creative rut since I did the Colossians Words challenge, which isn't unusual for me when I lead a challenge. It requires a lot of attention and energy writing the devotional Bible studies, making the art, posting daily, and managing the Facebook group. So I usually will find myself struggling with what to create for a few weeks following a challenge. To help stir those creative juices I started looking for something with some prompts for journaling. In that search I stumbled on The Reset Girl and her Faithful Life Club which offers a monthly Scripture journaling challenge. The theme for September is A Fresh Start and the weekly Scripture passages tie into that theme. I came upon the group mid-month but started with week one anyway. I've done one page so far. I also picked up the journal I made for Roben-Marie Smith's Salvaged Journal class this Spring and brought it along to make some nature themed pages. 

Week One Faithful Life Challenge

Everyday Journals Group

Nature Journal

I hope you are enjoying your last week of summer and are finding time to be creative. :)

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group

Bernice Hopper, Valerie Sjodin and I are using one journal to record events, experiences and relationships and  to explore our word’s meaning in visual and fun ways. We are each blogging about our experiences and our art. If you would like to connect with others about creatively organizing your word, your ideas, thoughts, prayers, events, or your projects all in one journal, you are invited to join our Facebook group: Everyday Journals – Living Your Word of the Year.

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Check out the other blogs:

Bernice: http://www.newlycreative.com/

Valerie: https://valeriesjodin.com/blog/

A Few of My Favorite Things ~ Plus a Tutorial!

It is no surprise to anyone who follows my blog or views my art journaling and photographs - I love birds. I enjoy watching them, studying them, photographing them, and include them often in my art. 

Another passion I have is for Bible study and theology. Last week at the library book sale I found a new book by one of my favorite pastor/author/theologian/ Bible commentators, John Stott. I usually buy any book I find by him when I go to book sales, but this one was special. It's called "The Birds Our Teachers: Biblical lessons from a lifelong bird watcher". A book that combines two of my favorite things by one of my favorite authors! And I had no idea that John Stott was also a bird watcher - bonus!

A few weeks ago I found out that 2018 has been named the year of the bird by Audubon and National Geographic to mark the 100th anniversary of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. It's a good excuse for me to continue to use birds in my art. Jeanne Oliver is doing a year long project called Series 52 which she says is a way to create a body of work that is just for you. One of my favorite art mediums is collage. Last year for the 100 day project I did scrap collage projects on Rolodex cards. It was a fun challenge to make them on such a small background, but what I loved most about the project was that I did collage more frequently. So I thought doing one intentional piece of collage per week would help me stay connected to this art medium and would be a nice way to work on a different size than my Everyday Journal, although some weeks it may be in that journal. And since it is the Year of the Bird, they will be my focus for my weekly collage.

My collage for week one was made to go into my commonplace notebook.

My collage for week two was inspired by the illustrator Richard Faust, who often includes small geometric collages on his work. This one was done in my Everyday Journal, which is a Traveler's Notebook.

In 2015 I was a member of the foundation team for a group called His Kingdom Come. We did a number of classes that year that were exclusive for group members. Now that this group is no longer in existence I thought I would share the art journal I made for the course we did called God's Aviary. It was a course that studied birds in the Bible and combined that with art journaling.

This was one of my all-time favorite art journal projects! I added the tutorial and the video flip-through of my journal to the pages at the top of this site. Or you can click this link to go directly to that page. Enjoy!

Delight in His Creation

Recently, in an art video in a class by Sheila Atchley, I was reminded to take delight in God's creation as He does. To delight in something is not to worship it, but rather to take pleasure in it, to find joy in it. Nature shows us the beauty and creativity of God. My favorite way to delight in God's creation is through nature walks with my camera in hand.

"Worship the Creator; delight in His creation." ~Sheila Atchley

Today I am simply going to share some of the photographs I have captured of God's creation over the past few months.

Loons at my sister's lake.