Things I've Learned: February 2019 Issue

For some reason I cannot pin down, I've been on a break from posting on my blog and Instagram. I felt a bit of a need to hibernate from words and posting. So I did. And it's okay. I have still made art though.

My word for 2019 is sacred. I chose that word because there are some areas in my life that need a renewed dedication to being used for God's purposes. As Christ's followers our calling is to live for Him in every way in every area of our life. Our life is then a journey toward living out Christ's life in us. It's a life long process. We don't change instantly and over time the transformation goes deeper and deeper.

Every year for the past four - five years I have had some type of health goal connected with my word of the year - eat better and exercise more make the list each year. But honestly, I haven't progressed far in either of those areas. A number of injuries with our parents this past year have motivated us to make some changes now and get healthy for the future. So I started this year with a different mindset and decided to study how God views our bodies in the Bible. 

Eight weeks into the new year, here are a few things I've learned so far:

• Changing habits is proving to be less difficult then I thought it would be. I think discovering more deeply how God views our bodies and health is changing how I view my relationship with food. Prayer has helped a lot as well. 

• Lots of little changes made consistently add up to big change. Last month I took The Little Way challenge, an online health challenge based on faith by Revelation Wellness. It gave me a good foundation for making little changes in how I eat and move. A big mindset shift was looking at food as substance or shadow foods. Shadow foods don't contribute anything nutritionally to your body and are empty calories.

• Cooking has always been a necessary chore for me...like doing laundry. It just has to be done! But, as we have made theses health changes I have enjoyed finding recipes to make our favorite foods healthier. I'm actually enjoying cooking!

• Last month I wrote about how I have discovered that making journals is a big part of sparking creativity for me (see this post). The problem is, I don't often fill them. So January's monthly journal is half full. I have been dedicated to rectifying that in February.

• I cannot paint objects, but I did find I can make them with scissors and painted paper! I have been studying the pages of a book called Cut Paper Pictures by Clover Robin. I follower her on Instagram and love what she does with cut paper collage. So I am practicing with guidance from her book.

• I still love the thrill of the hunt. I visited some book sales and estate sales in January and February. I was leafing through the pages of the recent Flea Market Home & Living magazine and ran across this great display of bird art. Turns out the art is pages from a book I had recently found and listed in my Etsy shop. I love finding creative ways people reuse, recycle and repurpose items!

That's it for my discoveries so far this year. I'll end with the most recent pages from my word of the year journal. In our Living Your Word 2019 group we are discovering words from A-Z that inspire us to live out our word of the year.

What have you learned lately? Feel free to share in the comments below. :)

Join Our Inspirational Facebook Group: Living Your Word of the Year

Bernice Hopper, Valerie Sjodin and I facilitate a Facebook group about Living your Word of the Year. In it we share insights through blog posts and connect with other like-hearted and like-minded people who want to live out a word focus throughout the year. We offer participants a bi-weekly A-Z Inspiration to help prompt reflection and creativity. as well as other inspirational ways to connect with your word of the year. If you would like to connect with others in creative ways about living your word throughout the year, explore new ideas, record thoughts, prayers, and events, you are invited to join our Facebook group.

 https://www.facebook.com/groups/203309083575277/

Please use #livingyourword2019 on social media.

Check out the other blogs:
Bernice: www.newlycreative.com
Valerie: www.valeriesjodin.com/blog

May Art Journaling Update

May has been a whirlwind with the end of the school year and so many activities. To top that off I was ill for almost a full week. Our theme in the Everyday Journals group was the Holy Spirit. I did a page in my journal to cover the whole month rather than a weekly page.

A few days before I got sick I went to one of our local parks. While walking I heard and saw a lot of birds. Once I got into the Window on Wildlife I saw a beautiful little bird that is not local. The Blackburnian Warbler is just passing through our area as it heads north for the summer. I also spoke with two gentleman from the west coast who were in our area to take in the Spring bird migration here. They reminded me how lucky we are to have the wonderful Metroparks that we do, as well as wildlife sanctuaries. I do not take them for granted, especially this time of year!

 A few more May pages in my Everyday Journal.

My other ongoing project has been the Salvaged Journal I made in participation in Roben-Marie Smith's online class. I'm using it as a nature inspired journal. It has a variety of styles and sizes of pages which is proving to be very good for experimenting.

 A dried and pressed wild Geranium from my walk at the park a few weeks ago.

This week we head into June. Happy creating!

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.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/203309083575277/

Hashtags on Instagram: #everydayjournals2018, #livingyourword2018

Check out the other blogs:

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

Valerie: https://valeriesjodin.com/blog

My Salvaged Journal

In my last post I mentioned that I was taking a class with Roben-Marie Smith called Salvaged Journal. In this class we made a journal out of an old book and filled it with various of types of paper and ephemera in various sizes. It's almost like the junk journal concept that was popular w few years back. I had completed the journal in mid-April and have slowly begun to work on the pages.

Since the book I used had these great etchings on the cover of a bird, a flower, and a leaf, I knew I wanted to use this journal as a nature journal. It has a lot of pages in it so it should last me through all four seasons. I love starting it in Spring, which is my favorite season and the season in which the birds return. What I am finding with this journal, with its variety of paper types and page sizes, is that is encourages experimentation with art mediums. Here are a few of my pages before adding art:

For my title page I used one of my favorite techniques: hand cut letters. I used pages from an older National Geographic magazine because I love the vintage colors used in magazine photographs from the 50's and 60's.

So far I have a mix of pages using collage, paint, magazine photos, my own photos, painted tissue paper collage, and painted tissue paper cut letters.

I am really enjoying experimenting in this journal with different types of art mediums. It's good to stretch myself creatively. I have also learned that whenever I take a class it's important to me to keep my own style. Roben-Marie has more of an abstract style to her collage, and while I did try her style with some of the lessons, I found it just didn't feel like me. It's good to try other types of art and styles when taking class but it's also okay to take those lessons and adapt them to fit your own style and artistic voice. It's also encouraging to realize after a few years of making art that I have developed my own style. 

This weekend my friend Rox and I take our annual visit to the wildlife refuge on Lake Erie to experience spring bird migration. We have one of the top 5 birding spots in the country so close to us! Over the years we have exposed a few of our young friends to birding and will continue with that tradition this year. I hope to include some of my photos and observations in my new journal.

Some of my favorite art and bookmaking supplies:

A note about Amazon links on my blog:

I am giving Amazon affiliation a try, which means I may receive a small percentage off sales made through clicking on the Amazon links found on my blog. There is no additional cost to you.

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!