Summer's End

School has started. labor Day weekend is almost over. Summer has come to its end. It seemed to go by so fast! I, for one, enjoyed having a cooler summer. This weekend I re-organized and rearranged my office/studio and got caught up on some of my pages for the Documented Life Project. I am now only about a week behind. This summer ended up being busier than I had anticipated, but I intend to work hard at making white space in my calendar this fall. September brings the start of the 2014 Made Course and 30 Days of Lists. Fall is my favorite season and I hope to embrace it in all its colorful glory! Have a good week and make some white space on YOUR calendar this week!

Doc Life wk 32

Doc Life week 33

A collage page

Doc Life wk 36 challenge ~ Black & White

The Documented Life Project Update

 We are into week 15 in The Documented Life Project. 36 weeks to go and my journal is getting pretty fat! The beauty of having made my journal into a 3-ring binder: I can expand it with larger rings, which is what a did a few weeks ago. I may however need to add a second journal for the second half of the year.

I last posted pictures on my blog from weeks 8 and 9, so I have some catching up to do in posting both the planner pages and the weekly challenge pages. I've had quite a few requests from others in the group on how to make an art journal binder such as mine. I'm going to begin working on a tutorial and will post it in the near future. For now here are my pages from weeks 10-15. For some of those weeks I have the planner pages done but not the challenge page and for others I have the challenge page done and not the planner pages. It's just how I roll when it comes to art! Hope you enjoy them. :)

Week 10 Challenge: A list of things that make me, me.

Week 10 page 1

Week 10 page 2

I punched my holes on the wrong side of the page so I ended up with two right sides, so I just went with it and have two pages for week 10 instead of my normal page spread. This is something I like about art journaling - just going with the flow and working mistakes in instead of starting over. It pushes my perfectionism outside the comfort zone, which is a good thing. :)

Week 11

Week 11 Challenge: Put a bird on it.

Week 12 Challenge: Use magazine cut-outs

Week 13 Challenge: add someone else's art to your page.

My sister drew a doodle for me while I was visiting her.

Week 12

Week 13

Week 15 Challenge: A monochromatic page

The Documented Life Project Weeks 8 & 9

I'm just going to post my most recent Doc Life pages and a few others. I have had the flu now for 6 days and cannot regain my energy or my appetite. But life moves on and one must catch up. We are off to the Youth Haven Ranch Friday and Saturday for our annual staff retreat. Another week of single digit temps has made the longing for spring grow much deeper. Hope you are experiencing a change in weather in your part of the world. :)

Collage 3

Collage 4

Week 8 side 1

Week 8 side 2

Week 8

Week 9

Week 9 side 1

Week 9 side 2

A Love Affair With Books

I love books. I always have. My mother said that we pass it down in our family. While she was pregnant, she read. While she nursed, she read. She said she taught me to read at an early age to help slow me down. I did all of the above with my daughter as well.

I read everyday. In the mornings I read the Bible and generally some type of book that will help me grow in my faith or that will aide in Bible study for Creative Team or just my personal interest. I'm usually reading a few of these types of books at the same time. Every night before I go to sleep I read fiction for 30-60 minutes ... to slow me down. It still works after all these years!

I rarely take naps, but laying down and reading for an hour or so can have the same effect on me that a nap would!

Now, I have incorporated my love for books and reading and text and words into my art journaling. I love to alter books and make them into art journals. I love to use book pages as art backgrounds so that the words and the text peak through the gesso and the paint.

Some current pages in my altered book art journal:
A few based on our study in 1 John ~

Some misc pages ~

I found an old book with a character named Mary and have found some great lines to clip and use on art journal pages. This line is so true of me!

Currently...

Currently...
I'm studying 1 John, along with the other members of our Creative Team, for our Sunday morning worship services. We have entered the heart of John's letter, chapter 4, where John will dive fully into the theme of love. I really love it when we go through a book of the Bible together as a church. It causes us to really slow down and hear what God has for us in the book. We may see passages in a different way then we did before. We see passages more in the context of the full book then we may have before in studying topically or just looking at a verse or passage by itself. Every time our church has studied a book together God has transformed us. Now, in 1 John, we look at love. I find already that I am being transformed; that I am seeing Biblical love in a different light. It challenges me as I try to look at it in practical ways. It brings about so many questions on what love really looks like when it is lived out, and on what it is not.

And so, as I study, I make art journal pages.

Currently...

I am reading "Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art" by Madeleine L'Engle with a group of artists online. A quote from the book on an art journal page:

Currently..

I'm loving the slower pace of summer. I'm playing with art supplies, taking online art journaling classes, helping the hubby remodel our living room and dining room, cleaning out closets and the basement. Hmmm, doesn't sound like a slower pace, but it is. I'm just focused on different things than I do for most of the year. The pace will pick up the closer we get to the start of the school year. Already this past week we have started our school supply drive for our ministry to Keyser School. A few art journal pages:

Currently...

The lens for my Nikon DSLR camera is broken and needs to be replaced so I'm exploring the world of Smartphone photography. The pictures are not quite as crisp as with my Nikon but I'm pretty pleased with how well my LG Lucid takes pictures. I'm also trying to figure out how to use Instagram, but I can't figure out how to embed a photo here. I'll keep plugging on.

That's my life currently.

Your True Self

I like true self/false self language. It is the language of spiritual transformation. It is the language of Jesus and of the apostle Paul:

"You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self (the false self), which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self (the true self), created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness." Ephesians 4:22--24 emphasis mine.

"...since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator." Colossians 3:9b-10

"We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may  live a new life.....For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin" Romans 6:4, 6

"If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2:20

"Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it.' Luke 9:23-24

The more we embrace who we are in Christ and live out of that, the more we become our true the self. The person we were created to be. The person God breathed into existence and formed in Christ. There is such a freedom in becoming this person, though the road is rough, we must go through death ~ death of our false self. Yet that false self feels so much like who we really are that it is often confused with "the real me". Each time I get a new pair of glasses with a new prescription I realize that I have not really been seeing clearly. I thought I was, but then that new set of lenses which makes what I see much clearer, reminds me that I had not been seeing as clear after-all. So it is with our false self. We think this is who we are, but then as we grow in Christ-likeness we begin to become the person we were really created by God to be. And the true self emerges and grows and we begin to see clearly that what we thought was real, was actually false. Our false self is made up of the lies we we believed about ourselves; it is made up of the person we thought we were supposed to be in order to be loved, to be liked, to be valued, to cope. It is made up of the coping mechanisms and defenses we created in order to survive. But all those things do not make up who we are in Christ. They do not make up who we are as a child of God, fully loved and valued for who we are ~ His beloved child. We are called in Scripture to live more and more out of our true self. Spiritual transformation comes as we yield to God and position ourselves in His presence to be changed. Positioning is experimenting with and finding those spiritual disciplines or practices which help us draw close to God and allow our hearts to be examined and reformed by Him. Art journaling as become one of those practices for me, along with Bible study, writing in my journal, reading, solitude, and connecting with kids and nature.

Well, this is not the post I had intended to write today, but it is the one that was revealed as I sat down and typed. It is the message that God drew out of me today.

A little more art:

A Little Art

Just posting some art journal pages today. I'm very ready for a long weekend. We're cooking out tomorrow and hanging out with kids. Saturday we're off to an Indians game in Cleveland.

Enjoy your holiday weekend! May you fill it with the people and things you enjoy.