Hello January 2019

I so love the start of a fresh year. 

Nothing literally changes between December 31 and January 1, but there is a mindset or perspective change that a new year will bring a new beginning, a fresh start. And I fully embrace that each year.

At my job, we usually close the office for the week between the holidays. So I am able to begin the new year, and January, feeling rested and refreshed. This year has been no different. I feel rested. I feel refreshed. However, I also began the new year in a bit of a creative slump. One thing I have come to know about myself over the past few years, is that after a long daily challenge, like Advent Words, I tend to go into a creative wandering phase. It's almost like having creative attention deficit disorder, I can't seem to focus on one thing for very long. Over time I have found that there are a few ways to jump start my creativity when in a slump: play with art supplies and/or make a new journal. I did both!

I had already made an altered book signature journal for my word of the year and our A-Z challenge in the Living Your Word group. You can read about that in this post. But I needed to just make a journal to play. 

Since I like using vintage papers and found items in my journals I have been drawn to junk journals. There a few junk journal artists that pop up in my Instagram feed and on Pinterest that inspire me, so I decided to make a junk journal. I've had this conference promotional folder saved for a few years waiting for the right project. The graphics caught my eye and I held on to it. The front cover folded in half made a perfect size for a journal.

The back side of the journal ended up narrower than the front because I wanted to keep the full graphic in view. So I simply cut a piece of kraft paper cardstock, folded it in half and attached it to the narrow side, making them both the same size. 

I then took a mix of magazine pages, book pages, maps, etc. and folded them in half, sewing them into the fold of the cover.

My assistant felt I needed a paper weight for the pile of papers I was combing through, so he cheerfully gave me his assistance.

My junk journal has enough pages to have one for each day in January. I'm following along with the Life Documented project again this year after not participating for a few years. Plus, there are a few junk journaling challenges this month on Instagram that I am not going to follow religiously, but will borrow from their prompts when I need some inspiration. So I will use this journal for the art I make in response to those projects and anything else outside of my word of the year pages.

It was great to play with supplies and make a junk journal. I really enjoy making journals and bookbinding so I may just make a new one each month...just to play and spark my creative juices!

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 and your faith. 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

Advent 2015

The past two weeks have been very busy for me with outreach events for my job and preparing for the upcoming TMD Advent project for the His Kingdom Come community. I have been busy prepping, writing and editing devotions for a daily blog post and challenge beginning on November 29. We will be featuring the Advent devotions on the HKC blog so people can participate whether they are TMD members or not. I will also be linking to the Advent posts daily from my blog.

I am going to continue to use the Advent journal I made a few years ago for this year's Advent pages. I only make a handful of Advent art pages each year so there's room in this journal to cover multiple years.

Here are a few sneak peeks of the art that will accompany the Advent devotions I wrote.

We have a variety of people from the HKC community writing the devotions. Each day's devotion is based on a song of the season or on Scripture that the song is based on with a piece of the author's art accompanying it.

In my busyness I got off-track on the 30 Day Blogging Challenge, but I determined to finish it and will continue on now that I have slowed down some.

30 Day Blogging Challenge day 11.

A Little Bit of Vacation and a Little Bit of Art

We had a great fall vacation a few weeks ago. We spent a few days in a cottage near Lake Erie just slowing down and relaxing, took in a Cleveland Indians game, and then went to southern Pennsylvania for a few days. While still in Ohio we visited a state nature preserve, Sheldon Marsh, and took a walk and did some birding. Birding is quickly becoming a favorite pastime for me and each time I go out and add a new bird to my list it is quite a thrill for me.

This is the cove at the end of the trail.

This Blue Heron just kept posing for me. Every time I got too close to him, he would simply move a little further down the coast, but he never left the cove.

The best I can tell from my bird books is that this is a Common Yellow-throat Warbler.

This was as close as I could get, This is a Belted Kingfisher. Our first sighting of one! Ironically, earlier in the day we had been talking about how it would be cool to see one.

Male and female Red-winged Blackbirds

Time near the water and just relaxing at the cottage was a great way to start our vacation.

In my Nature Journal I have attempted my first drawing/watercolor. I have always been drawn to the look of watercolor and have been looking at different tutorials online. I finally got up the guts to try it myself. While it is no masterpiece, I'm pretty pleased with my first attempt. Of course, it was a bird that inspired me. :)

 On vacation I took some time to work in my Light and Sight journal I made last month and wrote about in my last post.

Make sure you visit His Kingdom Come this week. We are in the midst of a birthday blog hop in honor of our 1st community birthday coming up on November 1st. There are prizes and discounts at each of the foundation team members blogs throughout this week. You can find out more at the HKC site here. My Birthday Blog Hop post and giveaway opportunity will be here on my blog on Thursday, so stop back!

Monday Meandering 6.15.2015

It's been pretty dry around here lately. Not weather-wise, but creatively. I have been experiencing creative block - no creative energy to do art or to write. And it has been so painful! Especially since I had a stay-cation last week and wanted to get a lot done creatively.This is one of the prices I pay when I get overly busy or stressed or overly busy and stressed. I need to keep those two things away from me!

So what did I do in the midst of my creative block?  My daughter was in town for a short visit so she and I made a trip up to IKEA and then we had a family dinner. We traveled to Cleveland for our nephew's high school graduation party. I cleaned and organized my office/studio a bit - this activity will sometimes get me out of a creative rut - but it didn't work right away this time. So, I focused on making some altered book journals for my Etsy shop. Two are already in the shop and the rest will be posted over the next few days.

Then I decided to try and read some of The Creative Call. This is the book we are reading for the first His Kingdom Come community book club. In the busyness of May I got behind. So I picked up in chapter 3 and started doing the recommended morning writings and by Thursday afternoon I started feeling like I had some inspiration. And, boy, did it feel good! Getting creative and playing with art are so restorative and refreshing for me, so being in a place of creative block is frustrating. The Creative Call is all about connecting to your creativity. Janice Elsheimer addresses inspiration in chapter 3: 

"Throughout this week and the weeks to come, whether you are writing in your artist's daybook, observing the world around you, praying, listening to the prompting of the Spirit, exercising, or taking care of the ordinary tasks of daily living, remind yourself that you are awakening. Be gentle with yourself, but banish the idea that you can wait until you are "in the mood" or "inspired"to get busy with your art. This journey is not about doing what we feel like doing; it's about doing what we must. As L'Engle says, "Inspiration far more often comes during the work than before it because the largest part of the job of the artist is to listen to the work and to go where it tells him." " The Creative Call, pg 49

Quotes from chapter 3

Yesterday I got a nice surprise when I received the newsletter from Vintage Page Designs in my inbox. I had uses Ali's instruction to make the notebook for my Creative Call notes and art. Ali selected my notebook for her post featuring books made by her readers in her June 6 blog post.

Our theme for the Take Me Deeper devotions for June is family. In the first week we looked at creation, the Trinity, and our need for relationship. I focused on creation.

We have a blog hop for His Kingdom Come on Saturday to share some exciting news. So stop back on Saturday and see my contribution.

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!