Pilgrimage

A few years ago I attend a retreat called Refine Retreat with my friend Bernice when she was visiting from England. The retreat was hosted by Kris Camealy. I first connected with Kris way back in 2011 when I joined her pre-launch team for her book "Come, Lord Jesus" and then used her book for my Advent art prompts that year. This past summer, in advance of her annual Refine Retreat, Kris asked former retreat attendees to submit art or writing for the 2020 retreat theme of pilgrimage to be used in her Refine magazine.

It's a great topic, so I decided to spend time last summer studying what God's Word says about pilgrims and pilgrimage. I then made a journal to create art from my study and reading. Kris chose one of the my pages to use in her retreat magazine. It's a great magazine with lots of art and articles from a variety of creatives. 

You can get the Refine Journal here:

I made a concertina book (also known as an accordion journal) to hold my pilgrimage art. It included a little booklet of lined paper on the back inside cover to hold my notes.

The piece that was included in the magazine was taken from this page of my journal.

In my next post I'll dig into what I learned and share more views of my journal.

Unfortunately, with all that is going on in our world with Corona virus, Kris has had to cancel her retreat, which was to be held next weekend.

Around here, we are preparing for 3-4 weeks of social distancing to prevent the spread of Corona Virus which entered our state on Monday. Schools are closed for at least the next three weeks. We are holding our church service this morning, but then will not have a public gathering for worship until Good Friday. At least that's our plan. We'll wait and see how well social distancing keeps the virus from spreading too rapidly. I have not had much time for art in the past few weeks, so I guess this forced slow down could have some advantages in that arena. 

I hope and pray that  all of you who follow my blog are doing well, and that you and your families are safe and healthy. Blessings to all of you on this Sunday morning. :)

A great read for Advent or any time:

A Little Art Journaling 2016

I am so glad I decided to participate in Ali Edward's One Little Word group this year. Over the years that I have selected a word to focus on I have gone up and down in my experience with it. Some years engaging in activities with my word has resulted in that word having a significant impact on my life. Other years have been lackluster and my interaction with my word has been sporadic, and thus the impact has not been great. This year I find I am fully engaged and experiencing change in my life as a result of it. Now, I'm not going to say that choosing a word changes one's life, like there's something magic in the process. But I will say that the process of focusing on a word that you then connect activities and introspection to help you set yourself up for improvement and change. This month our challenge was to create a vision board connected to our word and goals and to do this by cutting out words and phrases from magazines. This project started out slow for me. I started leafing through magazines and tearing out pages with words and phrases that spoke to me, but as my stack of pages grew things just didn't seem to connect with my intentions for the year. I pressed on and started adding background papers to my canvas and then images from magazines. Then I started cutting out the words and phrases and playing around with them. I cut out many more than I actually used and in the process I discovered that it was a part of the process. As I shuffled words and phrases around things just started falling into place and the result was a vision board that really seems to fit where I'm at right now and where I want to go. (I wrote some about my word and why I chose it here.)

The thing lately that has really been challenging me is getting out of my comfort zone and challenging myself to change habits and get healthy in different areas of my life. 

My favorite magazine is Art Journaling by Somerset Studios. I look forward every month to its arrival in my mailbox and I save every issue and comb through them again and again to gather inspiration. So when I received the new issue in the mail this week the only thing out of the ordinary was that its arrival was a little early. When I opened the plastic envelope, however, is when I got the surprise.

I've had the thrill and honor to be published in this magazine twice now, but both of those times I knew about it in advance. This time it was a total surprise! They have a feature in each issue called "The Written Word" where they highlight different ways artists use hand lettering on their art journal pages. It was in this section that they used one of my pages from a previous issue. It's so exciting seeing something I made in a magazine and something I never would have imagined would happen to me.

Around here the birds are starting to sing in the mornings. We see Robins and red-winged blackbirds...all signs that Spring is just around the corner. Spring is my favorite season. Everything is fresh and new and each day brings changes to the scenery. Happy first day of Spring!

Published!

I'm so excited!
                I can finally share a little news.

                               Because this came in the mail today....

And this was on page 8...

I was just so thrilled and honored to be asked to share one of my journals in one of my favorite magazines...again! 

There are four more pages to the article. I stalk the mail person every other month when this magazine is due. This time it was extra special tearing off the plastic wrapper and digging in. 

Thank you Stampington and Amber Demien! 

Happy New Year Odds & Ends

There's nothing more refreshing  than a week off with no agenda. I don't think I'm ready to get back into the swing of everyday life. But, it does begin tomorrow.

Friday I met my sister in Ann Arbor and we spent the day hanging out together and shopping. We poked around a few of our favorite shops such as Found (an awesome vintage shop) and Hollanders, a paper and bookbinding store. Then we went to an antique/thrift store and I found some great book finds. I got a huge U.S. Atlas book for $2.00! My Sis also brought me my dad's high school and college yearbooks that have been collecting dust (and mildew) in her basement. I'm going to take out the pages he is on and save them but use the rest of the books for art journal backgrounds.

We ate lunch near a Barnes & Noble bookstore so we popped in and look what I found on the newsstand a few days early!

It was very exciting seeing a magazine I am in on the newsstand. You can see it peeking out in the top row. I pulled this one out to purchase and photograph. My sister wanted to pull all of them out and spread them across the front row!

One of the bonuses I didn't anticipate from being published is an opportunity to build community with other artists. So far I have connected with two of the other artists in the magazine and love their work.

Kathy Zbrzezny

Mary Freeman

More Reverb 12 pages:

Day 10  side 1~ 10 things you were thankful for in 2012. 

Day 10 side 2

More art pages to come tomorrow. Happy New Year to everyone!

Published!

I have been anxiously watching the mail for the past few weeks awaiting an arrival that would enable me to share some exciting news.

I have art and an article published in my favorite magazine, Art Journaling Magazine by Somerset Studio. I was so honored when I was asked to consider submitting some of my art. The magazine goes on sale on January 1st, but my advance copy came in the mail yesterday.

So excited!