Rolodex Art Journal Cards

Last month on my weekend with my sister we had the great idea to use old Rolodex holders and cards as art journals. You can read more about the beginnings of this project here. In searching for ideas for this project I have run across a some other artists who have made Rolodex art journals also.

At Tuscan Rose she calls her project Scrapodex. Her project is from a few years back but if you click on Scrapodex in her category list she has a lot of posts about her project.

Collage artist Seth Apter called his project Rolodecks. He didn't have a Rolodex so he used a small box as his holder.

Kristin Peterson at Altered States Studio often uses Rolodex cards to get her creative juices flowing.

My sister has created a few more cards for her project of positive quotes:

One of the things I am enjoying about this project (besides the fact that it includes vintage office supplies) is that it's quick. My cards are 3 x 5. Once I built up a little stash of covered cards it was very easy to fit a little art in after a busy day and complete a full card in a short amount of time.

I'm going to fill the "A" section with a card a day for Advent.

30 Day Blogging Challenge day 12.

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.

Tips For Getting Words on Your Art Journal Pages

Adding words to art is really at the heart of what art journaling is all about. Whether you're spilling your feelings out on your page, using one simple word or using a quote, art journaling is all about adding the words.

I art journaled for a few years before I used my own hand lettering on my pages. What got me over my fear of lettering was taking a class taught by Hope Wallace Karney at besottment.com. You’ll see her influence in my lettering, but after a while of practicing, my lettering took on it’s own style. The key to my lettering style is very simple: You go over the first lines a second time, letting the spaces and imperfections actually become part of the lettering style. 

 Besides hand lettering, there are a number of easy ways to get words on your art journal pages. You can type them on your computer, print them out, cut them and adhere them to your page. I gravitate to old typewriter fonts and this summer I finally found an old working typewriter that was inexpensive at a flea market. I love typing words and sentences on old book end paper and then cutting them in strips to put on my page.

Another great way to get words is to cut up old magazines and use the words to form sentences. You can also cut up book pages and use the words you find there to express yourself on your pages. Stickers and letter stamps are also good tools for getting your words on your pages. 

And then there is always using letter stamps.

Even though I now do my own hand lettering, I still use all of these other options as well to keep my pages fresh and unique. I will also use combinations of lettering options on my pages.  One of my most enjoyable ways of getting words onto a page is to use hand cut letters from painted and pattern papers. (I mentioned this is my post the other day about tips for using old book pages) Simply write a block letter in reverse on the back of the paper and cut it out. Here are a few examples from various journal pages.

I love words and I love getting them on my art pages in whatever way possible!

30 Day Blogging Challenge day 10.

Lord Have Mercy

"To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”  Luke 18:9-14

 There are times when you hear the same thing repeated in multiple places and you know that you need to slow down and pay attention. This has happened recently for me with what is known as "The Jesus Prayer". I first read it in the book "Sacred Rhythms" about a month ago and it resonated with me. Then, the other day, I heard it in a podcast I was listening to. My friend Leigh Ann posted on her blog (His Artist) about  a podcast she was listening to at a website called "UnQuiet Life". So, I decided to pop over and check the site out. I was so glad I did! The site is a place where two guys are in a continual conversation about what it is to live a contemplative life. I listened to a few of the podcasts the other day and one of them was called The Jesus Prayer. There is was again.

In addition to the example of prayer in the above passage in Luke 18, there are multiple places in the gospels where people who are in need of something from Jesus, cry out to Him to "have mercy".

As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” Matthew 9:27

A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed and suffering terribly.”  Matthew 15:22

“Lord, have mercy on my son,” he said. “He has seizures and is suffering greatly. He often falls into the fire or into the water. Matthew 17:15

Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” The crowd rebuked them and told them to be quiet, but they shouted all the louder, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!” Matthew 20:30-31

When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Mark 10:47-48

He called out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Those who led the way rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Luke 18:38-39

In their podcast on "UnQuiet Life" they spoke of how this prayer has been used throughout the centuries by Christians to help them focus on their proper place before God; that this prayer helps us be present in the moment to God.

I'm not sure what is in this for me right now, but just as repeated words and phrases in Bible study should get us to pause and  slow down and pay attention, I think running across repeated things in life should make us pause and pay attention as well. So, I'm in the midst of pondering right now.

By the way, I encourage you to visit my friend Leigh Ann's blog. We've never met face-to-face but have begun a wonderful friendship through our blogs and through email conversations. Leigh Ann does wonderful collage work and shares her art on her blog as she ponders her life of faith. I used to feel it was not possible to build friendships and community online without physical presence, but have changed my feelings about this as I have gained great and deep friendships with many people through blogging and participating in online art groups... but that's a topic for another day's blog post.

30 Day Blogging Challenge day 9.

Monday Meandering 11.9.2015

A little bit of this and a little bit of that...on a Monday.
I mentioned a while ago that I have wanted to learn watercolor. I signed up for a class with Junelle Jacobson. I have long admired her art and since she does watercolor I thought I'd give one of her classes a try. I haven't had much time to dig into the actual class material but I did begin to play a bit with watercolor over the weekend. I am still trying to get over the cold bug I had so I spent most of the weekend laying low at home.

For this class I'm recycling an altered book journal I made a few years ago. I only filled a few pages and for some reason moved on to something else. The book is filled with watercolor paper signatures.

The other day when I went to antique shops and found the old Rolodex to use as a Rolodex art journal, I also found a few old books and some old flashcards. They'll show up in some of the Ephemera Paper Packs in my Etsy shop.

I did some more backgrounds on a few of the Rolodex cards.

My sister's first Rolodex art journal card.

Last week I added some new journals to my Etsy shop:

30 Day Blogging Challenge Day 8.