Leave plodding to elephants

I've been working on a new prayer album. The process has been slow. After several days work there were only four finished pages. I was plodding.

There is nothing lovely about anything related to "plod". The word itself is laborious! So... I decided to take a couple of hours to revive the muse with a visit to Mixed Media Variety Hour session 5. The break produced this...

warm up 1

warm up 1 detail

 

I moved right back into my album and made this while the juices were still flowing...

 

 

I suppose it's hard to see in yourself the retreat into doldrums. When I looked at the pages before and after my refresher art session, I was shocked at the difference. From safe and tidy and entirely acceptable...

 

 

to free flowing and full of color. (Warm up 2 here. )

 



Warm up 3

 

I must remember to have fun. Fill the brushes till they drip. Splatter everything in the area. Make a mess! May I never plod again.

 

Thou wilt show me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. Psalm 16:11

New things

Remember the art class I bought last summer? The wonderful thing about it is that once you're in, it's available forever. So I went back this week... and visited a session that I skipped before.

It's all about getting the creative juices going with quick projects. No fine art... just funky do-anything projects to spark a creative fire. Julie built hers around photographs. I used little pieces that have been sitting in bins waiting for some good reason to see the light of day. And tonight... I have some fresh guerrilla art.

Following the basic steps produced pieces that are much busier than what I usually do.

pink lilly of the valley

 

hand stitched



Makes me long for spring.

But ye ... be not weary in well doing. II Thessalonians 3:13

Perpetual calendar project

Pinterest is a gift... or a curse. It depends upon your level of self discipline. It can be a gold mine of great ideas, like the one passed on to me from my daughter.

She told me about a perpetual calendar. The bones of the calendar are index cards, with minimal decoration, to record life's little occurrences that you don't want to forget - like, when did we buy that stove? Or, was Aunt Jessie's funeral two years ago? You know, the minutiae of life that you don't want to forget... but there's just so much that it's hard to keep track of it all.

Based upon her description, I took care of the easy part - 400 index cards. Not so easy was finding something to hold them. It had to be attractive enough to leave in the open, small enough to hold the cards upright, but big enough so that the cards weren't crammed together and hard to read. (Thank you Hobby Lobby. And 50% off!)

I pulled out all the stamps that I haven't used in a couple of years - and some that I had never used! - and gave each of 366 cards a top border. I also added a 1/4 " strip of color along the top of each card to match the color of the title card for that month. (Disaster planning - what if I drop my box and everything falls out?)

 

The dividers for each month are cut from card stock with decorative tags for labels. It took a few days to complete all the steps, but it's ready to go and I love it!

 

 

I decided that I would go back to 2006 to begin recording things. It has been an interesting activity. Reviewing major events, life-changing moments, and unbelievably happy times. 

 

I just finished 2008. And I discovered that I just missed the 5th birthday of my blog. Isn't that sad?

 

O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps. Jeremiah 10:23

Time for more!

I have not fallen off the edge of the earth.

I am not sitting idle, nor sick, nor bored with my blog.

I have tried to discipline myself regarding times that I will spend in front of a computer screen. In so doing, I shot myself in the foot. Bye-bye moments for blogging.

So on a new track... also trying to get back into a schedule of writing, here I am. Catching up.

My prayer album is desperately in need of redoing. It has been almost a year since the last redo and it is falling apart. Literally. As I was reviewing the dog-eared pages, thinking about the time required to make a new book, I came to one of the last pages in the album - the record of what/when/where for guerrilla art.

Only 21 in almost a year.

I must ignore the fact that the creating is so much fun ...

... and do more! Many more!

Rejoice evermore. I Thessalonians 5:16

Blue skies

Considering my location in this time zone, the time of year and resultant length of daylight, it gets dark here between 5 and 6 pm. I mean dark. You can't hunt. You don"t walk the dog without reflective gear in place. It's dark.

About a week ago, between 5 and 6 pm, I walked past a window hurrying to another destination  in the house, when a flash of blue caught my eye. Brilliant blue. The kind of blue that makes you dream of tropical vacations and warm breezes.



SOOC

 

The sky was supposed to be darkening, yet there it was, brilliant blue. I grabbed my camera and ran outside, snapping this rare moment like a crazy ... um, blogger.



SOOC

Which made me think ... just because all the rules of nature say that the sky is supposed to be dark
 this time of day, doesn't mean that unexpected moments of brilliance and beauty can't happen.

And so it is with people. Life isn't over 'til it's over. Don't give up. Don't stop dreaming and reaching. God gives us each day to glorify Him. What will we do right now?

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. Psalm 90:12

Quality time

Quality time or quantity time ... that has been the age-old struggle for all of us who have loved and worked with kids through the years.

Though I have opinions in that debate, quality vs. quantity hasn't had much play time in my brain since my house became an empty nest.

Until Sunday.

I am the teacher for the 3-4 grade Sunday school class. I tell the Bible story and then a classroom assistant takes over and does the worksheets with the kids. Last Sunday, the story was about Moses, Mount Sinai, and the People of Israel preparing to stand at the mountain and hear God. The story went well ... multiple trips up and down the colorful, flannel-graph mountain for busy, flannel-graph Moses. Lots of discussion about the distance covered, the lightning and the great cloud that was to be God's cover. Then on to the business of racing to fill in the worksheets. The clock hit time-to-go and we started to pack things up.

That's when it happened ...

 

My budding-artist-student stood up and said, "I want to draw on the chalkboard." (Said chalkboard
stands floor-to-ceiling and is rarely used, so the request was surprising.) I handed the dusty chalk to her, she plopped right down on the floor, and went to work drawing the mountain that kept Moses so busy during our story.

The real shock came when my assistant plopped down beside her and said, "Well, I want to draw the mountain too!" And there they were, like two arty buddies working on an installation, drawing their separate versions of Mount Sinai, adding clouds and lightning, and groaning about the messy chalk.

I stood there and watched the spark of attachment form between the two. Head to head, they worked well beyond the allotted classroom time. Laughing, they disappeared down the hallway to find soap and water to wash the colorful dust from their hands.

A quality moment, after the class. Nothing in the teacher's book about making art, but blessings on my sweet assistant! Because of her, that young girl will have good memories about being in Sunday School -  a place where people love God and her... enough to get down and dusty for some fellowship.

Then they that feared the Lord spake often to one another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and thought upon his name. Malachi 3:16

Angels in the living room

Over the years, a variety of card-parts have piled up on the surface of Aunt Jessie's game table ... things like houses, choirs, Christmas trees, mangers. They bring their necessary accessories,  sometimes paint or ink, but always double-stick tape (my term) and scissors. 

 

This year angels are everywhere. While ink dries around their edges, the printer chugs away, turning out the message and the card itself.

 

Every December, I tell myself to go simple. I try, but the truth is that what I like is the look of multiple layers and uneven edges.

The ripping and inking are finished, but I'll be folding and taping for a while. And I couldn't be happier.  *smile*

...let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. Hebrews 13:15

Thanksgiving

 

Thanksgiving Day. The very name of this holiday brings to mind the joyful duty of a person who has been redeemed by a loving God... thanksgiving that is filled with praise. 

 

Swirling round my words that are lifted in praise, is the mighty chorus of nature. Weeds that twirl in graceful dance...

 

 

... the heavens rejoice ... the earth is glad;

let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. 

Let the field be joyful and all that is therein;

... all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord...

From the rising of the sun

unto the going down of the same

the Lord's name is to be praised.

Psalm 96, Psalm 113