40 Days continued once more...

The 40 days ended yesterday. We serve an ever loving, ever amazing God. He moved in ways I would not have imagined. I am still processing what I learned. I do know this, I gave miniscule imperfect offerings of small sacrifice and God returned with blessings overflowing of his imcomparable love and care.


 

40 Days continued

More pages from the 40 days.


 

40 Days

42 days ago our new pastor, Jake, called on the church to fast for 40 days. That idea resonated in my heart and I asked the Lord to show me what I might offer to Him. Jake had suggested that we look at the spiritual discipline of "denying the flesh" and also think of fasting as "eliminating distractions". I prayed and felt called to relinquish some areas of my life to God for the next 40 days and embarked on the adventure with expectation. Jake had suggested keeping
a journal. Since I was already doing that I resolved to become more intentional during the 40 day time period. I journaled every day, and within a few days chose a design theme that I tried to carry through with variations during this spiritual journey.

 

Individual Tags from the Tag Book

The first tag is a rainy Romanian street. I love the car headlights reflected on the rainy street. Because we traveled with a team from our church I had the added advantage of receiving all their photos, also. It ended up being over 3,000 pictures! I used Photoshop Elements to change the photo image, and there is part of a flyer I picked up at a museum we visited. The choices I use in Photoshop are in the "filter" section of the toolbar. From the "filter" I choose "artistic" and then use "cutout" and "poster edges". The image resembles a woodcut in a way. The second tag is a photo of a very old church down the street from where we stayed in Hateg, Romania. The background uses Distressed Inks with a rubber stamp on the background. In addition to the photo are the postage stamps and part of the post card that I brought back from the trip. The third tag has a stamp, part of a brochure, some small pictures from a map, and a stamp from a museum. On top is a photo I took in Arad, Romania. The Orthodox catherdral is being built in Arad and is nearing completion. The weekend we were there the four gold crosses, one about 10 feet tall, and three 6-7 feet tall were leaning against the staircase awaiting the crane to position them on the steeples of the church. I was so excited to have a chance to photograph the crosses still resting on the ground before being lifted into place. You can see the three gold crosses if you look for them.
The phot manager I mentioned in the last post "Picasa" can be downloaded for free at www.picasa.com. It is a terrific photo organizer. The store in Roseville where I took the class is: www.stampartshoppe.com. It is a wonderful store, great classes, and the store owner, Sandy, is terrific.

 

A Tag Book: Images from Romania and Vienna

I always come back from a trip with hundreds of photos and bits and pieces of ephemera that I have gathered during the journey. The photos are filed on Picasa ( great photo manager). And the bits and pieces sit on the shelf for years. This trip's images finally found a creative home. I took an evening class from the Stamp Art Shoppe in Roseville, CA on making Tag Books.
It was the perfect small, yet lovely way to show off my photos and odd gatherings. I printed some of my photos on vellum and have manipulated them on Photoshop Elements. The tags have been colored using Distressed Inks and various rubber stamps. Some of my gatherings from the trip included old post cards and stamps from an antique dealer and some wonderful yarns and strings from a yarn shop in Vienna. Everything gets cut and pasted on the tags.

 

These are pages I did in a series using each letter of the alphabet and some verses from the Psalms in Latin and English. The inspriration for this series came from a beautiful small book that is published by the Getty Museum, An Abecedarium:
Illuminated Alphabets from the Court of the Emperor Rudolf II. Getty also has The Art of the Pen and Nature Illuminated which I recommend. These are my designs for M and N.
 

So many options...

On my trip to LA and San Diego, and then later in the week to Palo Alto and Stanford campus I had so many opportunities for drawing and journaling. The first pages are from SD and LA. My son's dog I haven't quite captured his real likeness. I am going to keep trying. Then on the other side of the page is a photo of my great nephew, Liam, at a very colorful indoor playground. I am still a little intimidated to draw children. The lower journal pages
are the drawings I did in the Cantor Art Museum at Stanford and the Memorial Chapel. I have been reading a book by Peter Steinhart, The Undressed Art: Why We Draw . It has some wonderful insights on drawing. Such as: "Drawing is a way of communicating with the world, of listening to what the world has to say and answering back."
"The visual mind can only partly be understood in words." I am understanding the urge to draw in a entirely new way. It is facsinating. 

Cartoon format, thanks Danny Gregory

One of my all time favorite web sites is: www.dannygregory.com. He has inspired my return to serious drawing and journaling in so many ways. Just recently I noticed his use of the comic book format and realized it would work well for the newletter I write for my husband's non-profit organization, Wheelchair Sports International. On further thought I saw the potential for other uses. I immediately did a thank you note for a friend that I had just visited in Santa Cruz. I had taken some digital photos while I was there. I used those pictures and worked in Photoshop Elements and Printmaster, a desktop publishing program that I really like. I was able to fairly quickly put the photos in a comic book format and I was very happy with the results. Above are some clips I pasted in my journal from Danny Gregory's web site and then the thank you that Iwrote to my friend.

 

A hymn to the Great Creator

The service at Memorial Chapel on the campus of Stanford University in Palo Alto this weekend had a wonderful hymn: "God, who stretched the spangled heavens infinite in time and place,
flung the suns in burning radiance through the silent fields of space:
we your children in your likeness share inventive powers with you;
Great Creator, still creating, show us what we yet may do.
As each far horizon beckons, may it challenge us anew, sharing your creative purpose, serving others, honoring you.
May our dreams prove rich with promise, each endeavor well begun.
Great Creator, give us guidance till our goals and yours are one."  

Going Deeper

My journal has helped me to concentrate more on God's Word in prayer and meditation. I have then been able to explore drawing and journaling as a more daily activity. This page was inspired by Matyas Cathedral in Budapest, Hungary. We visited there 2 years ago and I took many pictures inside the cathedral. It is filled with richly painted walls of Hungarian folk designs. It also houses the crown of the royal family. This journal page was inspired by the crown.

Creative paths to entwine your heart with the Word of God

I have rediscovered journaling and through my journals have become passionate abut drawing and painting. A friend and I have started to do some workshops exploring how to go deeper with God in journals. We present a number of techniques to use journals in more creative ways, both using them as visual journals (collage, calligraphy, drawings, watercolors, etc.) and also using them for more creative writing and interacting with God's Word through paraphrasing, simple poetry, personal application, summarizing, and memorizing using the journal as a great place to rewrite scripture using different types of hand lettering and simple calligraphy.