Hello Creative Spark! (And a giveaway winner)

September always makes me think of fall - even though we are in the middle of a heat wave here! But the fall bug has started for me! I read a quote the other day that really struck me:

"Sunshine is delicious, rain is refreshing.Wind braces us up, snow is exhilarating.There really is no such thing as bad weather,only different kinds of good weather."  ~John Ruskin

That really does sum things up well for me - maybe with the exception of hot, humid weather! I really do like all of the seasons and all types of weather, but I would have to say that autumn is my favorite followed closely be spring. I'm pushing the season a bit with this little package I ordered from Citron Faire shop on Etsy. Aren't they cute!

For the past few months I just haven't had a lot of creative energy. I've made art and done quite a bit of art journaling but I just haven't felt the creative juice I'm used to. I've started painting papers many times only to give up, unhappy with the results. But over the past few days that creative spark has returned. It really started with a little Bible study I stumbled on by accident. I was studying chapter 9 in the gospel of John for the study team I am on at my church. This is the chapter where Jesus heals the blind man and one of the places in the book where he says, "I am the light of the world." I got rabbit-trailed in my study by looking into the Old Testament, and especially Isaiah, at the Messianic references to light and how restoring sight would be a sign of the messiah. This rabbit-trail of light and sight made me want to make a journal to record my findings creatively, So I made a stitched pamphlet with water color paper and started painting some papers. In between all the other things that needed to get done over this holiday weekend I have been covering pages in this journal with painted papers. And I have felt that creative spark ignite! I can make art without the spark, but, wow, do I really feel more connected to it creatively when that spark exists! I just don't like doing things on auto-pilot, whether it's art or Bible study, and it's easy to get into ruts and do just that. My Light and Sight journal pages are filling up with background papers and then I'll start adding what I gleaned from my study.

Our Take Me Deeper theme for faithart devotional studies in September is about God's promises. My first page of the month:

Now for the winner of the bird themed vintage paper pack from my Etsy shop: Shawna Rash! If you like birds join our newest class from the His Kingdom Come foundation team, God's Aviary. Thank you to everyone who participated! Shawna, send me your mailing address: marybrack@gmail.com.

Congratulations Shawna!

A Giveaway and a New Class at HKC

Tomorrow we are releasing a new collaborative class from the foundation team of the His Kingdom Come community. This will be our third collaborative class offering this year. The five of us have such a great time connecting and sharing ideas and art, and it's always neat to see how different our five projects end up!

The class is called Faithart 102: God's Aviary. Anyone who has followed my blog for any length of time knows how much I enjoy birds! We each took a different bird or bird subject and traced the theme through the Bible. We then each made a different type of journal to put our study notes and art into. You can purchase each class individually for $8 or a bundle of all five for $35. Visit here to read more about the classes. Here is a sneak peak video of the class:

For my study I dug into bird symbolism used in the Bible and focused on three areas: trust, refuge and renewal. Here is a sneak peak into my journal:

Since I love birds and I love collage and I have bird themed collage packs of vintage papers in my Etsy shop I decided it would be fun to do a giveaway on my blog.  Here is what you do: pop over to my Etsy shop, {found on brighton}, and take a peak around. then come back here and share a comment about an item you saw there. The winner of the random drawing will win a bird themed paper pack plus a few extra goodies! Leave your comment here by 6:00 pm EST Sunday.  I will announce the winner here on Monday, September 7. 

Well, I'm looking forward to a long weekend and a little extra time to play with art. I hope you enjoy your holiday weekend and that you find time to be creative. :)

Collage Therapy

There has not been much time for making art over the past ten days or so. The end of the school year has kept me very busy with the school our church has adopted. An exciting thing that happened last week was that our public school system held a meeting pulling their faith based partners together. We adopted a public school ten years ago and have long had a dream of seeing a church connected with each of the 40 elementary schools. Our new superintendent has been very open to this and we are now halfway to our goal. It was a great half-day event hearing the stories of the many different ways the partner churches are serving the schools. As much as I love networking and being at events such as this, as an introvert, I find that once the adrenaline wears off my energy just drains from my mind and my body and leaks out through my toes. The hard part about this past week was that after having events during the day each day, I then had events in the evenings. Not much time or energy left for creativity! 

I have had an idea floating around in my head for quite some time that I finally started putting to paper before this 10 day stretch of activity. So each day I tried to sit down for 10 or 15 or 30 minutes and do a little work on my page. I love collage and taking pieces of paper and making a design with them. I have taken magazine paper or painted papers and made sunburst designs to serve as backgrounds.

I even collaged circles inside a sunburst.

I have collaged strips of paper to fill a page or to simply make borders.

I have used pieces of paper to make objects, such as the nest on this page.

And of course I have collaged circles.

The idea that has been in my head for quite a while is to use paper to collage a mosaic or stained glass effect. So in the little bits of time this past week I cut small pieces of painted papers and glued them into a design...

And that became my page for this week's Take Me Deeper devotion.

Now, I realize that this may seem tedious and a lot of work for an art journal page background, but it is amazing to me how therapeutic cutting and gluing little pieces of paper can be. So throughout this busy stretch those bits of time were like being on an oasis during a long desert journey. Those bits of time each day would refresh me. Those bits of time in the evening combined with time in prayer and the Bible each morning restored the energy I need to keep the busy pace of a long stretch of high activity. And now that I finally got that idea out of my head, I'm quite pleased with it and looking forward to doing more. 

Last weekend the His Kingdom Come Foundation Team launched a collaborative class that we did together while on our retreat last month in Florida. The class is called The Zigzag Postcard Book and we each taught the others how to do a technique which then became five postcards and the basis for the book. I taught the other ladies how to do a paper collage sunburst - big surprise, huh?! Here are some glimpses of the book I put together. I used Psalm 51 as a theme for my book. What was really fun was how different all five books ended up.

If you would like to participate in the class you can pop over to the His Kingdom Come website. You will need to join the site, which is free, in order to sign up for the class. And while you're there consider joining our weekly devotion and faithart challenge, Take Me Deeper. We offer a weekly devotion with Bible study ideas and challenge our group to express what they read and studied through their favorite creative medium. Shameless plugs, I know!

Enjoy your holiday today!