Just a Bit of Art

Our "Secret Garden" has been the theme this month in The Art Journaler Community. Some garden art journal pages:

Mini Book Journal - Find Myself in Him

Gratitude Journal - A Moment of Understanding

Gratitude Journal - Live Gratitude

Making Books

I like making books. Altered books and three ring binder books and mini travel books. I like making books A LOT! In fact, so much so that I don't necessarily finish the books that I begin ...hmmmm, finishing what I begin ...that's a topic for another post! Anyway, back to making books ...
I have multiple art journal books that I work in at the same time. I think, for me, there are two main reasons that I work in multiple journals: 

1.) I usually have so many things  running around in my head and for some reason I feel the need to categorize them into themes or topics. Thus, multiple journals. I have one for making art and recording thoughts about my "One Word" for the year ~ my Gratitude Journal.  

I have another where I am making art for prompts from The Art Journaler community that I belong to, as well as some random journaling about my journey of self-discovery. I found a book appropriately named "The Examined Life"

2.) I find that I enjoy working in different sizes of journals. My Gratitude journal is 6x9 landscape. The Examined Life altered book is 5x8. When I made my Reverb 2012 album I had found a perfect little book that was 4x7 and I loved the smaller pages.

So I found another small book and started another art journal in it for this year. This one is 4.5x7. So far it just contains random art journal pages.

But probably my favorite size; the one I keep returning to is 7x9. I have done quite a few of this size:

2011 Advent Art Journal

SLJ Class Art Journal

Montana Road Trip from 2011

Because it's my favorite size to work in I have a new 7x9 art journal book in progress.

The beginning of the cover. The watercolor paper I buy has wonderfully heavy cardboard/chipboard back pages. I cut one down for the cover of my new 7x9 art journal binder, then sprayed on some inks and splattered on paint on a piece of patterned card stock. I glued it on the chipboard cover and will decorate it as I am inspired.

Like I said, I like making books and I love spending time filling them with the musings of my heart, one art journal page at a time. It keeps me sane!

OLW Journey to Gratitude

This year I want to be more intentional about putting into practice habits and goals that will enable my word for the year to result in a renewed mind and heart.  I want my life to be shaped by gratitude. I want to become more positive and more loving. I want my thoughts to be prompted by grace first, rather than criticism or cynicism ~ as embarrassing as that is to admit. I want to become even more aware of myself and how I am wired in order to prevent the "slow drift" from happening again and again.

I have selected a passage of scripture to go along with my word and journey for this year:

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

This passage speaks to me of making the choice to rejoice, to pray and to give thanks. That I need to be intentional about doing things that will focus my mind and heart on God's ways and that the mindset shift I desire will result out of those choices and practices. In addition, the "for" is very important here because it points to a higher purpose than just my attitude or my heart condition ~ choosing to to do these things and make them a way of life and the focus of my heart and mind is God's will for His people. Here is an answer to the "What is God's will for my life?" questions! 

One Word for 2013

Over the years I have selected a word at the beginning of the year as a word to guide my thoughts and goals for the year. I spend time praying about it. I look over my journals for the past year looking for where God may be pressing in on me, areas that need attention, areas in my life that are ready for more spiritual transformation. So, this year my word is...

It's so easy in life to drift, to slowly allow things to effect us in ways that eventually change us, whether we're aware of it or not. For me, I've battled over the past few years with drifting into negative thinking. I don't know exactly how it happened or when it began. I think there's been a thread of it within me all my life, but recently I've noticed that it's become more dominant. I think in part it's a dark side to my nature. I'm a visionary thinker. I see pictures of how things in life should be. I get pretty passionate about affecting change, especially in my job in the church. Reality often is far from the vision of how things should be and it's often very hard being instruments for change. These battles tend to make me weary, and when I am weary I'm not as good at balancing my attitudes. I've been weary for a number of years and this is where I believe the drift toward a negative outlook has crept in. I have not enjoyed noticing this drift. I've always had a fairly positive outlook, even through many years in my life of facing difficult life situations and trials. It has been a tough battle for me over the past few years to try to figure out how to change this attitude/perspective drift. It has been a constant part of my prayer life and I've spent a lot of time looking at this with my pastor/mentor over the past few years. Some of the practices I've made a part of my life have come about as ways to try to keep the weariness at bay, as I have become aware of how much the weariness/burn-out tendencies feed this negative outlook. Practices such as art journaling, making "white space" in my week, self-discovery, balancing my schedule, and doing things that re-energize me on a regular basis help keep me from drifting into weariness.

Then a few months ago I started noticing that many times in Scripture prayer and thanksgiving are connected. For example: 

"Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."  1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
And this study led me to looking at making gratitude a practice. This practice of gratitude and its effects on changing my perspective is what I intend to explore throughout the year.

As a way of keeping me focused and on track through the year, I have joined Ali Edward's group/class "One Little Word". It is more scrapbook based, which I'm not into, so I have made a journal to art journal my journey with this word. Ali's first challenge for the month of January was to create a list of 12 intentions that fit our word to use as guidelines through the year. It was a good practice for focusing in on areas to concentrate on for the year...to be intentional in creating a journey for growth.

The start of my Gratitude Journal ~ an altered book, of course!

First page.
The quote from Ali Edwards reads:
"A single word can be a powerful thing. It can be the ripple in the pond that changes everything."

Gratitude definition and synonyms

My intentions for making gratitude a way of life.

The first few weeks of this month/year have started out very busy ~ hosted a baby shower, finishing and presenting the church budget, some draining issues to work through with some people ~ I'm ready to get back on track. Ready to re-connect with the very practices I spoke of above! 

Advent Journal

This year I did something a little different for my Advent art journal. I participated in Mandy Steward's Advent project which gave us 25 words to randomly select from and then journal about. Some completed pages:

4. Envision

5. Permit

6. Play

7, Eliminate

8. Invite

9 Read