The Christmas season is upon us, and I am super excited!! I wanted to take just a bit of your time to remind you to lay down your badge of honor. You know the one I’m talking about...Busyness. Our days are so crammed with work and chores and needs of others that we run here and there all in the name of being busy. With the fast pace of the world we live in, comes stress. Many say it’s the new normal, but it doesn’t have to be your normal. We have one life to live here on Earth, and Jesus didn’t die, so I could be busy. He came and paid my debts in full, so that I might have and enjoy life-not just in eternity, but here while I’m working for Him. And that’s just what I intend to do. What about you? Are you going to choose busy or blessed? Take some time to enjoy Christmas this year. Lay down the tech and pick up the cookie cutters. Make some decorations. Sing along way too loudly with the Christmas music playing in the stores! In searching for some new Christmas recipes and enjoying a little Christmas fun myself, I ran across the #theydrawandcook hashtag. While I'm not a foodie or a food illustrator, I found myself drawn to some of the more cozy food illustrations that were being shared. That led to me creating a few of my own #theydrawandcook illustrations, so I thought I'd share one of them with you! By the way, did you decide to choose blessed over busy but don’t know where to start? First, spend time with God. You make time for what’s important to you. Make Him the priority, and everything else will eventually fall in place.
Find a quiet place to meet with Him. Put your Bible there, some paper and pens, maybe a journal, and schedule a daily meeting time. If someone needs you during that time, say, “No. Sorry, I have an appointment.” That’s what you’d do if you had a meeting with your boss, right? I like to start the morning with God, but do what works for you. Now write down Psalm 46:10. Be still and know that I am God. Then do just that. Be still. Soak in the great I AM. Share something you’ll be doing to slow down and enjoy the Christmas season, won’t you?
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How is your 2019 rolling along? What successes have you had in the new year? Did you reflect on 2018? If you did, I hope you found it was a year well-lived. Life is good here at the Cabin, and I am excited to give you some much-needed updates. We were blessed to spend time with family during Christmas, and we even broke out the paints for a walk down memory lane. While my grandkids and I all know we celebrate Christmas to honor the birth of our Savior, we painted Santa Clauses when they were little. My heart sang when I got a text from my oldest granddaughter, now in college, asking if we could paint Santas. Yes! As always, I’m dabbling in art journaling and have been playing along with a #useitupfillitup2 Challenge to fill up an old journal with old or left-over supplies. Honestly, I ought to give myself this challenge every month, so that I fill up some of my journals before starting another one! None of you have that problem, right? So what is on my writing desk, you ask? Well, maybe you didn’t but I will fill you in, anyway. Book one of the Cedar Wells Mysteries series is done, and Book two is underway. I've got lots of thoughts on what it takes to really become an author, but I will save that for another post. I will suffice it to say 2019 is the year to make a shift in my writing habits. I am making small changes in the way I do other things, so that I can carve out writing time each week. Be sure to get your copy!
It has been a great month, and I am excited to be moving into September! What does the new month bring? First, the end of summer crazy, good madness at work. I've been enjoying helping amazing educators get the most from their summer professional development hours, and I'm so blessed to be able to work with so many great teachers. As their school year gears up, mine gears down (a little). I've gotten to spend time doing some Bible journaling this afternoon with one of my favorite verses. Your Word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. Psalm 119:105 This Bible journal entry brings with it some exciting news! Starting in September, I will be teaching on Skillshare--an online, subscription based how-to channel. This entry will be the first Bible Journaling for Beginners project. For those of you keeping up with the Cedar Wells Mystery Series, I'm hoping to hear back from the final beta readers this week. After some final adjustments, off to the proofreader it goes! Book two has been stewing...just waiting for the end of summer, so I can dedicate some serious time to my writing. I've got to hurry up and get it written because book three is stirring around in my little noggin! What's on your worktable today? We'd love to know! Share with us in the comments below. Share with us in the comments below.
One of the toughest challenges for me when I journal in my Bible is making a mistake. It's not like I can just rip that page out and start over. By the way, this is why I journal on loose pages and bind them later! But what do you do when you mess up in your Bible? Break out the markers, add another layer or two, and go with it! We've been studying the book of Joshua at church for the last several weeks. Our pastor used Proverbs 21:31 as a tie-in to the study, and the scripture stuck with me. I knew I needed to journal it. The horse is prepared for the day of battle, but the victory belongs to the Lord. I imagined an armored horse at the ready and realized, although we prepare for the journey ahead, each and every victory we receive comes from God. Pretty powerful stuff! I Googled armored horses and found hundreds of types of equine armor--amazing! I sketched out my horse combining a few things I'd found and broke out the watercolor pencils and crayons. I decided to try to use a light wash of black to try to get a grayish-silver for the armor. It was pretty flat, but I kept going. What to do with the horse? I grabbed a brown but stopped. This horse was going into battle with God...what color should he be? Brown just didn't seem to fit. White isn't an option with watercolor on cream-colored Bible pages...Black. I'd already used the black to create the armor, and I wasn't going to get a rich black for two reasons. First, I use matte fluid medium to seal the Bible page. The paint dries on top of the medium; therefore, trying to layer on color reactivates the dried paint and doesn't build on itself. Second, I use inexpensive watercolor crayons which aren't the most vibrant without being able to layer them on. I decided to mix the black and white crayons and hope for a light gray horse. It somewhat worked, but there was no contrast. In other words, I had a large gray blob on the page. Markers to the rescue! I picked up a black marker and started adding some details. Better. I went back in with a gray marker to add some depth...not realizing the black marker was not permanent. I now had a gray blob with black smears. Yay... I grabbed the waterbrush and started pushing black ink around, and something began to happen. I liked what I saw! The monochromatic shades and the hazy lines began to work for me. I said all this to say two things.
#1 Don't worry about making a mistake in your Bible. It's about the time you're spending focused on God's word without the distractions of the world. #2 Don't quit if you make a mistake! Keep layering, add some marker detail, break out the white acrylic paint and clean the slate. Above all, enjoy time being thoughtful, prayerful, conversational, and reflective with God! |
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