John 1:12-13

Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.  (John 1:12-13)

Today I decided that I wanted to do everything sitting here at my computer...while I go to church online (I listen better when my hands are busy)... I picked up a piece of card-stock and pencil, prayed about the scripture and within seconds began to draw.  Went over the drawing with a Thin Sharpie, erased pencil ... Done!

It wasn't until I went to scan it that I realized I had used a piece that had something printed on the back! WHOOPS!

About the picture:

• I put the words "Child of God" on each person's forehead because in II Corinthians 1:22 and Ephesians 1:13 it says that when we accept Jesus we are sealed.  I LOVE THAT!!!  Satan can't put his number seal on our forehead because we already have something there!! WHOOHOO!!! (thing is, I'm guessing the location, it doesn't really say where we are sealed)
• I show Jesus sitting at a table inside each heart to show that He knocked, and they opened their hearts to him and he took up residence in their hearts....in the form of the Holy Spirit of course, because we all know Jesus is sitting on the edge of his throne at the right hand of God ...ready to jump up at any moment to COME GET US!!!  YES!!!  I can just see him...looking at his watch and at God saying ... "Can I go now?!  Isn't it time?  I'm ready!"  Okay, he isn't really looking at his watch but he is getting excited I bet!

Now, I'll probably go downstairs and color it, cause you know I love to color :-)

Later today... 1st I tried watercolor ... way too muted, then I added marker especially to the large heart to make it darker.  I first colored the inside of the heart a darker red and thought. THAT'S NOT RIGHT!  Gotta glow...so I scanned and changed it to yellow and made some other minor changes to the black guys face...I know, it doesn't look good... but I couldn't control my mouse well enough to do a better job.  And then I cropped some of the heart...I just like things going off the page better sometimes.

Matthew 5: 14,16

I just wanted to show that your idea doesn't have to take a long time (for people that really don't have much time).  This literally took me 10 minutes!  and most of that was looking for the permission to use the picture!  


1. I goggled "city lights" and found tons but I just LOVED this one!
2. Found Terms of Use permission... I got it from  Visible Earth (http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/) ... they allow use as long as you give them the credit
3. Opened it in Corel, copy/pasted the scripture, changed it to white text...
4. Saved
5 DONE!



There are several other ideas running in my mind... I have a couple of friends who spend every Saturday morning volunteering at a horse camp where they let children with various health problems ride...they are spotters... and take care of the horses... They are  definitely shining their lights. 

I  have another friend that does transports about once a week.  Meaning she volunteers to transport  an animal scheduled to be "put down" the next day to someone willing to foster it or give it a full time home. 

I explain it better HERE   Light shining.  I could have added the scripture to her picture.  Oh!  And she would give them all homes if she could afford it!  She already has 13(?) cats, 3 birds and a dog!...but every run I make with her she wishes she could keep the animal!


I hang with some good people.


Today's scripture was super simple!

Psalms 119:93

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“I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life.” Psalm 119:93 NIV

Why this picture today?

Last night I got the idea to challenge myself, and anyone wanting to play, to do something artistic with the "Verse A Day" that Biblegateway sends out everyday. If you look at the top of this screen you will see the Verse-A-Day button...click there and see the details.  The challenge doesn't start until August 1st but I wanted to start today to have some examples and just to see if it was even do-able!


What does it mean?
Again the scripture is:
“I will never forget your precepts, for by them you have preserved my life.”Psalm 119:93 NIV
I wanted to show

• the "fork in the road" where we all have to choose, life or death, belief or unbelief...
• the Bible on the sign is the precepts with the "Life" to the left arrow and "Death" to the right...it is there for us to keep us from certain death.
• the "road" to the left is the road less traveled, the narrow road ... and I drew it close to the edge of the page because I wanted to show that we really can't see what is next...we have to depend on God for our every step. I didn't do a very good job showing it but the road is rough (gravel maybe) with stones on either side showing that it is a direction that isn't attractive to "the world".
• the road to the right is wider and the scenery is more beautiful with flowers and trees (ok, so use your imagination!)...but what the traveler can't see is the cliff he will drive off of going that direction...in the direction where he/she is their own god...they don't "need or want" ANYONE telling them what to do, "if it feels good, do it" is their motto.
• the text below is the definition of "precepts" (I had to look it up...I knew what it was, because everyone knows about Kay Arthur's Precept Training...  but it isn't a word you hear every day and I wanted to be certain and to put the definition on my page)

That's it!  YAY! I was able to do something!

Hebrews- Chapter 1

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I started Hebrews Chapter 1 yesterday and finished it today. 

 I did a few things different this time.  In James I had the text of the chapter on the facing page...you don't see that on the blog.  I didn't love that because people looked at the pictures but not the text so they really didn't know what it was saying.  OK, that's a horse, but what about the horse?  So this time, I printed the chapter out on clear label paper and did a LOT of cutting!...that's why it took so long!  Not only the cutting, but figuring out where to put it!  I'm not too crazy about this method either, but we'll see, maybe it'll get better.

There were a couple of things I wish now, that it is too late, I would have done differently.  The whole chapter really is about Jesus, but that isn't all that obvious at first glance of the pictures... I wish I would have written his name really big in the middle then had off shoots from it.  I added the red "Jesus", on the left side, last because I felt like it needed to be somewhere and that was the only spot left!

Now, about the decision I made to hide his face. hummmmmm..... not sure I made the right decision now that it is done.  The reason I did it in the first place is that I don't know what he will look like in Heaven...heck, we don't even know what he looked like here!  But, in Heaven will he just be a glow?... I don't know???  But the further along I got with the page I realized that a portion of his face was going to be showing anyway so I kinda blew that plan!

Another really hard decision for me to make was to put wings on the angels.  I don't personally believe they have wings, it doesn't say they do anywhere... but how would you know they were angels without them?  And that really is the point, right?  When they make their "appearance" here they DON'T have wings...they look just like everyone else!  I actually lost a little job for the pastor's wife one time because I wanted to have angels that looked like a man with a hard hat, or a doctor, or policeman...because THAT IS WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE!  Otherwise we would say..."there goes an angel".  If they had wings we would know who was and who wasn't!  Right?  (And don't even get me going on those silly little cupid things they sell as angels!  Wouldn't the devil just love for you to believe that is all that is protecting you!  NOT!!!  Angels are big BURLY men, able to KICK BUTT!)   ANYWAY, I had to sacrifice my belief for clarity.  SHOOT!

Year before last I took the "Read the Bible through in 90 days" Challenge... I read it cover to cover in 64 days.  I am ashamed to say that was the first time I had ever done that!...cover to cover...I tend to jump around.  Let me tell you what... straight through is THE WAY to read it!  I was shocked at the things I learned doing it that way... and doing it that fast was good too because I was able to "follow" it better that way....I am really bad about running after rabbits and never getting back to the original starting place...OR, just giving up because I hit Leviticus and who wants to take days and days to read that?!   But the point I want to make here is that even though you read the words, you don't "see" them the same way you do when you are thinking about how to draw them.  If you look to the left, mid-way down, there is a little picture of Jesus' hands, rolling up the universe like a garment!!!  It says he will do that!  WOW!  The words take on a whole new life for me now.  Now, I'm off...on to chapter 2.  

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Flower Girl Collage

I was out surfing the web this morning and saw a collage done that I just loved; ((HERE).  Donna Downey had taken a piece of flower patterned cardstock and cut the flowers out and pasted them onto her journal page.  I LOVED IT!  So, I decided I would give it a try..but you will see that I OBVIOUSLY looked at her's once and not again, because mine is TOTALLY different!  I like her's much better, but, mine is ok too.  This is my original (again, the scan is HORRIBLE!  All of the background colors should be a pale yellow!  there is ZERO orange in the background of  the original!  And I don't know how to fix it!  I guess I really need to take pictures instead of scanning.  ARGH!!!

If you looked at her's you will see that the proportions are completely different...  She started out with a smaller journal and the original 12x12 card-stock.... Mine is bigger and just a copy of the card stock.  I decided that since I just wanted to see what I could do with the idea  I cheated and made the copy... When I make it again I want the REAL piece of card stock!  This was done in a quickie, cheap card stock spiral bound "prototype" book that I made for testing ideas.. I do that a lot, if I like it then I will re-do it on  in a good journal.  As it turns out, it is probably one of the favorite things I've done and now its on a throw away journal! SHOOT!

However, I'm sure you've noticed that I liked her well enough to add her to my header!...the wonders of cropping!

THE REST OF THE STORY....

I have had a clock that I wanted to do something with for a while so here ya go...

What Every Teacher Wishes She Could Say...

I got a new White Gelly Pen...had to play!

Just Because...

I was just out on the web looking for bracelets that I might could make using my Dr. Pepper bottle...and as I looked at some this thought occurred to me....

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LOVE IS....

This ended up having to be a hybrid  ... not on purpose, its because I misspelled a "angered"!  Thankfully I noticed it before it was colored.  I scanned the b/w version, took it into PSE and erased the misspelled word, then printed it again.  Watercolor painted the background of the heart the used markers for the words.  Scanned that so I have that version... but I cut out the original colored copy, glue it down into my journal and did this:

I just couldn't stop there!

I always feel like I have to fill the whole page!  ... and this was the big tablet again so it took a while!

The Book of James

You can probably tell by now that I REALLY want to do a journal... but I REALLY don't have anything to say!  I have tried my whole life to write in a diary/journal and get about a week into it and think "WHY?!"  Don't like that much "self focus"!!

I was thinking about all of the above last week and I was reminded "to seek ye first, the kingdom of God"... I don't do that very well either! Sure, I seek (some) but certainly not FIRST.  OUCH!  So, I decided then and there to make an art journal of books of the Bible.  I ordered new pads of paper to do it and they came in today... so, here is my first...James, Chapter 1.

I not really certain why I started with James...except it probably is one of my favorites.  It is the "meat" of how to live a life of righteousness...and I tend to camp there a lot.

I just started, one verse at a time and hoped I would have enough room to get through the chapter!  It was close...I may have done some things a little different with more room...but that's okay...I accomplished what I set out to accomplish....1 chapter, 1 page.  I wonder if anyone else can "read" it.  HA!  The good news is, I can... and it is forcing me to THINK about each verse.  MUCH needed discipline!

AND, I had FUN!

Added 7/20/2011

I finished all of James last night...

One thing I did that I would recommend if you want to try something like this...
I printed each chapter out and tape it to the back of the previous page so that I could take my pad and pencil with me everywhere and draw when I could.  I drew the horse and boat while sitting in my car waiting for a friend I was picking up at the airport.... no wasted time.

Lessons learned:

1. - Read the whole chapter first, not just one verse at a time.
2. - I used ZERO visual references, it was all from my head....soooooo, there are things that really aren't great representations of what they are.... Like chapter 3:4.... the thing in the water is SUPPOSE to be a rudder... a friend let me know quick, that is not what a rudder looks like...  oops... well, its a rudder to me...
3. - Every chapter was a little different... For chapter 3 I tried to incorporate the verse number into the drawing...so I can now look at it and know exactly what verse it represents...I like that...but I gave up on that by chapter 4... In chapter four there were main "word" ideas ... and by chapter 5 I was drawing stuff I never dreamed I could!  Hummmm....He does indeed "fill in the ability gap"!!!
4. - I now know why I started with James... first, James was a very visual writer!  Almost every verse could be drawn... second, I NEEDED to know what it said!
5. - I am AMAZED at how much I can remember of James now, and what I learned while meditating on it one verse at a time.  I came away saying...WOW!  I'm not "there" yet...gotta WATCH WHAT I SAY!!!
6. - The last couple of days I have been tempted to spend on things I don't need...but really want...and my little picture of the girl praying for $ with wrong motives, and the self-indulgent fat man pops in my brain... NOPE not gonna give way to temptation!

This was an amazing exercise!  I totally recommend that you give it a try.  No excuses!  I started saying "but I can't draw"...I really wish I could make you understand how much I don't believe I can draw....and so I don't.    Okay, I'm pretty good at Pictionary,but that's about it.  You may not have noticed, but by the last chapter, my drawing, and ideas got better... I never looked at anything for reference, I just sat on my sofa and drew ... THAT is a perfect example of God filling in the gaps ...where we are weak He takes over! 

100% Computer This Time

I have worked with CorelDraw since Version 1.0...YEARS and YEARS now.  But, I only know what I know from pushing buttons to see what they will do.  Once I learn what I need I stop there and work with what I know.  One thing I have always wanted to do but just never bother to figure out is fitting letters into a space.

Like this:

and obviously, today I figured it out!

- Copy/Pasted text from Biblegateway...just so I didn't have to type it.
- Changed font to "AL Boogie Woogie"
- Drew the shapes I wanted to fit the text into
- Used Control K to break all the words apart.  This is the new part I learned today.  If you have a paragraph of text you can hit Ctrl K to break the paragraph down into sentences. Ctrl K again breaks it down into words.  Ctrl K on a selected word breaks it into letters...
- THEN you can do whatever you want to with the letters...stretch/shrink/skew...but, if you want to move the nodes around you have to convert the letter into "curves" and you can move it to your hearts content.