The spiritual dimension of being content

Two new prompts on two of my favorite art journaling websites, Daisy Yellow and a Year in the Life of An Art Journal, have led me to create my first two-page art journal creation. Art journals perhaps typically are two pages, but up to now, mine all were one.

Daisy Yellow's 6ix 3 prompts were decadence, magenta, a tree or petals, rubber or eraser stamp, painted polka dots and a diagram. The idea on her prompt is to use all six. When I saw this prompt, I immediately thought of some rose petals that were drying out on the floor of my craft room. They had been given to me by a sweet 6-year-old girl who was volunteering at the same race I was on Saturday, the Citrus Heritage Run. The girl is "Marcie's daughter." (I think I know her real name, but her Mom's is enough for those that need to know.)  I knew I was going to use the rose petals on this page, along with eraser-stamped painted polka dots, but I wasn't sure what else I would do.\

Then I read "A Year in The Life of An Art Journal's" first official prompt for 2013. Although my initial year of joining in on these prompts, 2012, didn't seem to have much of a theme, most of the five or six years "A Year in the Life of An Art Journal" has been around have. In 2011 it was music.  This year it is beverage-filled mugs. I have so far focused on mugs that hold tea (or maybe coffee) but the prompts could possibly be interpreted to be mugs of cold drinks as well. So far means this official prompt, and the one posted earlier this month, a warm-up exercise, that for me focused on tea, but not a tea mug.

The new prompt asked us to focus a page on whatever "one little word" or New Year's resolution we are focusing on in life all this year. There are actually two parts to this year's prompts, which are posted twice monthly, and you can do both parts or either if you want to participate. The first part is to actually take a picture of your mug in some setting that incorporates the prompt. The second part is to follow specific, but short, directions for creating a more artistic rendition based on the same prompt. This week, those directions were to use water colors and sprinkle salt onto the wet page.

Unlike the last prompt where I merely stained the page with a teabag and then drew a calming ocean scene onto that, I actually gave some thought to my collection of mugs this time around. My "one little word," in case you missed an earlier blog post about it, is "content."

Part of being "content" will probably soon mean figuring out soon how to make Starbucks-style drinks at home and drinking them from the nice  too large collection of mugs we have here, as we have all but sworn that restaurant off. (We did pay them a visit yesterday.) But for now, one mug in particular especially reminds me of being content. It is my mug that I received one Mother's Day at my in-laws church in Lancaster. That mug has a scripture, Proverbs 103:2 on back, and originally came with a little book filled with devotionals. That's plenty of stuff right there to help me fill my mind on the things above,  which is what I believe is the key to being content. Not to mention that I got that mug because I'm a stepmother. I remember having to defend my choice to accept the mug to my brother-in-law that year, but once I explained it, he understood. My shorter explanation, for here and now, is that after eight years of infertility followed by a divorce, (and watching all the other women over 30 in my church receive special Mother's Day gifts and bask in their glory) each Mother's Day, I remarried and became a stepmother. Don and I have agreed since the first Mother's Day after our wedding that I should claim any recognition given to the moms. And sometime after that, I decided instead of pursuing adoption, I would be content to love my stepchildren as if they were my own. (If that's possible.)

Now remember that I had already decided, before I read the Year in an Art Journal prompt, that I was going to use rose petals on my Daisy Yellow 6ix page, right? Well, guess what's on the front of my teacup? Roses! That's what made me decide these prompts had to go together. I've already combined Daisy Yellow's prompts with each other, and with some of the past Year in the Art Journal prompts,  into single pages of my best artwork. But as this was only the third 6ix prompt, and the first two had produced some nice pages without outside assistance, I wasn't sure I would have had room for all this prompt goodness on a single page. But they had to go together.

So, my process was:

1. Use my two shades of red water color pencils to create the background. I was hoping when I activated them with water the darker red would smear into a shade that at least resembled magenta. But that didn't happen. That background is red, just like the tea mug.

2. Use two rubber flower stamps and red ink to create a "rose bouquet." I had initially thought I was only going to do that on the top (Daisy Yellow) side, but for a number of reasons, I decided to stamp bouquets in several places on both sides. I also thought I was going to color the leaves green, and I started to do so on the first bouquet, but I really didn't like how that looked, so I

3. glued the rose petals down over most of that.

4. Misted the Year in the Life side of the page with red mist, and dabbed an eraser atop a pencil into the wet mist to create polka dots on the Daisy Yellow side.

5. Drew a circle diagram across both pages.

6. On the Daisy Yellow side, glued pieces of scrapbook brand strips, a star, and the cherries from the last package of Cherry Dr. Pepper I drank inside the circle. Just to make sure I had something magenta on the page, and also to remind myself that things in the circle can be eaten by moths, I glued a magenta winged creature, not sure if it is a butterfly or moth, on the edge of the circle. I also stamped cake, ice cream and music notes in there. Note that both the ice cream and the music notes are also rubber stamps, while the cake is acrylic. Also note that one of the tiny pieces of branding strip is the letters "EP," which a few people will recognize as Echo Park Paper's logo, but most everyone else will recognize as my initials. I chose this logo, and put it near the center of the circle to focus on the I-centeredness of decadent desires. My decadent desires include scrapbooking supplies and nice food. (including chocolate and ice cream.) Don's, which I find myself often sucked into and enjoying anyhow, are primarily his passions for music and acting.

7.  On the Year in the Life of An Art Journal side, I wrote out Psalms 103: 1-5. While verse 2 is great by itself, the five verses taken together are very good advice for someone who wants to be content. In summary, they say, praise God and do not forget his benefits.

Coming across this passage of scripture this week was one of those God things. I also made a decision for 2013, perhaps even a resolution, to spend more time in God's word. To that end, I am reading "Breaking Free" a Beth Moore study I first did at High Desert Church in Victorville sometime in 2003. This week, I am studying the benefits of having a relationship with God. These primarily are being able to know and believe God, glorifying him, finding satisfaction (contentment) in him, experiencing his peace and enjoying his presence.

Looking back at the thoughts I had in my head 10 years ago, I can see that God has already done a lot for me, and just one of those things is to deepen my awareness of how wonderfully he can work in my life. Being reminded of that, I am so much more confident that whatever happens this year, if I focus on being content, God will be there for me. The verse on the tea mug was just a further reminder of that, and a reason to blog about it. Sometimes God will use two different mediums in one day or one week to drive home the same passage of scripture, and when that happens, I consider it a passage God really wants me to understand. While this week, they were different scriptures (the Beth Moore study focuses on a section of Isiah 43), being reminded of God's benefits twice this week is obviously something God wants me to keep in mind. I will!