Stepping out in faith

One Year Art Journal isn't a spiritually focused blog, but quite often its prompts put me in touch with my spirituality. The Nov. 15 prompt is "What Do You Want Right Now?" and the second "booker" prompt is to use rubons. Well, it just so happens my most recent rubon purchase is some spiritually focused ones I bought about a year ago, to illustrate my grandson's baptism on a scrapbook page. I also had a few much older rubons that are like fake stitches.

The older rubons came off fairly decently for their age, although since they are white, I am not sure how well they show up in this photo. They are on the left side of the page, which I had already created a striped watercolor background on.

The newer rubons were more of a challenge. Big chunks of all three stayed on the backing, no matter how much I rubbed. So, I decided to fill in the gaps with some gold Stickles.  Not perfect, but better. The top rubon is a dove, the bottom one, which largely stuck to the backing, is a cross. In between is a quote "Let The Faith In Your Heart Be Your Guide."

It is this quote that inspired the rest of my journaling. As One Year Art Journal and several other inspiration sites prompted, I picked a One Little Word for the year, which was "Content." At the beginning of 2013, I thought I'd have plenty of good reasons to focus on the portion of that word that means "being content with what you have." (I also was focusing on some of the other meanings of the word, but that's not part of the point of this entry.) I ran out of unemployment in April, so I was bracing myself for what I thought (correctly) would be a rough year.

But things started looking up in May. I started my business, Pen Porter, that month. Seeing as I invested nothing but the cost of registering my business, it's been profitable. Not quite as much as I'd hoped, but then in August, I got hired to manage the Jurupa Valley Chamber of Commerce part-time. So there's another little bit of income, and it's more than I thought it was going to be. So that's good.

On the somewhat bad side, I've decided I had to split my income off from Don's. I won't go into all the reasons why, but if you know me, you might know why. But the up side of that means I now have some freedom to spend some of my income as I see fit. There's a million things I want, far fewer things I can get.

And then there is a challenge to reach beyond myself. My co-worker, Bob Hernandez, inspires me to this in many ways. He is working at the Chamber strictly as a full-time volunteer, but invests a lot in me both timewise, and financially. He would like to see me "pay it forward," although I can only do so on a limited basis now.

But Sandals has always challenged people to reach beyond themselves. For the past six weeks it specifically has done so through its "Reach" building campaign. This campaign asked us to look beyond ourselves and let God move in our church. Sandals also has a holiday gift giving ministry.

It gave me a lot of pleasure to invest in two gifts for a 13-year-old girl, and to commit a small amount of money over the next two years to the building campaign. I feel like I am a part of something significant, that will reach far beyond myself. I've blessed a young girl, and I've helped my church bless many others through the building campaign.

The journaling at the bottom of this page explains "In the past few months, I have moved from being simply content to feeling blessed and looking beyond myself."

I know this is exactly how God wants me to feel. And therefore, it's what I want for myself right now.

Journaling some of the fall holidays

I know only post sporadically on this blog, mostly my art journal pages. Some of the pages I share on certain Facebook groups instead. But for A Year In the Life of An Art Journal, it often works better to post them on my blog. This day's story also references a page I did inspired only by some Daisy Yellow prompts and the proximity at that time of Veterans' Day.

I more recently finished pages inspired by both the Oct. 30 and Nov. 15 prompts at A Year in the Life of an Art Journal. Here's my story about the Oct. 30-inspired page.

Oct. 30 was in honor of Halloween. The first prompt was "Scary," and the second was to create stripes, like the Wicked Witch of the East's striped socks. Remember her from the Wizard of Oz? She was the one crushed by the house at the beginning of the movie. All you saw were the striped socks peeking out from under the house.

I'd already painted one of my art journal pages orange because of a Daisy Yellow Daily Paper Prompt gone wrong. Then I saw some Zentanglish stripes on Pinterest, and copied them to the best of my ability. But then the page sat there for about two weeks, not anywhere near finished in my mind. I knew that my "scary" orange and black page would somehow focus on Halloween. But Halloween is not my favorite holiday, so I wasn't sure how to finish it. So, I moved on, working on some of my favorite inspiration sites via other pages in my art journal. Quite recently, I came across prompts in Daisy Yellow DPP "Ransom Note," and another prompt in Emily Falconbridge's 52 Questions, which is a series of prompts she published in 2009, but I only discovered at the end of 2012. The prompt in 52 Questions was "What Is Your Favorite Holiday?" My favorite is Easter, which is not a holiday I'm thinking a whole lot about right now. Instead, as I thought about how I might incorporate ANY holiday into an art journal page, my mind roamed from Halloween (this at the time unfinished page) to Veterans' Day (a holiday I had already recently incorporated into another page, below) to Thanksgiving (a holiday I like almost as much as Easter, and will no doubt feature in the journal soon, but not yet.)

Halloween won out when I remembered that I had purchased some really cute Halloween stickers last year to scrapbook my grandson's first Halloween. And Daisy Yellow's DPP "Ransom Note," (create a ransom note with mismatched stickers brought it all together. I decided I'd use the "scary" stickers, the skeletons and the ghosts, on the page. I also wanted to use some of the gazillion "candy" stickers I had left. So, with a little bit of imagination, I came up with the idea to "kidnap" my least favorite holiday, and warn the world that if they want it back, they must give me candy.  I can be pretty diabolical, can't I?