THE WORLD IS CHANGING DRAMATICALLY.Speaker John Randalls delivered the Senior Day sermon at Preston Ridge last Sunday. While many of the High School seniors may not have heard a sermon based on 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27 most athletes have come across this passage a time or two.
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one gets the prize?Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, bu we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do notrun like someone running aimlessly. I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."
The main points of the sermon were:
Champions run to win. (This is a command)
Be Disciplined
Set goals
Strive for Excellence
Love God, hate sin
One of the things Mr. Randalls pointed out was that the last person a coach wants on his team is someone who just wants to make the team. If we do not want to win then we are likely to do more harm than good. Those who try to do just enough to "make the team" usually bring others down to their low standard. I have mentioned the Awesome Bible Study Ladies before and will likely mention them many more times. One of the things I most appreciate about them is that they are in the game to WIN. No one there is sitting idly by, just glad to know Jesus and slide into heaven by GRACE. My Awesome Bible Study Ladies want to finish strong...they want to cross the finish line with hearts that are more like Jesus than when their race started. I want to be changed. I want to be sanctified not just justified by Christ's sacrifice for me.
I created the circle on the left page by following the directions given in this video on YouTube (video by Millande). Millande calls this a Mandala Zentangle. Since I began with a circular theme, I continued by punching out some circles and then learning a new circle based tangle. I also added dots to the border picking them up from the inside of the circular Zentangle. I repeated other motifs from the circular zentangle throughout both pages.
The border around the scripture is Snircle. I first saw it on Pinterest, it's original source is tanglebucket. There are complete instructions on this site by Sandy Hunter.
A closer look at the Mandala Zentangle. I purchased some circular cardstock from Michael's. I painted the white circle with watercolors to match the existing pages before I tangled the designs. I used paper tape to add interest (striped red and white). I placed one piece of tape across both pages for continuity.
As in my first Smashed Sermon I used a page from the Smash Pad to record the scripture from the sermon.
This bee appeared in the video for the Mandala Zentangle, I repeated him on both pages for
continuity OR because he is fun to draw!
Bee!
Another bee!
More circles to go with the theme. I liked the three keys sticker, it reminded me that many sermons have three "key" points. Though this particular sermon had more. I love this project. I enjoy thinking about the sermon, coordinating the colors, planning the layout of the pages, creating tangles and embellishments to include on the pages and the freedom. I feel free to experiment, to try new things, to do what I want since it's my SMASHing Sermons journal and doesn't have to meet any ones expectation except my own.
At the end of "Making Crosses", my project for Lent, I stated that I wanted to find another project that would allow me to focus on God and use creativity on a regular basis. I found it!!
Every Sunday I take notes on our pastor's sermons in a small notebook for that purpose. I don't like the notebook because the spacing of the lines is weird and sometimes I use all the lines and pages (2 per sermon) and sometimes I don't. All that blank space bugs me. The notebook itself is very bland and not very exciting. Most people probably don't care if their notebook is exciting but as a lover of pens, paper, school supplies and The Container Store I want my notebook to be pretty!
Recently I went to Michael's Craft store to purchase some supplies for the third grade Sunday School class and I saw some wonderful notebooks called SMASH books. The idea for these is that you use them for projects. They have a pen with a marker on one end and a glue stick on the other attached to the notebook. That way the glue is always handy and you can easily glue things into your notebook as you find them. Examples of things people use these for: wedding planning, decorating or remodeling, a place to collect ideas for projects, a place to save favorite quotes and sayings and as a planner. Art journaling is very popular right now and this is a modified version of that.
What I think is really cool about things like this is that I love to take something designed for a "normal" or secular purpose and use it for something spiritual. I bought a SMASH book! I am using it to paste in my sermon notes. I am then taking time during the week following the sermon to go back over the notes, look up the scriptures mentioned in the sermon and then create something decorative around the sermon notes and the scriptures. The SMASH purpose is to record "the moments and musing that stick". I want God's Word to "stick" to me!
I did the first sermon this week. Our pastor presents interesting and challenging sermons, ones that make you want to change something about yourself or to do something differently. Each sermon is based on scripture and is full of meaning. This week was the Mother's Day sermon. Mother's Day was so hectic for us this year. I had spent several days preparing to teach the third graders and teaching them just fills your head with kids. If you've ever taught children then you know what I mean. They are so funny and they talk so much. After I leave them I need time to let it all settle. This doesn't leave much room in my brain for reflection on the sermon. Since it was Mother's Day we rushed to Chipotle after church to eat lunch and then catch an afternoon movie (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel - my Mother's Day present). Dean has work going on all the time and Parker has had AP tests so both wanted to get home and have time to do things in the evening. Anyway, life is always like this so I rarely take the time to go back over the sermon, even the ones that seem like they were written just for me.
This week I worked on the SMASH sermon pages several evenings which meant I thought about the Scriptures and the Sermons several times and let them sink in. I was very excited with how the pages came out. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can come up with for the next sermons. Below are pictures of the notebook and accessories. Yes! the notebook has it's own accessories! Sadly notebooks don't wear shoes, however there is an elastic band to go around it that holds extra pens, there are little flags and stickers, some striped paperclips with little flags on them, Smash pads which are for recording certain kinds of information like quotes or family events, and there are pockets. I did not purchase all the mentioned accessories. I need something to look forward to!
SMASH notebook and glue/pen.
I glued one of the pockets on the inside cover. I keep grid paper in the pocket to take sermon notes on. I also keep some of the pages from the small smash pad that I use to record the sermon's scriptures.
Some of the pages in the notebook are already "decorated" in some way. This is the first page of the yellow Smash notebook.
This is the two page spread of the sermon and the scriptures. I pasted the sermon notes onto the left hand page and then later wrote the scriptures from the sermon on the smash pad pages and glued them on the right hand side.
I stamped some butterflies onto watercolor paper and then painted them and cut them out. I then glued them onto the notebook page. Then I began tangling around the butterflies.
In the Sermon our pastor, Gerald Griffin talked about what Moms do. They protect. He mentioned three ways Moms protect.
1. Moms protect by living the Word of God.
2. Moms protect by Living Their Faith
3. Moms protect by Modeling Service.
The scriptures used in the sermon were: Psalm 103: 8-12, 1 Corinthians 13: 4-7, and 2 Timothy 3:16
The quote card is from the "blank" smash pad. The tangle that looks like a zig zag is called Pea nuckle and it is new.
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Some pages in the SMASH book are simple and some are pretty busy.
Blank SMASH pad.
Quotes SMASH pad.
More pockets and pages.
This is the elastic band pen holder that goes around the notebook!
When I made the crosses for Lent sometimes I found myself more focused on the process of making the cross than on the MESSAGE of the cross (but not always). I think it will be the same with the SMASHing Sermons project. When I was stamping, painting and cutting out the butterflies, I was thinking about the butterflies. But when I was writing the scriptures on the SMASH pads, I was thinking about the scriptures and I was going back over the sermon notes. When you are blessed with really good teaching it is a shame to hear it on Sunday, talk over the particularly meaningful parts with your husband and family and then just sort of let it go. I don't want to let ANY of God's Word go. I have mentioned my ladies Bible study and how much I get from studying God's word in depth. Those lessons stay with me. Maybe this will be a way for the truth of God's Word from Sunday's Sermons to also stay with me, SMASHed upon my heart. Happy Smashing!
My office: this shows the entire width of the office, the only other things that fit in here with me are a tall, narrow cabinet and Jackson's bunny cage. It is cozy but functional! In the dark spot on the left side of my desk is a small metal drawer cabinet where I keep glue, tape, exacto knife, etc. On top of that is my printer. Immediately to the right of the cabinet is a tie storage box from the Container store. In it I store markers of all kinds, drawing pencils, paint brushes, paint pens, gel pens and Truman the Mizzou Tiger. I have a metal pin board on the wall behind my desk. I also purchased two metal pictures from Hobby Lobby, you can see the Eiffel Tower one on the wall. These double as magnetic boards so that I can put up projects or ideas or just new pictures if I want to change things up. One of my crosses is currently on the other metal picture.
Another view of my desk.
My creativity is usually fueled by Diet Cherry Coke and Starbuck's Black Ice Tea, I think the tea on this day was the Black Currant Ice Tea from Corner Bakery. the watch is my Garmin, it sinks my runs to the computer and automatically puts them on a calendar. One less organizational item to worry about.
I am not a very organized person. I have a loose organizational system that involves lots of visuals. If it is out of sight then for me it is out of mind. This is one of the reasons there is perpetually a stack of papers on my kitchen counter. This is the stack of papers that I shove into the kitchen cabinet when someone comes to our house. The stack is smaller and more manageable than when the kids were in elementary school. There is just so much less to keep up with now that Bailey is at Mizzou and Parker is in High School- much less: permission forms, project rubrics, school trip information, Earth Day/ holiday/Fall festival info, car wash, scout information, rec sports info, schedules of all kinds for team, clubs, lessons, picture day forms, prescriptions to be filled, pictures to be framed, forms to be filed, etc.
The other area of organization that I struggle with is in the area of crafts. I have a craft cabinet and a very small office. I employ the same organizational strategy for making crafts and storing craft materials that I use for paperwork: out of sight, out of mind, therefore keep current project materials handy! The Zentangle projects are ones that I want to work on often, these can be worked on while "watching" TV with Dean and Parker. I therefore needed a way to store the Zentangle supplies in a way that was easily accessible.
This is what I came up with- a magazine storage box. I can keep this box with all my books and supplies for Zentangle projects in my office and then easily take it wherever I will be working.
I also needed a way to organize and "store" the different Zentangle patterns. I looked at the many Zentangle websites to see how others have organized their patterns. It is helpful to have them all in one place. Some people complete all the different patterns on special Zentangle tiles but then you have to store all the tiles. This is the method I liked best found at TanglePatterns.com. This is why Linda chose this system of organization: "I use Moleskine® squared notebooks. The paper is acid-free and nice and smooth for drawing with the Sakura Micron Pens. The squared pages provide light guidelines and these help me get more accurate proportions when I draw. Not having done any drawing before, I need all the help I can get. These notebooks are a perfect size for portability along with your Zentangle® supplies." I agree with Linda. Below are examples from my Moleskine notebook and some tangles I have completed recently.
In the Zentangle books each new step in the tangle is drawn with red pen. I sometimes remember to change pens to illustrate the next step! I could just refer to the books but I need to practice the pattern anyway and this gives me a place to put the Zentangles I learn from the internet websites. It is also helpful to have all your patterns in one place so you can easily flip through the book and find what you want to use for a project. I am often trying to balance light and dark patterns in a project so it helps to flip through to look for what is needed for balance.
OWLS!
I must have created the one on the right while watching the Big Bang Theory with Dean and Parker. I will use it in my Project Life scrapbook. Bazinga!
Tangling is fun to do. It does not require much skill and can be easily learned. The results are satisfying immediately. I grew up watching my grandmother, her sister and my cousins knit or crochet in front of the TV, while sitting outside, etc. I do one day hope to learn to knit but until then tangling has been so much fun to learn. It's the perfect thing to do while sitting somewhere. I wish I had known about it when I was doing all that waiting in car pool lines and waiting at soccer practice, dance lessons, and doctors appointments.
I used a jar stamp for the outline of one of the tangles above. I used the same stamp to create one of my cross projects, you can see that here. I have a pear stencil that I used for some and an owl stamp that I love! after stamping I sketched a "string" inside and then tangled around the strings. Sometimes looking at all the little tangled squares reminds me of quilting. Some Zentangle artists make samplers of the different patterns so tangling does have a quilt-making quality. It is as close as I will get to that intricate skill. Happy Tangling!
I continue to enjoy this project. Here are my thoughts so far. I am posting each day's photo of the cross on Facebook. This has been very helpful because people seem to enjoy seeing them and many people say kind and encouraging things. This is very helpful with the perseverance and accountability needed to do something every day even if you do not have time or don't feel like it that day. I do need to make sure that my focus stays on Christ.
It is challenging to make a cross every day that is interesting with the things available. I can see where I might later want to do a project where you make something once a week. Then you could use a day to plan and get ideas. Another day you could go out and search for materials or buy supplies that would leave 5 days to paint on a layer, let it dry, mold something, bake it, paper mache one day- paint the next, etc. Some of the things I wanted to do involved supplies I do not have on hand. I want to buy a white paint pen and a white marker to use on black. I also want to buy a small box of crayons to do one of those pictures where you color very hard with the crayon in color, then you color over it with black - then you scratch away the black to reveal the colors below. When I was in elementary school we colored orange onto paper in this way, covered it in black crayon and then scratched on a jack-o-lantern. Is it strange that I remember that?
The two crosses above were made using Prismacolor markers. I love Prismacolor markers! Many years ago I noticed and liked the artwork of Mary Englebreit. One of her famous greeting cards pictures a little girl in a chair, I think she is surrounded by toys with a crown on her head and a royal cloak about her shoulders. The caption says "It's good to be Queen!". I read an article about Mary Englebreit and her work, she often uses Prismacolor markers. So I bought some. I love them! They make me happy. I have used them over the years to make three little pig birthday invitations, Christmas cards, newsletters, illustrations for an enrichment program and many other alien, cowboy, construction, pirate, dinosaur, Medieval, Egypt, China--themed kid projects and decorations.
Below are the other crosses created this week. The "remember" cross is made from a post card mailed to me by my friend Nanette from her Spring Break trip to Paris! Parker said it looked like something from a scrapbook and that's because I used scrapbook paper, scrapbook embellishments and scrapbook techniques to make it. There are two Zentangle crosses, an origami heart cross (Instructions here) and a cross made by using the technique of quilling. The origami cross was very time consuming because I wanted to make an origami dove. I tried for at least half an hour to fold several sheets of origami paper into a dove. I could not figure it out. I was using instructions from an origami book, I then went back to the easy origami site and checked to see if Nancy Jenks had dove making instructions, alas she did not, but she did have heart instructions, so there it is. I am often constrained by my artistic limitations, the key is: Do not give up and make substitutions with skills you already have when necessary!
Bailey will be here this week. I plan to have her collaborate with me on some ideas and cross making projects. There will be another post today. It's a long story but it has to do with not being able to get Blogger to do what I want it to. In this case I would like to add text and some more pictures below the pictures at the bottom of this post...it won't let me. Bailey will be here soon to solve all my Blogger problems. continued!
