Art
journaling is something I've been playing with for awhile. I love it! I art journal pretty much everyday. I have one journal that I use
at home and I have one I take with me everywhere. I use many different
kinds of media. I use acrylic, collage, stamping, watercolor, PITT pens and more.
There is no wrong way to art in a journal. It's all about being
free and experimenting. It can be a private place to express yourself.
I'm hoping to teach workshops on art journaling soon. I do hope to use art journaling in a ministry too. I want to help others in healing, in seeing their identity in Christ, for connecting with God and for their spiritual walk. An example would be when I was 3 to 6 I was terribly scared of storms. We moved when I was 5 and I met an older girl who lived across the street. I remember she was hanging out with me in the hallway of our apartment complex and it was storming. I told her how scared I was. She told me that when it thunders that the angels were bowling or God was moving furniture. From that day I wasn't so scared of storms. So with art journaling I can use paint, other visuals and words to make a page of how I was scared, but God made a way to comfort me. I even have a picture of the girl that I will put on that page. It's neat flipping through the pages of my art journal seeing what I was struggling with or seeing encouragement for when my feelings try to get the best of me. I want to help people see things differently. I want them to see the good things in all the bad things. I want them to know how people will let us down and not meet our needs, but God loves us so much and will help us get our needs met one way or another. I want to help others forgive others who don't know how to meet our needs, or are going through things and can't, or are selfish and won't help our needs. I want them to trust God to change that person and if they don't change, for God to give them the consequences for it. He's better at it anyway! I want to help others see God active in their life, even before they really knew Him. Those are just some ideas. I'll keep praying and see where God leads me. :)
Three weeks ago I was feeling very grumpy. I tried to take a nap, but I couldn't sleep. I finally went down to my studio and decided to work in my art journal. I picked up some bright colors of paint, that I thought wouldn't make a pretty page...my mood wasn't pretty. After I applied all the crazy paint colors with an old credit card, I found a picture of a bear in a magazine. I added him to one of the pages. I felt like a grumpy bear. I took some foam stamp letters and spelled out roar. I felt like I was roaring at others. I painted more details to the word. Next I took a cloud stamp I picked up the day before, and filled it in with some paint. I added others stamps too. While doing all this I kept praying, asking why I was in this mood. My answer came while expressing all my emotions on the pages. Grumpiness has other causes....anger does. There is always a different emotion causing the anger. There was an underlying issue that I was able to answer before art journaling. I was upset. I want to teach art journaling. I have dreams of helping others through art. I had negative feelings of my dream never coming true. After I finished art journal pages, I felt so much better. I had so much fun figuring out why I was upset. The photo above is that day's art journaling. I hope you give it a try the next time you feel like you are in a funk.
