Prayer Changes Things

My church has been going through the book of Daniel on Sundays. I knew there would be a lot of visions and prophecies but I never noticed how much this book talks about prayer. Daniel was such a prayer warrior!

In chapter 10 we see Daniel prays and fasts for 21 days but doesn't get an answer until day 24. The messenger who visits Daniel lets him know that God heard his prayers on the very first day even though the response was delayed. What a comfort to know that our prayers have power!

My head pastor has a saying about prayer-Prayer changes things. I've heard it many times, but this weekend it really hit home in Daniel's story. Prayer changes things but we have to be persistent because sometimes the answer gets delayed.

 I love using my acrylic stamping blocks to help me layout my stickers. Sometimes I have to get a bit creative to fit all of the letters on the page but this really helps me decide if I can squeeze it in.

 And then I outlined because outlining just makes things really pop! I really felt like this page ended up with a bit of an old school comic book feel so I doug out a speech bubble to add to the page.

Tada! It's easy to get bogged down in trying to figure out all of the nitty gritty in deep passages of prophecy but I always like to bring it back to the simple, obvious things in the Word. They are always areas in my life that I still need to work on!

Just remember this week that your prayers are powerful because we have a great God who answers them.

 P.S. I though you guys would like a sneak peak of what my workspace looks like when I'm creating. So crazy! I always tidy up afterwords though so my space can be open for other crafting endeavors like sewing.

The Purpose of Friendship

I am absolutely loving the Illustrated Faith June Devotional kit! It is just so gorgeous plus the devotional is amazing. I wanted to share an entry I did reflecting on the friends in my life who have shaped who I am.

Growing up, I was painfully shy, a late bloomer and had a really hard time making friends. Add to that the fact that I (still) don't enjoy a lot of things that are universally popular and I like things that are not mainstream and you get a perfect recipe for a very lonely girl. But thanks to the internet which has let me meet people who are my own flavor of weird and growing up and learning how to communicate better, I now have some really awesome friends!

The inspiration for this page is from Proverbs 17:17 "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity." The kit came with this cute little banner that gave my a color palette but I ended up not using it on this page. What God spoke to me in this verse was not about being grateful for my awesome friends (even though I am!) but that to be a good friend, I need to love at all times.

Being a good friend is hard. It takes a lot of time, effort and energy to build that relationship with someone and then be there for them. Jesus has to suffer and die just to be friends with us and that's the ultimate example of friendship. "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends." John 15:13 That's probably why most of us have a small group of really good friends within our larger group of more casual friends.

The real purpose of friendship is not having someone to talk to or hang with or any other benefits I might get from it. The purpose of friendship is to be a blessing in someone else's life.

Illustrated Faith Unboxing (June)

It's time for a new unboxing video! I just got the June Illustrated Faith Devotional kit Blessings or Lessons and I'm so excited to see what's inside. I also decided to do a flip through of all of the pages from the May kit Lists By Faith so you can see what I've been creating in May. Enjoy!

Illustrated Faith Devotional Kit Unboxing May

Today, I'm doing a type of video I've never done before-an unboxing! I don't usually do subscription type boxes but I have been purchasing the monthly Illustrated Faith devotional kits by DaySpring. I thought I'd do an unboxing of the May kit (even though I've seen pictures of it online already) and let you know what I thought about the April and March kits (both of which are still available).





Did you enjoy the unboxing? Let me know if you'd like to see more of these!

Grace and Faith

Today I wanted to take you along as I did some bible journaling. Recently a friend lent me some acrylic paint so I could play around with it. Lots of journalers like to apply acrylic paint with a gift card/reward card for a fun splash of color that keeps ink from bleeding and that you can read through.

The section of scripture I decided to journal on was Ephesians 2:8-9 since I had a really cute "saved by grace" stamp from Illustrated Faith. I love these verses because it really highlights one of the main differences between Christianity and other religions. Our salvation is not something that we have to work for or earn or be good enough to make it. It is a gift from God because of His grace and all we have to do is have faith!

I applied some ivory acrylic paint using a gift card and trying to stay in the margin as much as possible. (If you want a demo, check out youtube. There are quite a few good ones.) This method is a bit messy but you can apply a thin enough layer that you can read the underlying text so that's a plus for bible journaling.

Next, I laid out my acrylic stamps to get an idea of what I'd like my page layout to be. I love the clear acrylic stamps because you can see exactly where you are going to place them! I had the "saved by grace" and "faith" stamps and added in a with because that's the closet thing I had to through. In the end though, I decided to hand write through with my trusty micron pen because I just really liked the way it sounded better.

Once I had the main text on the page, it was time to embellish! Yay for embellishments. These super cute feather stamps were from the same kit as the saved by grace one so I just pulled them out and stamped in coordinating inks. Some people like to really really plan out a page and some people just fly by the seat of their pants. I feel like I fit somewhere in the middle. I do sort of plan out what I want but sometimes I just keep going until it feels right. In this case after I finished the feathers, I felt like I needed to tie in the black a bit more so I added a couple of the three triangles in black scattered on the page just to make things look a bit more cohesive.

To keep the feather stamps off of the text, I stuck down a row of post it notes along the edge of the margin as a mask. Perhaps I should have done that with the acrylics too but I didn't think of it! And I always stamp/paint/gelato/etc with some sort of scrap paper under my bible page to protect the other pages from stuff running off the edge or bleeding through.

Do you like to try new art techniques and tools or do you prefer to stick with tried and true methods?