finding beauty every day...

on lambert road...

on the walk between michael's and starbucks...

in the little things i notice

in "accidental art" (more on that later)

in my amazing family...

(also, can you tell i've been obsessed with yellow lately? i think it started with that tree ;)

it's been a while...

almost 2 months...! life got really crazy there for a while (okay, it's not really all that much less full now, as i keep being reminded), especially around easter. hadn't been making much art & really just lost my rhythm in life... organization who?

so, although i don't really feel like starting again, i think sometimes it's taking the first step that puts us back on a healthy path to living the life we want and were intended to live...

i had been saying i hadn't made any art since that lovely snowy mountain retreat, but then i realized OF COURSE I DID! all the artwork & decor for the church! our big "launch" was on easter, so although we'd been meeting for a couple months before that, and had completed lots of projects here and there, i had a lot more big ideas in my head (and heart) to finish... ended up getting LOTS of help from people willing to paint-by-number and make random things designed by me... but there were a few things that i needed to do myself, and ended up staying up to the wee hours working on... mainly these four art pieces, which now hang proudly along a wall they were not intended for ("what?? a huge industrial light stand with spotlights and stuff is blocking half the back wall?? that's where these pieces were designed to hang... plan B - the blue fabric folding wall!"

the idea for these pieces started with some of the vision statement of Whittier Hills Baptist Church (both the parent "russell" campus, and the new "uptown" campus) which has been fleshed out in the past into some graphic design-y color-coded rectangles and an alliteration of words creating the mission statement: red = Reborn (ie salvation), green = Reshaped (ie sanctification), orange = Retooled (for ministry), and blue = Released (on a mission with God)

so here they are (my version :)

and some of the rest of the decor...

it's so weird to see my ideas actually made, and "out there" in the real world. feels like my heart is on display - which is a good thing, unveiling the beauty God has uniquely given me and all that - but also so vulnerable and risky! i pretty much feel naked every sunday, especially when people talk about my work, ESPECIALLY when the person preaching for some reason continually points it out to be an example of how God is working, and asks for people's responses "isn't this amazing? how this place has been transformed?" it IS amazing. amazing how God has worked in my heart to bring me to this place. i could never have imagined a year ago THIS. and truly (not just in like an "i made a touchdown, but i'm pointing to God to be humble" kind of way) it has been his work. his ideas even... there have been moments that i have really felt like it was HIM stirring my mind in one direction or another - waking me up at odd hours with tons of inspiration flowing, not letting me get back to sleep until i get up and write them down, stuff like that. and to just be able to share pieces of my journey and what i have learned and am learning about the heart of God has been so good. sometimes i forget. glad i finally buckled down and wrote this so i could remember...

it's also very weird for me to have sketched my vision out and then see it "come to be" (like a "real artist"! ;) - these sketches were done before we started working on stuff and look at the next picture how (eerily ;) similar it ended up!