Know Your Why

You may remember that my One Little Word for 2016 is Purpose.   I wrote about in this blog post: Purpose.  I had great intentions of getting to grips with the word via various books, videos and studies and apart from the one of the exercises in the Reflections class I have done none of it.

And then this week, this video turned up on my Facebook newsfeed.

And it started me thinking.

Do I know my why?  Do I know my what?   If my what currently is mixed media and textile art then why am I doing it?

I believe we have seasons - not the four seasons in the year - but times for certain things to happen.  There is a famous passage in the Bible about this:  Ecclesiastes 3:1-8
There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven -

A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.

A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.

A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.

A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.

A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.

A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.

A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.

I think that our purpose has seasons - we have times where our activities fulfil a certain purpose and then we move on to something else.

I believe that there are some purposes in my life that are on going:
To be the best wife that I can be
To be the best mother that I can be
To be the best friend that I can be

However I also think there are other purposes or plans that God has for me now and in the future - although currently I don't know what they are.  I trust God to reveal them in his timing which is never the same as mine!

But I wonder whether sometimes I am doing the what without seeking the why first.

This month's assignment for One Little Word was to make a vision board.  So I cut out words and pictures from magazines that 'spoke' to me and collaged them together.

I enjoyed putting it together but sadly it didn't help with the why!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Glimpses of Jesus 10

Glimpses of Jesus in the Old Testament is a year long bible study written by Simon Clay of Jubilee Church Solihull.   You can join in at any time.

Today's post is about the Lord, our healer from Exodus 15:22-27.

I am trying to keep each page of my journal simple and easy to do.

For today's page I took one of the Bible verses that Simon quotes in the blog post and used a Sunkissed font, different sizes and colours to print out a page to glue into my journal.

Do have a look back through the posts on the Glimpses of Jesus blog where you will find links to other people's art and poetry.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

More gothic than Venice

On Thursday Roger & I went to St. Albans - a place we had never visited before.  It has the most amazing cathedral.  I don't much care for cathedrals but this one had medieval wall paintings and tremdous architecture which reminded me of my Venice sketchbook and Michelle Ward's gothic stencils.

Some of the brickwork patterns reminded me of La Mezquita in Cordoba.

And this made me think of interesting decay in textile pieces.

I belong to Workshop on the Web created by Maggie Grey.  Each month there are several textile ideas form a variety of artists.  In the March issue Gillian Cooper provided a phototutorial on 'A mixed-media approach to surface design' which involved gelli plate printing on fabric.

I love gelli prints but usually do mine on a variety of paper surfaces.  So I had a go and ended up with these two lovely pieces of fabric.

The first prints of each of these came out really dark so I took each piece and using cellulose glue put a layer over the top.

This is the original piece of fabric and a piece of repair tissue

which combined to be this and I added some extras.

 These two - fabric and teabag paper

combined into this image.

At present I'm not sure where this will lead but I am planning to try some sketchbook work!  Shock, horror!

I'll let you know how I get on.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice