Lions Den!

Good Wednesday all my crafty friends!!!  I wanted to start off this morning sharing some awesomeness that the Lord shared with me as I spent time in His presence! You know, God is like that....you spend time with Him and He WILL visit and spend time with you! He is faithful to share His heart with us if we are faithful to open our hearts to Him! He has HASN'T failed me yet!

I read a quote this morning by Charles Wesley that said "The den of lions is as safe a place as any." WOW! WOW!! That really spoke to me this morning about our faith as His precious children! Faith amidst ANY circumstance against ANY problem! You think about Daniels faith from the beginning of this saga to the triumphant end. Those governors and satraps wanted Daniel OUT of the equation for their own purposes and plans and schemed to take him down, but God would have none of that for His faithful servant! The enemy's schemes never change! He has no new tricks they are all the same he just disguises them through our different circumstances! BUT GOD!!!

The verse that leaped off the page to me as I was reading in Daniel 6 was "Then this Daniel distinguished himself above the governors and satraps, because an excellent spirit was in him; and the king gave thought to setting him over the whole realm." (V. 3) Did you get that? An excellent spirit was IN him! My friend, for those whom believe on the very Son, Jesus Christ, His excellent Spirit is within YOU!!! Daniel walked with God and that anointing remained with Him causing him to be encouraged, faithful and strong in God's very promises for him. He would NOT be moved no matter the circumstances!

The very thought of going in that lion's den, I am sure, caused a pause in his heart, BUT he knew His God was for him!!! He had a strong enough spiritual fear of his living God to know that the temptations of his "physical" fear would flee if he remained in faith! God can use troubles and circumstances to develop our character as a part of His mighty purpose and destiny for our lives! Destiny is ALWAYS on the other side of crisis!!!

Recently I decided to take part in the wonderful and fun artist Carolyn Dube's free workshop, Permission to Play over on her website A Colorful Journey. I knew right away that I wanted to take this workshop, because lately, I have needed to give myself permission to play! I believe my OCD fangs come out on a regular basis concerning my mixed media and I needed a time out!!! LOL Carolyn is one of the freest mixed media artists I know. I'm talking talent because there are sooooo many AMAZINGLY TALENTED artists that I follow, but I'm talking free to lay down whatever her heart desires on that page or canvas and confident to believe that something will come out of it! It may be down the road and not in that session, but eventually it will resurrect itself. Time and time again I have seen it happen on her videos and I say, man, I need to be more like that!! So I am on a "colorful journey!"

Carolyn asked us all to sign and design a "Permission Slip" to start the process that says "I give myself permission to play and love what I do and call it AWESOME no matter what!" I totally needed to do that!

On my "permission slip" I used some of my fave Silks Acrylic glazes, a little gesso here and there and did some stamping. When I was done, I went back over my name and the "key" messages to me with journal pen to make them dark and stand out, so if I needed to, I could look back whenever I had a tendency to OCD!!!! LOL

I have actually gotten through lesson 4, but I will just share Lesson 1 with you guys today, since this already looks like a novel blog post!!! In this lesson Carolyn asked us to acquire a cardboard box and out of it cut panels for our journal. From there we were to start building our pages with gesso, book pages, her Sparks of Art-spirations or other things we wanted to apply to the cardboard. So I will share my beginning stages with you!

I have this empty container that I keep all my scraps from projects in, so I pulled that container out to just pull scraps from to use on my pages as well for text and possible images. After going through that guy, I found some pretty nifty pieces! One man's trash is another man's treasure!!!! LOL

Then I just began applying some gesso and adhering my pieces, book page and her Art-spirations where I felt led. I'll share my fronts and backs!

My glorious fronts!

I'm doing 8 panels

Then here are the backs of the pages:

Whatcha think so far????? I will share Lesson 2 with you tomorrow. I can tell you that I have been having so much fun with this challenge. It really has made me stop and take a look at my thoughts as I work on my my art! It will be a process (old habits die hard), but I am so thankful to Carolyn for offering this lesson! What a lovely gift on her part of time to us!! I look forward to seeing this evolve!

My friends, God desires an intimate relationship with you! If you don't know Him in that way, I invite you to seek Him and His Word and He WILL show you His purpose and destiny for your precious life!

Blessings to you! :)