What does your eye see?

Good Thursday all my crafty friends! I pray you all have had a blessed week and are looking forward to an eventful or relaxing weekend! I, unfortunately, will be CLEANING!! Uggghh! I mean really...how much cleaning can you really do? But somehow or another, it comes around like clockwork ever other week! I love my "off weekends" because I get to be somewhat lazy, except for the mounds of clothes that still have to be washed! But all that said, I am exceptionally blessed to have a beautiful home to clean and clothes to wash! I shall stop complaining now!!! LOLOL

Today, I want to share just a couple of pictures from Carolyn Dube's Permission to Play Lesson 2 over on her website A Colorful Journey.  In Lesson 2, Carolyn was wanting us to fin images and shapes inside her Sparks of Art-spiration that we could download for the lesson. Carolyn found a disco dancing 70's superhero, which was too cute to me! Somehow, if only in my mind, I had to find something just as cool! LOL I'll share two with you today!

Both of the Sparks of Art-spirations that I picked immediately brought images to my mind (luckily...you remember those psych pictures in college that you had to look at and tell what you saw in the picture? I usually had to sit and stare FOREVER at them before something came to mind..LOLOL) and I was looking forward to seeing if I could pull it off! The first picture I went off from was the one in this photo from yesterday at the top right:

I  saw a carnation in the top left and bottom right....or a flower resembling that. So I went with that to this:

Also in that picture on the top right (almost cut off) I saw a butterfly looking blob, so I went with that also. I wanted to keep Carolyn's background because I just loved it so and just added my artwork to it. I really just rough drew it out with my pencil and then just got various acrylics and went to town. I also did some shading with a Stabilo pencil and white gel pen and added some stickles on my butterfly. I also stamped "gratitude" on the board. It turned out okeedokee. I am not a "painters artist" that's for sure, but it was just fun seeing what I came up with out of her art-spirations!

The second art-spirations picture from this photo at the bottom left:

I immediately saw a tree to the left with many leaves falling down out of it. Now what I thought I was going to do, didn't necessarily come out from my minds eye initially, but I still like what I ended up with here:

Like the previous one, I rough sketched what I thought I wanted and ended up light gessoing over it. I did want some of Carolyn's colors to pull through, but in the end it was very light. I simply took some acrylic paints and painted out my tree and then took a stipple brush and pounced out leaves with various fall colors. I had a "leaf" stamp in my collection that I then used Staz-On in in Saddle Brown and stamped in the stipple area to get a "leaf look" it's faint, but you can see it when you re close up. I also stamped some pumpkins at the bottom and colored with Faber Castell Big Brush Pens and then stamped my sentiment with Archival Ink in black. And voila! It was fun finishishing out what my eye saw!

As a believer, I am well aware that God sees things that we don't see! And I am thankful for that! Imagine if God handled things the way we saw them half the time! Oh me!!!!! In God's Word in 1 Samuel 16:7 He says "But the Lord said to Samuel, 'Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The Lord does not look a the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance but the Lord looks at the heart." Hallelujah! Matthew Henry said "we can tell how men look, but God can tell what they are!" Indeed! God continually looks at the heart!

It is so easy to judge people from the outside appearance, but you don't know what is in a man's heart? If we are too quick to judge another, we may miss out on being a blessing to another or may even miss out on a blessing ourselves!  Furthermore, if that person is "seeking" and you, as a believer, are too quick to judge, you may turn that person from our Father. How sad would that be? Remember God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise!

I encourage you today to see people through the precious eyes and blood of Jesus! Love them with the heart of the Father. Sometimes we may feel it's a little tough, but God's grace is sufficient, I promise you that! At this beautiful time of year open your heart and see beyond the surface and give thanks to the Father that you can do all things through Christ! :)

Be blessed