I give up.

I'm telling you, if you're a believer and you're struggling with something with deep roots, trying like crazy to dig to the bottom of it, worship will do it every time. My dad was saying yesterday that it's like a prayer language that totally intimidates the enemy and he has to flee when it begins. And I think it's also like fire and the enemy, like sin, is completely flammable. When we walk into the presence of the Lord-- whether we dance, crawl or limp in, singing-- the consuming fire that is His holy presence begins to burn away the dross in us. And the enemy, who would press my face into my navel, not looking for the Lord, cannot stand that holy presence. I think that's a big part of the whole mystery. It shows up in the psalms all the time-- start off with "OH, woe is me..." and end with "You alone are perfect in all Your ways! Praise You!"

Anyway, I'm standing there with suds and water all over my hands and somehow all over my arms and in my hair, weeping, singing "You alone are holy, You alone are worthy, You alone are God and worthy of my praise," adding "dammit" every few lines. It went against everything within me, honestly, for a few minutes. Look, the bottom line is that this is literally the most mysterious road I have ever walked down with the Lord. But I cannot leave Him. Everything in me knows that He is good. And I'm not brainwashed or fearful or stupid: I know it.
~ http://thisonetime-samantha.blogspot.com/

I'm struggling with some things right now. And I realized I'm not going to God in the midst of it. I'm aware of Him, I love Him...I adore Him. But I'm not clutching Him like I should be in the midst of this mental and emotional thing I'm having. And by "should be" I don't mean in some "doing the right 'Christian' thing" way. There are times when I'm a mess and being in Rusty's arms and hugging him in silence makes me feel better. It doesn't change the situation but it makes me feel better. I used to do that with God; being with Him and being in His arms made things feel better even when they weren't. I don't know when that stopped and it doesn't feel good. It feels worse to admit that I noticed it a week or so ago and haven't done anything to change it. I don't know why. I truly and fully adore my God. I believe He loves me.

This morning I was reading and thinking and realized there are times - a lot of times - when I feel God prompting me to do something and I blow it off as my own idea or my own desire, deem it therefore not as important because I came up with it, and move on (mostly without doing it.) What a wasted opportunity! Who have I become and how did it happen so suddenly when I thought everything was ok? Is this just a speed-bump and I'm being emotional about it? Totally possible. But being emotional about it still doesn't mean it's not there.

I'm going to take that random blogger's advice, above, and purposefully worship God. I don't know a lot of worship songs, actually, so I'm going to have to be deliberate about all of this. Put some effort in. And I'm also going to go through my art supplies and get my stuff out of my dining room and back into my workroom and start creating again. Every time I stop creating I fall apart... maybe I just answered my "what's going on?" question right there.

I am rambling, I'm well aware of that.

Tutorial: Using unmounted stamps

Back in 2003 I purchased my first set of unmounted rubber stamps. I was immediately a fan as they are usually quite a bit less expensive than the wood mounted stamps and they take up a lot less storage space. As I started using them more often I had friends asking me about them. I created this photo tutorial. It was originally on my old website but I moved it to Flickr then kind of forgot about it when we moved to Ohio and we bought my new laptop.

After stumbling upon it this morning I figured it's always good to post practical advice on a Faith & Art related site. So here it is! And please let me know if there is anything you'd like to see specifically - tutorials on materials, techniques, etc. If I don't know how to do it, I'm sure someone else does and we'll get them to help!

So here it is, the "Using unmounted rubber stamps" tutorial photo set on Flickr!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/art_chick/sets/463224/

Art workroom update photos.

So here are some photos of the mess at our house right now. The first three are my workroom as it is today. I filled holes left by wall anchors and tried out little swatches of the new paint (similar color but lighter - it's either khaki or yellow depending on the light. I like it.)

So the next photo shows an old door I bought at Building Value down in Walnut Hills (architectural salvage store. LOVE. IT.) I am planning to use it as a desktop on that wall for my laptop. Notice the doorknob hole? Will use it as access for the cords. I KNOW! Genius!

And I painted my wooden office chair. By the time we're finished it'll have a slip-covered cushion. Too cute.

And this? This is my dining room. Nice. That's all the stuff we cleared out of my work room this week*.

Mmm, paper rack. How I adore my printed papers. And my Sharpies (in the lazy susan in the foreground to the right.)

OK. So... there it is, in all it's unkempt glory. I'll post more as we go. I know you're waiting on the edges of your collective seats, eh? Yeah.

P.S. Yes, that is a bookcase with my name embedded in it. My great Uncle Myron made that for me when I was little. Jason (my brother) has one as well, um, but with his own name on it. Not mine. It is honestly one of my most prized possessions as I never had personalized items because my name ends with an "-ie" rather an a "-y" or "-ey."

Catching up.

I'm hoping to renovate this blog later this fall - new look, new posts on a more regular basis. God is working on me and I need to talk about it (regardless of whether anyone is reading this.)

In the meantime, if you've just tuned in, I'd suggest going back and reading some of the posts that got me to this particular point in my life. Instead of you having to sort through the archives, I'll make a list below of the posts that made the most sense (I might include the Mail Art cow. Because I can.)

Let's start from the very beginning. It's a very good place to start...

Art

In Which I Tell it Like it is. For Me at Least.

Cosmos from Chaos

Art as Remembering

Clarification

Faith

Icons of the True

What You Need

See What's Out There

Today's Post (I'm including this one because it's the reality of my life. It's not always paint and glitter and "Oh, I'm so inspired and creative!")

My Faith. And art.

Favorites

Preface to Reflections on Perelandra

And yeah... that's where it stopped. Or where the blog stopped. So far. We're in the process of re-organizing my art room and hopefully I will be able to create on a regular basis which will give birth to thinking about the creative process and getting back into a conversation with other creative junkies about it all. I still struggle with my responsibility complex kicking in and whether I should take time away from "real" pursuits and responsibilities to do whatever I'm inspired to do creatively.

It's just that now, a week before I turn 37, I'm at a point where I'm finally embracing the entirety of my identity as an artist and as a Believer. Regardless of what more practical people may say. Or what more responsible people may say. Or "better" mothers, better wives, better housekeepers, cooks and lawn-mowers might say.

You're more than welcome to browse the archives on your own. Just be warned there are a lot of life updates during our move from Maryland to Ohio back in 2006/2007 and other little things that are boring to click through. So have at it. Read it and think about it and let's talk about what you think (I'll see some of you in person so it doesn't have to be online.)

Hope to be back soon! I'll try to post photo updates of the room make-over, too.

Soldered stuff.

I burned out my third tip trying to do this with a way under-powered soldering iron (a 35 watt dinky thing with no reostat. Boo.) Hopefully I will be getting this* for my birthday next month and all my soldering dreams will come true!

I messed around with a few stained glass scraps along with a 1960's/70's brooch I bought at St. Vincent DePaul last week and a rock that's been sittig in the dining room for months. Anything that sits in my line of sight for months is in danger of being soldered to something or glued to something or painted with something.

This is about an inch square scrap of stained glass with irregular random yellow, white, and red stripes. The "live" charm and is attached with a jump ring which also has a little turquoise bead at the connection.

The next two are of the same piece, a larger bit of the same scrap I used for the "live" square. This one has two vintage beads attached by jump rings at the top. You can definitely see the stripes better in this one!

This started out as a sad little retro brooch. I pulled the pin off of the back, turned it sideways, soldered on a jump ring at the top and a dangling bead at the bottom (the bead is a vintage glass and it's more blue/gray than it looks in the photo.)

This is the rock that should have known better than to hang around with nothing to do. I wrapped it and soldered it then added the bead (another one from my jar of old glass beads; yay for old stuff!) Unfortunately the camera picked up way too much reflection off the solder. It is shiny. But not that shiny.

These didn't turn out a well as I'd like but I'm really picky about what I'm picturing verses what circumstances let me actually create - the soldering wasn't smooth because the soldering iron I have at the moment doesn't stay consistently hot. It's like cooking on an electric stove where the burner heats to a certain temp then cools then heats again then cools... so I got out my Dremel and tried to make it look like the lack o' smooth soldering was on purpose. I wish I knew more about photography because the texture on the rock's solder is actually really cool and I was able to make it mimic the texture of the rock itself. Not too bad for messing around though now I'm really coveting that new iron...

*I'm not buying the Weller from the ToolBarn.com, but I like anything called The Tool Barn! :)

**Also, I didn't forget the Perelandra post. Just finished reading the third book and have been thinking about it as well. So far haven't been able to separate the two for posting...

Preface for "Reflections on PERELANDRA"

I'm not really sure how much of my personal life I want to talk about on this blog. I guess inasmuch as it applies to my thinking on my faith or my art. I know it won't be a static thing and will change as my life changes (and yes, I did look up the correct spelling of "inasmuch" before I typed it.)

So I've been doing some comfort reading the last few weeks. It takes the place of comfort food for me... ok, let's be real, sometimes comfort food accompanies the comfort reading... Anyway, "comfort reading." For me, that means going back to those books and authors that lead me back to where I plainly see God's glory and that this life isn't what it's all about. These are the books that open my eyes, wake me up again.

This latest bought of comfort reading was brought on by a seriously stressful mid-July that culminated with having to cancel our summer trip to Maryland, get Liam back into therapy and deal with the fact that our relatively new, but much loved dog has a tumor that we are not able to treat due a variety of reasons. Added to this is the fact some other situations with people I care about and the fact that a friend was dealing with her mom going into hospice only a few months after being diagnosed with very aggressive cancer. The situations got a bit worse and my friend's mom died Saturday. And it put "stress" into perspective. It didn't lessen our sadness in dealing with our own circumstances. But it did, definitely, put them into perspective.

Having things put into perspective for you is a good thing. It's a healthy thing. It helps you see that yours isn't the only life with sad or hard or stressful circumstances. And for the most part we can't really change or fix these kinds of circumstances. Realizing that helps you let go of it a little. It brings you out of yourself and helps you understand, once again, that we live in a fallen world. None of it is personal, no matter how very personal it feels. Or maybe the exact opposite of that is true to the extreme - it's all personal because we are His and there are powers and principalities that do not like that. At all.

So having written all of that, let me say this: God is good. All the time. Either we believe it or we don't. You can't "kind of" believe it. Or believe it's true sometimes and not others. It's hard to admit God is good and your life can still suck. It seems like then maybe God doesn't care? Or you're not as important to Him as someone whose life is rambling along ok? Don't fall into that thinking. If nothing else go read some firsthand accounts of life in war-torn countries, places where lives are steeped in poverty with not much chance of change... it'll give you some perspective. Not to put you in your place and shut you up or make you stop whining. But to give you strength to keep wading through your own situation. To give you courage and some hope.

That's my purpose for comfort reading. Perspective, realignment... hope and courage to keep going.

And it lives...

Life keeps getting in the way and yet the ideas and inspiration that originally got this blog started are just as strong as ever. We've had a lot going on and I'll post more about it in a bit. Wanted to update to let you know I'm still here and will be setting up a Twitter ID for Faith & Art in the next day or so. I think that way I can at least get little blurbs out while trying to make time to post longer blog posts more often. I'd also like to get some more challenges up. So here's to picking myself up and dusting myself off and moving on...

See you soon.