Allow me to get a bit deep here today.
You may recognize this post from the POST I did on the HeidiSwapp.com blog. As you may or may not know I am a Media Team member with Heidi Swapp. We make pretty stuff. However, my making pretty stuff goes a lot deeper than layers and embellishments and pretty pictures.
Hope I can explain that here today.
I made this "Photo Folio" as a gift for my mother in law. In it holds each of my kid's 'official' photo from this year, 2020. Something happens in the midst of any type of scrapbooking I do. Especially when the photo is focused on a single person.
St. Benedict called this 'ora et labora'. For all you non-Latin-philes out there, that means "pray and work". That pretty much encapsulates what it is that can happen when I am in a meditative form of scrapbooking. While I am working photos and a page, I am thinking, praying, meditating over the subject of that page spread. It's fulfilling. Meaningful. And brings an extra depth to this hobby we call 'scrapbooking'.
Not quite sure this idea needs that much explaining. Perhaps you do this already. I know in the fiber arts world meditating while crocheting is often part of the creativity. I'm a deep person anyway. I can bottom feed like no one's business. It often just scares people away. Maybe that is why I enjoy this creative process so much. The introspection it provides me meets with a need and longing in my heart.
To 'scrap' this page here, of my oldest son, and his bride to be, brings with it so much pride and joy. Allowing myself to pray into their future. To ask that God would guide and lead them all the days of their lives...this brings me so much joy to intertwine this act of love for these two people into making with paper and embellishments. How blessed I am!!!
To not only have been privileged to take this photo of this beautiful girl, but then to add around her page embellishment vibes that match her and her personality. To pray for this, my youngest of daughters, as she is in her junior year of school and praying her through all the challenges the lock down culture she lives in is causing her. To also lift up her body that carries with it an auto-immune disease and allowing that knowledge of her reality to continue to speak to me so that I know how to care for her. That is my kind of scrapbooking!!!
Then there is my oldest daughter. She is a soul that loves God as much as I do. To watch her life, to review it here as she is still at home, but making plans to marry her cowboy. To pray for their future life and to meditate also on how I can be the right kind of mother in law to him. Scrapbooking these pages encompasses so much.
I could not be happier with an art form that takes photos and mixes them up with paper and it creates this complete package of a story. You don't want to pass these pages up. And not only that, as I pray through this daughter, class of 2020, one of the most challenged classes in our society right now, to pray deeply that they all will find their way. That she will be grateful for every opportunity she is given, and learn to create her own as well. The contemplation I feel when crafting this page, I think it actually brings even more depth to the love I already have for this girl.
What a joy to be a scrapbooker, no? What a joy to creatively exercise ideas in my mind, while prayerfully exercising my love for the subjects of these photos in my heart. I said it out loud the other day, "How blessed am I???"
I am blessed. I only have my photo albums to remind me. Any time I want or need.
I hope this inspires you to take a deeper look at your scrapbooking. I hope you are inspired now and in the new year to reach a little deeper. Tell a few more stories. And pray a whole lot more.
Thank you for visiting and reading this blog.
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This mini album was created mostly with the Heidi Swapp Storyline Chapters Collection. Find that collection right HERE.
I appreciate your sharing your artistic process. I find it intensly interesting to see how people create.
ReplyDeleteI had just finished some early morning prayers in the quiet here when I came across this post. I was so touched and grateful that you shared so deeply. It was pure and sincere and touching. We are here to be "ambassadors of Christ" 2 cor. 5 :20 and in this post you were that for sure. Just wanted you to know I am so grateful for this post, for your heart and your talent...blessings!
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