Hi friends! I'm back with this week's Life Book lesson, which was focused on creating a jar to fill with our favorite things. Since my mind has lately been on love and being more loving, I opted to make love the theme that my mind focused on during my creative process. It seems that our culture is focused on love being just a feeling when real love is more action than feeling. Often when we don't feel very loving towards someone our emotions can be helped by doing something loving for that person, even if we don't want to. (Take, for example, responding patiently to our children or spouse when they did the very thing that pushes your buttons. Not that I'd have any experience responding impatiently...right...)
Loving actions can actually stir up loving emotions.
I opted to take a portion of 1 Corinthians 13, known as the "love chapter" and focus on the characteristics of what love is and what it isn't. I started by adding gesso to my watercolor paper and then coloring the paper with a variety of Distress Paints. I hand drew my jar (with help from a Sweet 'n Sassy stamp set, Get Well Critters..it helps to have a reference!), using a Graphite Stabilo pencil, which smears just enough when water is added. I then used whatever alphabet stamps I had in my stash to add the words. The love piece was created by die cutting a shape from the Decorative Plaques set, covering it with vintage paper and more Distress Paint, and then added the grunge board letters. I used a stencil and Wendy Vecchi's Watering Can Archival Ink to add just a hint of flowers. The birds are from the stencil too...
Last week's jar now has a home on our fridge (hey, adult art can go on the fridge too!) to remind all of us to act loving towards each other and to put away unloving responses and attitudes.
