Fun workshop!

I spent the week-end at a wonderful workshop taught by Rosie Kelly, where we played with paper, color, and cutouts. The creativity flowed and we all had a great time. To the left are some pictures of my favorite piece that I did during the workshop. It's a birthday gift from my good friend, Dawn. (She loved it!) (Sorry the one picture is sideways).

Below is my friend, Nadine, who is fearless with color -- as you can see! She really helped me take risks with color, and I like the result!

Below Nadine is Mary, another friend from the workshop. She is holding a card she made -- there are 89 cut-out candles on it, and she individually cut out each one with an exacto knife! Makes my hand ache just to think of it. I'm sure her 89-year-old-friend will love it!

There were so many other pieces created by some extremely talented artists -- maybe I'll add some in a future post.

Haitian Art

Last night our church held a benefit concert & silent auction to raise money for the earthquake victims in Haiti. It was a stirring, amazing evening with four groups sharing from their hearts and performing some great music. My husband's worship band, "The Four D's" opened the evening, and then helped close it out with the other musicians with the song "A New Hallelujah", including a special verse written as a prayer for the people of Haiti. Over $4000 was raised, with 100% of it going directly to a mission project that has been working with the people of Haiti for several years.

There were several pieces of art done by Haitian artists, and I was the highest bidder on this one, done by someone named Jean Louis. I think it's absolutely beautiful.

Artist Trading Cards

I have finally joined the world of ATC's (Artist Trading Cards). Yesterday the wonderful ladies at our calligraphy study group (led by new member Starla) learned how to make these little 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inch works of art. As you might have noticed, the theme was Valentine's Day. Most of us started with an 8-1/2x11 piece of cardstock, added splashes of acrylic paint, swirled it around with a credit card edge, and then let it dry. Then we cut them into our little cards, added embellishments and traded them. These are the ones I ended up with. By the way, sorry about them being sideways -- this blog is so hard to figure out sometimes! Next month we are bringing green themed ones (spring, St. Pat's Day, etc.)

Retreat

Over the week-end, I was blessed by being able to attend a retreat at a lovely facility on Lake Michigan. Above is a picture I took last year when I was there in January. This year it looked more like the arctic outside -- not nearly as beautiful.

But what was beautiful was the actual retreat. The topic was "Open your eyes -- burning bushes are everywhere." We spent the week-end with Moses and his experience of discovering God in the unlikely barren desert. We tried to keep our eyes open all week-end to look for God in the ordinary moments of our lives. It was great to be able to journey with some wonderful women as we encouraged each other in this endeavor. Our retreat leader, Pat, had attended an "icon writing" retreat last year, and had created an icon of Moses and his experience with the burning bush. I took a picture of it, and added some adjustments, the the picture (which is supposed to appear below!) is somewhere on this blog -- I hope! (Maybe someday I'll learn how to format these postings!) But I can experience God right now even with the pictures in the wrong order!

Hope you have a day of wonderful unexpected blessings!