Today's Teacher: Horror Vacui

Horror Vacui. I first learned the term in an Art class in college. It means  "fear of empty spaces," "fear of the empty," or "fear of white spaces."

Today, I came across it again while working on a layout project for our upcoming camp meeting. Thankfully, another sister has already chosen the images and created the general look of the design. My job, she said, was to arrange the elements. I am no artist/graphic designer. I'm just somebody who tries to do the best she can. So over and over again, I found myself changing images, resizing, changing colors and fonts, adding and deleting elements, and stressing all throughout. At the end of all that, I sat in front of the computer, face to face with 40-50% of white space.

This is it.
The boss battle.

I tried putting back some of the images I had already deleted. I tried one background after another. Almost exhausted, I asked myself, Why do I need to fill up this space? What is wrong with this emptiness, this silence?

When God created the earth, He made it with lots of air, lots of breathing room, lots of space, lots of peace and quiet.

That was when my favorite passages from the Bible and Inspiration came to me:

"When every other voice is hushed, and in quietness we wait before Him, the silence of the soul makes more distinct the voice of God." -EGW, The Desire of Ages

He says, "Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." Psalm 46:10

"There is no limit to the usefulness of one who, putting self aside, makes room for the working of the Holy Spirit upon his heart and lives a life wholly consecrated to God." -EGW, Maranatha

Be silent. Be still. Do not be afraid of the quiet, of the inactivity, of rest, of what seems to be emptiness. It is room for the Holy Spirit to work in your heart.

Meanwhile, here is the promotional banner for the camp meeting. You are, of course, invited. And do keep us in your prayers. Maranatha!

What Moves the Earth?

Early this morning, as I made my routine visit to our vegetable garden, a little prayer kept running in my mind: 

"Please, Lord, help the seeds to sprout. I have no life to give them but You are the Source of all life."

I knelt low and checked the radish and pechay seedbed, and lo and behold, some seeds have already begun to sprout. One here and a couple there. Amazed and grateful, I drew even closer and saw the teeny tiny crack in the teeny tiny seed, where a white-yellowish stem had come through and struck root in the soil. And then the thought:

“But I buried that seed!” Not very deep, of course, but deep enough to cover it entirely. Now the seed has emerged to the surface, having pushed away the soil above it.

I look around at all the vegetables and flowers and the big trees. They all started this way and have continued this way - moving the earth by simply reaching higher and wider and deeper.

So what moves the earth, really?

In the garden today I realized: growth.

The development of all our powers is the first duty we owe to God and to our fellow men. No one who is not growing daily in capability and usefulness is fulfilling the purpose of life. In making a profession of faith in Christ we pledge ourselves to become all that it is possible for us to be as workers for the Master, and we should cultivate every faculty to the highest degree of perfection, that we may do the greatest amount of good of which we are capable. Christ’s Object Lessons, 329.2

Ukulele

Photo Challenge

I recently invited a friend to join an online photo challenge with me. We're both beginners at photography (he claims to be a beginner, i'm not really sure) who both can't seem to get ourselves to give our cameras value equal to their prices. So maybe joining a photo challenge will compel us to take the camera out of the bag a little more frequently - at least once each week since it's a weekly challenge.

Every week, a new theme is announced and participants submit photos according to the theme. The participating photos are posted on the site for other people to view and comment on. So there's also the pressure for me to do better than the candid shots of friends.

This week's challenge is themed CYCLES, in honor of the ongoing Tour de France. It'll be my first entry so there's a bit of pressure. Photos don't really have to be about bicycles, just anything that comes to mind at the word cycles, but i've never really tried themed shots before, sooo....

Ideas, anyone?

youth group logo

you know how sometimes you do one thing and it leads to another and that other thing leads to still another and so on?

since i started on the journal project for the students of my Sabbath School Class, i decided to create a Facebook group page where i could remind all of them at once to write their journal entries.

i know it could be a task to have to write sometimes, and i hope the regular prompts would actually work. :D

creating the page compelled me to find a suitable profile photo. not having enough photos to go through for the perfect one (meaning everyone's there so no one feels left out), i decided to just make a logo.

now, i know photoshop, but only as far as crop, save, fill, add text, and other basics. but i think the effort i put into this logo was pretty much worth it.

the idea revolves around the International Association of Free Seventh-day Adventists logo, which my church has adopted. so the three angels and the globe are there to depict the world-wide scope of the gospel commission. but i wanted to add something to make the logo distinct from the general group and to emphasize that this is a sub-group for youth, thus the text. blue has always been our unofficial color as a church and it's fortunate that the IAFSDA logo is also largely blue. the maroon/dark red is yet another tribute to IAFSDA which uses the color a lot in its publications, or in its newsletter at least. the contrast with the blue is also nice, i think. the yellow "Royal Valley" text was added as an afterthought, just to make it closer to home. maybe after we've planted other churches, they would like to customize that part. it's yellow because i realized i didn't want too many colors in the logo. it's the same color as that of the angels in the IAFSDA logo.

i was in a bit of a crisis for a while regarding this logo. i was caught between making it more "fun and colorful" or a bit on the "formal and conservative" side. i apparently chose the latter. :D

after i got this logo up on the page, i thought it would be fun to turn it into a badge that the members could wear. but i didn't know how to make one that the others could conveniently use. besides, i'm still hoping they would want to use it. haha. so i just made one for myself.

with Genry, my on-off "boyfriend." ;-D

the logo isn't official. it's just me trying to stretch my creativity and photoshop skills.

so there, my recent example of "chain reaction." it happens a lot, too, with habits. and that's why we need to be careful what we're doing because it may lead to other things we might not be able to handle.

the chain that led to this logo, i think, was okay. :D

-o-

soar like a hundred pretty balloons!

i gave this card to my friend, Jeanelyn, who shared my birthday. she seemed really happy - though i don't know if it's because the card was pretty or because she shared a birthday with me. ;-)

i added a fairly large yellow balloon on the front of the card and wrote Jeanelyn's name on it.

i wrote my message on the left side of the balloons: a reminder for beautiful spiritual growing and "soar high like a hundred pretty balloons! :) "

birthdays are such happy times. well, at least mine was. :)

my first paper craft fail

in a previous post, i talked about being very interested in paper crafting and wanting to make one of those pop-up cards as my first project. well, i tried... and failed.

here's how my card looked like:

this was supposed to look something like this. see the difference? i had to make a lot of cuts on the base because the card won't open properly.

i didn't have the heart to finish this project. i just told myself that maybe i needed to start somewhere more basic; learn cutting, folding, measuring and gluing techniques as i go along and become more knowledgeable in making more complex  projects. so pop ups would have to wait a while though i have a new (and special) popup project in mind. (sneak peek: it's going to have a plane in it.)

meanwhile, i bought a bunch of materials to start practicing with. i didn't have the money for card stock or vellum yet. so i just bought construction paper (for solid colors) and wrapping paper (for prints. my, i love the prints i bought). then i got myself some basic tools: scissors, hobby knife and cutting mat, and white glue.

i am especially fond of the knife and mat. boy, do they make measuring and cutting a lot easier. though i have to admit that i don't know what the many different blades are for. :)

and i also made a little card, a much simpler one, using the materials i bought. here it is:

my ultimate dream with this craft is to learn techniques and projects to use for bringing color and personal touch to my ministry. i pray that God sees it that way too and that He'll prosper this undertaking. 


so while i fail at a few projects, i promise to rise again each time and try harder next time. so do  come back and check on my progress. :)

paper craft!

i have always been interested with paper - cutting, folding, gluing, et cetera, et cetera. even as a child, i would buy construction paper, cut out shapes (any and all shapes), glue them together and turn it into greeting cards or tags. my friends used to get regular birthday cards in different sizes and shapes from me. unfortunately, none of the cards looked pretty enough or clean enough. but you get the idea.

it was only very recently that i decided to actually give time to paper crafting as a productive leisure activity. i originally wanted to buy a how-to book, but didn't have the money for it. luckily, the internet has everything on it. here's one site to get me started: 

http://extremecards.blogspot.com/

my first project would be a pop-up card that hopefully will look somewhat like this one 

here's to hoping my paper projects would bring a bit of sunshine into other people's lives. :)