Advent calls

This is often the tough bit of Advent for us clerical shirt wearers.
We try to hold on to the "not yet" time of waiting for the Christ child to arrive
in between it being obvious that there are carol services and mince pies and cards to write aplenty.
And the rest of our work doesn't stop - because it isn't Christmas yet.
I don't know about in my new job but in my last pastorate, life actually eased up in terms of commitments for the last couple of days before Christmas Eve. (Won't work as such this year because SOMEONE made the 23rd a Sunday this year....)
but right now its always a bit hard going


It makes it even harder to carve out crafting time which for me is a spiritual necessity. All of us have something that we need to do to sustain us - it might be fishing or dancing or chatting to friends or yoga or painting - and these "hobbies" are things that often get pushed out of the way in order to add "more important" things to the diary. But I do think that we do this at our peril. That finding time for those things that nourish and feed us is important as otherwise we will run dry. The phrase I often use about being blessed to live as close to the sea as I now do is that it "restores my soul" - looking at the water brings me closer to God and calms me down when I am stressed. And crafting restores my soul too.

But I have only managed two things this week - an Advent Journal (see below if interested!) and a card for the Daring Cardmakers challenge this week.

Gez found this delicious colour combination for us

and here is my take on it

 Green and orange are spot on but the yellow isn't quite right and I didn't really have anything that rather lovely blue - although Kathy got the blue right using distress ink and I thought I had all the blue distress inks. Ah well!

There are some new goodies on display here. I was helping Phil with his "Soup and Scripture" Advent Bible Study on Tuesday morning (by attending and making Parsnip and Apple soup!). we didn't have any paper napkins so I bravely volunteered to go and buy some. And discovered that not only does Newton Abbot have a Hobbycraft and another large craft shop nearish the station, in the town centre, along with a wool shop and a sugarcrafts shop there is a local crafting shop called "The Craft Room". well it would be rude not to go in. "Veni, Vidi, Visa" (I Came, I Saw, I Shopped)as the saying goes.

I only bought two things - the MFT Fishtail Stax and a new A5 size embossing folder which has a blank middle portion. I covered the middle up with the yellow paper but it is v. nice. The papers are MME - most are Lime Twist but I'm not sure about the yellow and the woodgrainesque one - they are the scraps left over from the Quirky Kit I had last month! The design is sort of based on a CAS(E) this sketch

So to the Advent Journal. I had decided on a certain shape and printed out my bits accordingly and then opened a drawer and found an A5 sketch book so used that instead!
I had the idea that if I was going to do anything it would need to be simple and so graphic would work best. I downloaded some Carta Bella digital numbers and papers but seem to be doing my best to make it less graphic as I go on.

Here is the front. There was only a flimsy cover so I added a piece of A5 cardstock which I gessoed and inked and sprayed and added the title. This comes from a poem by Sally Coleman - a Methodist Minister and I have included the poem as the introduction
Then each page has part of the lectionary reading for the day and a bit of craftiness upon it. The idea is to focus more on the Word and my reflections on it than doing lots of crafty fun bits...

Sundays get extra big numbers! The title for each page is stamped using an American Crafts alphabet for consitency.

Here is today's page ready for some writing.
My aim is to do all the crafting on a Monday so that I have time for the writing every day. It is kind of happening... I am not very good at keeping this kind of thing up so lets see how I do!