Greetings Illustrated Faith family!
A long time ago, my husband helped a company that made shirts. As a thank you for all of his efforts, we were gifted some t-shirts. Among the pile was one of my all time favorites. It was printed for a mission trip to Africa and it said “You Have One Life, Use It.” The shirt reminded me how powerful one life was and made me realize how important it is that I choose wisely how to spend mine. I wore the t-shirt for years and now my daughter has it at college. Note: that is how much I love the girl, I let her steal my shirts!
As I have been journeying through Illustrated Faith’s Make it Count devotional by Maggie Massey, I knew I wanted to put the stamp “Make it Count” somewhere in my Bible.
The quote from the t-shirt always has always been on the forefront of my heart so I combined “You Have One Life” with “Make it Count” and searched scripture to see what page might have the blessing of these pivotal words.
In Deuteronomy 30, God tells us He sets before us ONE life. That’s it. That’s all we get. And with that ONE life, we must choose. Perfect spot.
I gathered my supplies and laid out my words on clear plastic packaging.
I added my Illustrated Faith Transformed stamp set to the mix because I adore butterflies. Flowers, butterflies and owls…..favs. Anyway, butterflies represent life to me. I noticed that there is a new set of Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith butterflies coming out in February. These would be awesome as well. One of my life messages is that even when our lives are as ugly as a caterpillar, we need to keep in mind there is always butterfly, hidden, just waiting to spread it’s wings. I love that God sees the butterfly in me and that He has given me eyes to see the butterfly in others.
I stamped my images onto the page prepped with clear gesso. I always prep my pages because I like the surface and it lets me follow my creative path no matter where it takes me!
Next up, add some color. My favorite go to is watercolors. Now, I have been working with watercolors for many years and I have a significant stash. I have listed two of my favorite sets below but any watercolors will do. I often use and mix colors from many different sets. Use what you have.
I added the words I laid out on clear plastic to my page and continued adding layers of watercolor to the design. I used my Bella Blvd Illustrated Faith pen to sharpen any stamped areas and my White Signo Gel pen to add highlights. The butterflies were also embellished with an aqua gel pen.
The last touch was adding washi tape to the bottom along with a heart stamp and a tab on the top that says “1 Life.”
Let’s make our ONE life count and remember He sees the butterfly!
See you next time, happy Bible journaling!
In His grace, amy
ESV Leather Journaling Bible
Love it! I too love butterflies, flowers and owls! Pretty sure Illustrated Faith needs to do some owl stamps. :)
Gotta work on some owls in my mixed media Bible too! Blessings for your kindness and we can be butterfly, flower, owl sisters!
Amy, Thank you for drawing our attention to this verse in such a dynamic way. It is so easy to think of the Law as “old” or to fall into the rote reminder that the OT does reveal who God is. This is a great way to remember that it still speaks to our lives today!
And I love that your butterflies seem to be in motion across the page–so neat!
Monica- so glad you enjoyed the post!!!!
Gorgeous way of meditating God’s word!