The challenge for this week in The Documented Life Project was to “Add an inspiring quote to guide your week.” If you are new to reading our posts, The Documented Life Project gives a challenge each week to add art to a planner/journal with a specific theme. How you interpret that challenge is totally up to your own creativity. Melinda and I are doing the challenges as art projects on individual pieces of paper and not doing planners or journals this time. We wanted to commit ourselves to something every week that would help us to stretch our creative skills in new ways. If you like using weekly planners and journals or just want to add a little more creativity to your life, check out the project. There are so many creative ideas and processes shared each week by many of the over seven thousand people participating from around the globe. (When we first signed up the number of participants was about fifteen hundred!)

Jan:
When I came across this quote by Jon Acuff, I put it on a sticky note on my computer. It can be applied to so many areas of life, but seemed especially applicable to creative endeavors. Some of the comments posted on The Documented Life Project Facebook page are from people who are just starting out on their creative journey. They see the beautiful work done by people who are further down the road on their creative journeys and feel intimidated. It really doesn’t matter how much you have progressed in your creative skills, you will always be able to find someone who can do “it” so much better than you. But that doesn’t mean that what you are doing is bad– you are just nearer the beginning and they are nearer to the middle. Accept that and rather than be intimidated by comparing your work to theirs, be inspired with new ideas and techniques. Get excited about taking the next step in your creative journey. When you get nearer the middle, your work will look different than it did near the beginning.

Since chalkboard lettering art is a big trend right now, I decided to give it a try with my quote. I thought about using one of my white pens so the lines would be more crisp on the black paper and still have a chalk look, but that defeats the purpose of trying to use chalk! By the way, chalk doesn’t erase very well on paper.  (Confession: I did use a white pen for the name at the bottom because it was so tiny. AND this paper was the third one I did trying to get my letters to turn out the way I wanted. And that’s OK. I got more confident each time.) So here is my quote in chalk.Melinda:

There’s been a lot going on in my life lately, and when that happens, I enjoy listening to the song Oceans by Hillsong. The line that kept resonating with me this week was “keep my eyes above the waves.” I decided that would be the quote I would use for my page. I started by drawing the eye from a picture on pinterest. I like the handwritten quotes using different fonts and thought I would give it a try. Letters can be quite the challenge! After I had my words finished, I decided to add some waves at the bottom. I have enjoyed working on my drawing skills the last few pages!