Everyone is born with creativity. But those people who appear to be super creative have a secret. They know that creativity has to be developed and exercised to come easily. I am on a quest to immerse myself in creativity of all kinds. I hope you will join me!

 Today was a fun day. I spent the afternoon in Central Detroit with two vans full of team leaders for the Bs in the D project. Because I am overseeing the whole project, I have not (YET!) taken on any rooms to design and lead myself. This has given me an opportunity I have never had before. I am able to spend time with the kids we are meeting. Chatting with them and their parents has been quite enjoyable!


This is Keisa. She lives with her two older sisters and her Mother in a home that CDC built. They own it, making them a wonderful little success story. The girls were darling, as well as the home. I got to interview Keisa. 

Me: If you could have anything in your room, what would it be? Go crazy. I am not promising, but say what you really want, just in case we can make it happen.
Keisa: Hello Kitty. I visited the Hello Kitty store and was there for an hour! I loved everything.
Me: Wow, that is a lot of pink.
Keisa: YEAH!



 This is Maciyah. We met her last weekend when we were there doing our leader training rooms. She lived across the street. She spent part of the afternoon, quietly in a corner, watching.  When we knocked on her door today, she was literally jumping and wiggling with excitement.  Maciyah has a gold medal from school for having a 4.0 average, does not want to grow up to be the President because that is way too much to do, and has interest in being a designer. In fact, she had some very good ideas of things we could do in her room. First she said to get rid of the wall color. We all agreed!


 Dan measured Devon's room. There were what seemed like 323493 little kids running around. Turns out it was only three. One had his underwear on backward. Not sure why I found that funny, but I did. Mom was not home and Devon (big brother to all), got Mom on the phone while we were there. So, little sister helped Dan hold the end of the tape against the wall to get the needed measurements.


 I turned around and there she was. She needed to know how the distance from the bed to the ceiling!


 Autumn could totally not believe that her brother Jeremy would not put down the game controller and pose for the camera. She talked to him about it and he had no interest. 


Never mind. Autumn knows how to pose!

We drove the neigborhood in a big van. When we turned one corner, we saw a Mom jumping up and down on the porch, clapping and yelling.  What better welcome could we have had? She lived in the house with her son, whose room we are making over. The house is a glorious old victorian that has so seen better days. The inside was quite bad and there was no heat. In the living room, she had gorgeous victorian sofas. Gorgeous. She told us she inherited the house from her Grandmother. Her Grandmother used to drive a cab. She moved on to be the bookkeeper of the cab company, and ultimately became the president of City Cab.  

And, I thought, when you have the blood of that woman in your veins, you are going to survive!

Now the meet and greets have begun. It is time for the Vitamin C to flow!

I don't usually go off the creativity path in this blog, but this is firmly on my mind and I am hoping that writing about it will help me process some of it. 

For the next 7-8 months, I will be working on a project that will give beds and bedroom makeovers to some kids in Central Detroit. So, on Saturday, I took a tour of inner city Detroit, thinking I should find out a little about the area and the culture.

The bedroom project will take place in the 48202 zip code. That zip code is the poorest one in the United States. Not just Michigan, but all of America. It is like a third world country. Unemployment is 66%. High school graduation rate is 15%. The first grade class at the elementary school has 69 kids in it. Little kids have to walk 4 miles to school and then sit on the floor on a mat all day with 68 other kids....while being hungry, after sleeping on the floor with a blanket the night before.

Some families live without furniture, their children have never slept in a bed. Some homes have no electricity or running water. I saw several with broken windows and blankets stuffed in the holes. Think about having no electricity and trying to heat your home with the gas burners on the stove.

We did a poverty assimilation exercise. We were given $1000 for our family of 6, to last a month.  We priced food, transportation, clothes, and housing. We looked for jobs. It was impossible to even take care of the basics for a family. And then we were told they gave us a cushion and most families have more like $500 a month.

Now I am thinking about our lifestyle here in the suburbs. How many times have I pulled into McDonald's for a $1 ice tea? And how much could I have to buy food for someone if I had not done that for a year? And it just goes on and on from there. Sigh.

Yes, we have been educated and worked for what we have. But, don't we have so much that is not necessary? And we are sitting over here in the burbs with our miracle cell phones and computers and closets and pantries full, driving to get more stuff in our new gas guzzling cars? And not even thinking about the people over in 48202? 

See? So much to process. It puts reality to loving your neighbor as yourself.

Hoping my Vitamin C will work here.

Here in the Detroit area, more than 500 churches have banded together in a program called E.A.C.H. Meaning Everyone a Chance to Hear, the program is about evangelism and service here in our own community. This is one of the most desperate areas of the country. Detroit needs what this program is about.

Service projects like mobile medical and dental, and programs to feed people are being manned by a variety of churches. Every church agreed to a certain amount of service hours and there have been all kinds of creative projects like building a house and giving it to a family, tutoring in downtown Detroit, and tons more.

Evangelically, we have all joined together  in prayer walks that have covered almost every neighborhood in SE Michigan, and in 2 Word Stories. Thousands of us have 2 word stories that we are sharing. I have seen yard signs, t-shirts, buttons, bumper stickers, and banners with 2 word stories. The stories reflect something about ourselves before we followed Jesus, and something about how our lives changes since following Him. They are stories of victory and joy, all with happy endings.

Yesterday was Christmas in Action by the City of Canton, and Divine Design participated. We were assigned two rooms in one of the ten houses they worked in.  Homes and homeowners are selected by needs, financial and otherwise. Our homeowner was delightful and we enjoyed meeting and getting to know her yesterday.

This was our first one day job. There was a lot we wanted to do in those two rooms with minimal time and minimal finances.  I spent my budget on art, but we needed more. Luckily, I had a 25% off coupon on the day canvases were 50% off.

I asked for volunteers to make art and got terrific projects!

Project #1: three 12" x 12" canvases. The girls painted them brown.


 Then Mod Podged sheets of cut out scrapbooking paper to the fronts. So easy and very inexpensive.

 They look great on the green wall next to a new black chair. Perfect!

 Project #2: Paper covered switch cover, cost $2. And it is custom made. Nobody else has one like it!  Just Mod Podge paper to the cover. So easy.

 Project #3: Complements to a large canvas. We had with three 8" x 8" canvases. One was decoupaged with fabric.

 The other two were simply painted with craft acrylics, one with the homeowner's initial and the other with some swirls.  We used the color palette in the large painting so everything was tied together.

 Project #4: I found these 6" canvases in the clearance bin for 50 cents each. We already had scrapbooking paper in the right palette and some Mod Podge. Put it all together.........

They make a nice little bit of color right over the desk.

To see the before and after pics of our two rooms, see the Divine Design blog.

Just took a big lack of funds and a little Vitamin C!

 The New Smyrna Beach Girls Just Wanna Have Fun Art Retreat girls helped me with a project. I wanted us to make 5 pieces of art that will hang on the inside doors of the bathroom stalls at church. That may seem like a weird place for art.  And you may be right.

But, this project has been on my mind for a long time, so it feels right to do this. It is possible and probable that emotions come to the surface while in church. That is kind of the point, praising God is about emotion. Often, women come to the rest room to cry, wipe away tears, or just to take a breather. So, how about a little encouragement when they close themselves in to do that?

Sometimes the word of God comes from an unexpected place, and is just the encouragement needed. I hope that is the case here.

I worked on these pieces and the process was encouraging to me, if nothing else.


These two were done by my sweet friends, the Barbaras.  This one with all the hymn titles will make me sing from my stall.  So, if you hear singing....it's not me...really.....not me.

The three of us worked on these and it prompted a lovely chat about our faith and beliefs, bible studies and of course some hymn singing...quite an enjoyable time.

You will be able to visit these in the Ladies' Room very soon.

Take your Vitamin C....how can you use it to touch others?

It is my favorite kind of project. It was easy.  It just required printing letters. It was quiet in there, I spent most of the time alone. Part of the joy I get from projects at church is the quiet time I spend without distraction. Yes, it is quiet at home in my studio, but there are 23432343 distractions in every direction.

 So, I perform my physical task and that allows me to focus mentally on prayer or singing or thinking. It is about the only time I get to do that.

Last week, all of these pieces of paper were put up on the walls.  On Sunday morning, people were encouraged to get up and write on the paper. They could write a prayer, or a meaningful verse, or whatever they were feeling or responding to from the sermon.

So today when I wrote The Lord's Prayer over top of what came from their hearts, I kept thinking that I was wrapping all their personal prayers up in The Lord's prayer...just tucking them right in there. Nice.

Another example of how serving brings blessings back to you.

Take your Vitamin C!

I have a giant pot of beads. Bead Soup. For the last couple years, I have used bead soup for some interesting ministry opportunities. It has been a fund raiser for mission trips. We take it sometimes to make bracelets at Girls Night In at Grace Centers of Hope. Last summer, we took 16 pounds of beads from the soup pot with us in our suit cases to Germany where we made bracelets with the women of the Air Force base.

Another use for the bead soup ministry was presented a couple weeks ago.  We committed to make 200 beaded bracelets for a ministry called My Sister Song.  My Sister Song ministers to women in the sex industry in the Detroit area. They go into strip clubs and brothels to visit with the girls who work there.  They take goodie bags for the girls, help them with resources they might need to change their lives, and offer them a link to the outside world should they choose to accept it.

It is a faith based ministry. Their vision is for women to understand their great worth and realize that God has a purpose for the life of each woman and every woman has a story that matters. 


So, we asked if we could pitch in 200 bracelets for the goodie bags.



We sorted beads, strung them, attached charms and got 106 bracelets finished tonight.

It has become important to me to use the skills and resources that God has afforded me to serve others. I know many artists that look for avenues to do that same thing. I have read stories about random acts of art, where artists leave notes and small bits of art in public places for others to find, hoping it will be meaningful and brighten someone's day.

That is a fun activity, but I wonder if an artist is going to that much trouble, wouldn't it be more gratifying to use art to serve someone else whom you know for sure will benefit?  I love encouraging artists to do just that. It is more gratifying that you can imagine.

Gather a group of women who crochet, sit together, and make scarves and mittens for homeless folks who need them. Have an art sale, give the proceeds to a rescue mission. Teach simple crafts to women in the battered women's shelter.

I think every artist can think of ways to make a difference in someone else's life.

Think about it. It will bless you.
And take a double dose of Vitamin C!