Doing What I Love

Have you ever heard the phrase “don’t turn what you love into your job, it will kill the thing you love”? For years I loved having a blog not only for the writing outlet it was when the kids were little, but also for the ‘set design’ I was able to do behind the scenes. Even when I had nothing to write or share with the world, I would often get on and play around with a new design and find new images to use or just change settings to see what that looked like on the interwebs. It became a space that I could customize when I was unable to decorate a rental house however I wanted to.

When I was asked to do the website administration at our first church, I hesitated. I love doing web design, I love being creative in this type of space, and I didn’t want to hate doing that when it became a chore with expectations. My love for digital creation won out, and I’ve continued to enjoy digital design for the past 6 years. That’s a wonderful joy in my life!

Because I love doing what I do, I thought about all the designs that hit the ‘cutting room floor’ so to speak. I have a lot of fun goofing around in Photoshop, sometimes the design I try is hilariously wrong! Other times, I create something that doesn’t make the cut to publishing, but I love it just the same. So I thought I’d share a few designs that may never be seen anywhere but here. Enjoy!

That final image with the marquee bulbs in the ‘live stream’ lettering was very labor intensive! I placed each of those bulbs into the letters. The Nahum image was done on a whim after reading through the book to get a theme for a sermon series image. The flaming letters turned out so cool, that image was used for the sermon series 🙂 The Genesis image was just fun an whimsical and still makes me smile when I look at it.

What brings you joy? How do you let your creative juices flow? What is your creative outlet? I’d love to know!