the playful praise of an ordinary woman

I have an altered prayer book, a work in progress, that I use and add to. The book itself was really too fragile for an altered book but I couldn't resist. My friend Katie rescued it from the throw-away pile at their church library. It was originally a Sunday School lesson book,

The Children's Six Minutes

by Bruce Wright and I've changed the title for my purposes to:

The Playful Praise of an Ordinary Woman

. I gessoed over some of the text, glued some pages together and left some of the text as prompts to incorporate into the visual prayers. I draw in pencil first, use a pitt pen, allow it to dry overnight, erase the pencil lines and then paint with Golden fluid acrylics. Here's the cover and one of the pages that includes the prayer written at the end of my last post:

images & text except otherwise quoted copyright Valerie Sjodin 2010