DEsiGn

AS some of you know I like to dabble in graphic design as one of my hobbies. I put together a War Of Ages (Christian Metal Band) image this weekend and really was thrilled with the way it ended up looking. So I thought I would give details on how I designed it.

I started with inspiration of a shield and figured i wanted some sort of Epic looking landscape.
I wanted a really neat looking shield, and it took me a while to find one on google images. I eventually found this one..
I noticed right from the get go that I wanted to change up the shield's wording and the battle hammer into a cross. First I removed the surrounding background. I then was able to remove the wording from the banner by pasting pieces of the surrounding red banner over top of it. The battle hammer to cross transition was just a matter of removing the upper half of the hammer and copying and pasting a part of the lower handle as the top of the cross.

The next thing I wanted to do was change the skull into a lion. War Of Ages has used a lion in it's identity in the past. I downloaded the lion in this picture from google.


I then scaled it down and adjusted the opacity and placed it over the skull for a transparent look.

The next thing I did was add the traditional War Of Ages typography logo to the top of the shield. the finished shield came out like this:
For the landscape I wanted something epic looking. A smokey battlefield vibe, yet vacant. I decided to find a cloudy elegant sky. I came up with a picture from google that had that quality.
I followed that up with a smokey mountainous picture i found. I cut the mountains out of this picture and used an eraser with glowing edges to avoid an ugly fringe between the mountains and sky.
After those were put together I used a desert piece of land from this photo to add the near-ground where I wanted to have the shield half buried.

To pull this off with all the different pieces of land and sky from several different pictures..I utilized the glowing edge brush and adjusted the contrast and lighting effects pretty heavily.
The result was, I think, a perfect setting for the shield:


For the addition of the shield to the landscape I simply pasted it and trimmed off the bottom left corner for the buried look. I added a stroke to the outline of the "War Of Ages" wording. I then added the word ETERNAL to the banner and put a motion blurred layer underneath it for some wear and tear. I adjusted the lighting effects to finish things off.

Once everything was put together I was really happy with how it looked. I think it is probably my favorite and most complex design I've done thus far. Here's the finished product!

WHiTe as SNow

I've walked with the kings and I've marched to the pounding drums
Then you came

You asked me to change but like a fool I refused
And walked away
Oh, oh

It's not like you would know, would you?
You were white as snow
But still you plead, still you plead guilty

They took my crown as I hung my head and tied the noose
Around my neck

They tied me up and left me for dead please, cut me loose

It's not like you would know, would you?
You were white as snow
But still you plead, still you plead guilty

It's not like you would know, would you?
You were white as snow
You were white as snow
You were white as snow



These are lyrics from the song White As Snow by Haste The Day. I hear this song often on 89.7 Power FM when I'm driving my mail route in the morning.

It really got me thinking about Jesus Christ's unbelievable innocence...

Fully GOD. Fully MAN.
When I think about Christ I picture my Savior, my KING. The fully God SAVIOR OF MANKIND robed in righteousness, and surrounded by awe. Which He ultimately is and will forever be.. However, this a lot of times overpowers my perspective of him as fully MAN. Jesus was a man. Thats just so hard to fathom sometimes. I have to literally ask myself... Did Jesus ever burp out loud..and laugh about it, like I do?..Did He ever trip over an exposed root in the road and totally face-plant in front of everyone? hahaha...Did He ever call one of His disciples names and have that awkward moment where they turn around and it was someone else?

I find the "fully man" characteristic of Jesus to be absolutely fascinating. And then I tend to always find myself wandering one step further and becoming emotionally and completely awe-struck, by the thought of Him pleading GUILTY on my behalf, though HE was completely INNOCENT.

INNOCENT. WHITE AS SNOW. PURE.

Christ died a horrific and unspeakably undeserving death for ME. For YOU. For our friends, co-workers, bosses, and relatives. For the rulers of empires, countries, nations, and tribes. For the homeless men, women, children, and orphans across the world. For the professional athletes, celebrities, garbage truck drivers, mechanics, tax-collectors, board game inventors, NASA geniuses, and drivers-ed instructors. For cyclists, for criminals, for Spartans, and plumbers. For prostitutes, alcoholics, politicians, skateboarders, landscapers, and pilots. For gardeners, artists, models, lumberjacks, and those people who are really annoying. FOR EVERYONE.

A chance to live again. A chance to become NEW in HIM and live eternally in the presence of the FATHER.

All this for us... in spite of the fact that He was perfect. He lived a life that burned clean, with no stain or blemish.

We are so undeserving of such SACRIFICE. Where does that kind of love come from? How do we fathom such compassion?

I can't answer these questions. The only thing I can do is thank God everyday for such a blessed life, and for SALVATION.

AMAZING.

EngageD

Engagement Photos courtesy of Jessica Mooney (www.jessicamooney.com)

LOvE.

God is SO infinitely GOOD and JUST and AWESOME and WOW. wow wow wow wow wow. I honestly cannot believe this. December 12th 2009 was two days ago and it was HUGE. The reason being, I asked Lauren Celeste Moriconi to be mine forever.

For those who don't know her...she's the little 4' 11" ball of joy and compassion that I'm constantly following around :). I have been so blessed to have had God not only answer my prayers but for giving me so much more than I ever thought possible at such a young age. All the glory to Him, for creating such a fascinating and wonderfully radiant soul in Lauren.

I met Lauren on a Wednesday night in early 2008. After I had been living at DBU for a few months during my first semester, me and my (now most recent roomate and one of my absolute best friends ever) Wes began going to the Wednesday night College group gatherings at First Euless in Euless, TX. On this particular night we were going to Mission Arlington to help out with stocking canned foods. Lauren came as a friend of Lindsey Buchmann (One of the girls who regularly attended Wednesday nights.....also a hilariously awkward friend). As the night moved forward I found myself handing her canned peas over and over again. In retrospect I think I strongly misjudged her stature and handed her way too many cans at one time for such a tiny little lady. However she seemed to smile and make small talk nonetheless. At the end of the night I didn't see myself pursuing her...in other words it wasn't love at first sight, but there was definitely a new friend in the works! A day or two later she added me as a friend on facebook. If somehow you haven't heard of facebook... this has to be the ultimate way to get to know someone else! I still remember her picture being that one with the pretty flower, and the even prettier smile! I knew I wanted to see this girl again!






One Wednesday night the college group went to Taco Cabana afterwords and we had some horrible nachos...Lauren seemed really interested in the fact that we had the same major and I wound up forgetting about my wasted money on the nachos..Ha I remember her asking me lots of questions.

I remember the first day we hung out was in March...I had suggested we meet at DBU and then I would run errands with her, which included her picking up a friend from the airport. That was the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE! I've honestly never had that much fun getting to know another human being! She was so amazing and intriguing, that I asked her to hang out with me the next day. It was awesome............I could keep going on forever about how much fun, joy, happiness, and excitement this girl has brought to my life! The point is God brought us together.. we fell in love and I gradually realized I never wanted to imagine my life without her right beside me. Thank you God in heaven that she feels the same way!!!! She said yes! And I am so excited!!









The Lord is the reason for it all, and I pray we keep Him as our only cornerstone forever.

Thanks to everyone for all the prayer and support. I love you all!

God bless.

taylor

Dc*B ChurCh MusiC

I've been jamming hard to this one lately!

RoboTS & MonSTerS

a pretty pointless yet intriguing website i stumbled upon.... http://robotsandmonsters.org/

AliVe

We've all had those moments where the Lord is working in us...deep within us..we feel it as it happens. There are all sorts of examples: helping someone who is struggling financially, randomly calling that person you haven't talked to in months who happened to enter your mind today, emailing your good friend asking for prayer requests, standing up for the kid getting picked on in the locker room in junior high, or just doing something slightly out of the ordinary just to help someone out. These things are all very thoughtful and Christlike. Yet, don't they seem somewhat....rare? I don't mean rare on a worldwide spectrum, or even nationwide for that matter. I'm simply talking about one's individual life. All of these God inspired deeds, are ones of very good nature and are very prominent in the retrospect of anybody's life. But is the reason they stand out so much, because of their infrequent appearances? I believe the Lord is always working within us, in the presence of every decision. In Romans 6:11(NKJV) it reads: "11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord."... Through Jesus Christ we are alive to God. If Christ is alive within us and we are alive to God because of this, doesn't that prove to be consistent? In other words, life is a constant. If you are not living you are dead. If Christ is alive inside of us, wouldn't that mean He is working in us at all times. Which finally brings me to my point...How often do we listen?

It bothers me to think that the Lord is consistently working in me and moving me to make the right choice in all of life's "tight spots", yet there are only those few times that I do exactly what He has called me to do in that specific moment. I don't want those "God's way" moments to be rare....I want them to be my entire life. I want to be wrapped up in those moments. I want to live to be a good steward of my own God given good nature. The Lord is eternal and ultimate. Why not honor that by striving to not just succeed in those few moments of extravagant Christlike behavior, but to live for every moment in a way that is pleasing unto Him. I only hope I can take my own thoughts to heart and pursue the Lord the best I can in every moment.

...He is always working within us, because we are alive in Him...