This blog is to share my adventures in art journaling. It's a journey of discovery and you are more than welcome to join me.
A little bit about me … I’m English and live on the Isle of Wight which is off the south coast of England. I am retired and I’m married to the love of my life. We have been together as a couple since 1970 but only got married in 2007. before that we were just getting to know each other 🙂
We have had an amazing life together, travelled to distant parts of the world and lived life to the full. Sometimes when we look back at our life together we say “Wow! did we really do all that stuff?!”
My husband has been very unwell for the past 10 years and I am his full time unpaid carer now. When he was younger he worked as an advocate supporting people who were detained in hospital under the Mental Health Act. He was also a musician and DJ. He is still interested in music and on good days our house is still filled with music.
Me, I’m much more of a visual person, I love photography and images and now, of course, I love art journalling and being creative.
We never had children, but we are now the proud parents to two beautiful cats called Bill & Jack (after Bill Burroughs and Jack Kerouac). They are getting old now and need more care and attention.
Want to know anything else? Just ask 🙂
Big love
AJ
Hello friends, I hope 2026 is going well for you. I wish you all the best this year. Unfortunately, for us it has brought more problems and stress.
T’s heart operation was a success, and his heart is functioning better now than it has in years. That’s the good news.
The problems started because we couldn’t get any pain relief for his broken rib. The break was not recorded on the discharge notes from the hospital. We only had paracetamol at home. T didn’t get to see a doctor over the holiday period. I wasted a lot of time, on the phone, trying to get him the help he needed.
T spent most of January in bed, trying not to move because of the pain. This had an effect on his mood – the mood swings have become much more noticeable and difficult to manage. It has been difficult to get the mental health support he needs. This seems to be a common issue in the UK.
We also had a lot of ‘tech problems’ recently. I knew that our old computers would eventually stop working so we ordered new ones. They arrived around Xmas time. Now I realise that many of the advances in computing are completely unfathomable, and probably unnecessary for us senior citizens. It’s been an ordeal for me to try and work things out. I’m SLOWLY getting there. T doesn’t even know how to connect his new computer, and he’s not in the right headspace to try and figure it out just now.
I had intended to refocus my blog more on art and creativity this year. Originally it was just about art journaling, but Health issues have taken over. I’m going to try harder to refocus. I know that things will get better, and eventually I’ll get back to normal (whatever that is).
The image at the top is another page from my Paint and Doodles journal.
Take very good care of yourselves and, hopefully, I’ll be back soon. Big Love
I’ve been away for a while again because, out of the blue, I received a phone call from Southampton Hospital on Friday 5 December advising me that T’s operation was scheduled for 17 December. T had just gone out to see his therapist when I received the call so I had to wait until he got home to tell him. I was really pleased that it wouldn’t be necessary for us to travel to a foreign country to get it done now, but he immediately went into shock and subsequently through the whole spectrum of emotions before we got to the hospital. By the time he went to the Theatre for his op on 17/12 he had come to terms with everything and was mentally in the right space.
His operation went really well, he spent one night in Intensive Care, then a couple nights in the High Dependency Unit before returning to a normal ward. He had to be put on a 12 hour drip because he was so dehydrated and they also sorted out a couple of other problems. Although the op went well the surgeon accidentally broke one of T’s ribs (he apologised when he did he ward rounds and saw T after the op). The new valve has settled in nicely and his heart is functioning better than it has for years. Unfortunately the pain from the broken rib is delaying his recovery a bit, but it gets slightly better every day. He was discharged from the hospital on 24 December and we got home at about 4:30pm. The trip home (which involved a half hour taxi ride from the hospital to the ferry terminal; a short wait then a half hour fast cat ferry ride to the Island – the sea was rough that day which caused T more pain and caused me to feel sea sick!; then a slightly longer taxi ride home) he was exhausted by the time we got home and in need of more pain relief then went straight to bed for a rest.
The lovely cats were pleased to see us and we were pleased to see them.
Christmas Day was very quiet, T slept and rested most of the time. I took the opportunity to go and visit my Mum and when I got home I cooked a ‘sort of Xmas Dinner’ in the evening.
Each day things are getting better and we are optimistic that he will be healthier and able to do more in the future. However he is still in heart failure, that will be treated and hopefully improved by medication, the pace maker, exercise and diet.
While T was in hospital I was able to stay near to him in Heartbeat House again. I am so grateful that place exists, it’s clean, warm, safe and full of other people away from their homes and caring for relatives who are heart patients. Some of the people I made friends with at HBH had to stay there over Christmas but I know they will have supported each other and it’s important that our loved ones are looked after and helped to recover.
So because of all of the above I haven’t had much time for creativity again in the past month. Today I am sharing a small project I did earlier in the year – a birthday card for my friend Claudine. It’s called an Explosion Book (or Squash Book). The two images above show both sides of the book/card ‘exploded’ but it all squashes down to a small square. I forgot to take a picture of it squashed!
Here is a quick YouTube tutorial on how to make one There are longer and more detailed tutorials available if you search for them.
For anyone who is reading this I hope you had a lovely Christmas. People who know me well know that I’m really not a big fan of Christmas but nevertheless I hope you all enjoyed it. I do however wish you all the best for Good Health and Happiness in the New Year.
Hello, I hope you are keeping well and enjoying life.
Things have been a bit hectic for me since we got back from our successful trip to London.
T has been sleeping a lot because he is tired all the time now. He wrote to the hospital in Southampton (who have told him he will get his ‘urgent’ heart surgery ‘some time’ in the next year) to ask if they will be monitoring his heart in the meantime. He got a rather abrupt and unfriendly answer to say that no they will not be monitoring him but if he becomes unwell he should report to our local hospital for emergency treatment.
He is losing all confidence in the team at Southampton now. Luckily he is seeing the local Heart Failure Nurse early next week and he finally got an appointment to see his GP the next day.
When he was first told that his only option for surgery was Transapical TAVI, (a very specialised and complex type of keyhole surgery) he was told that he was not ‘optimal’ for the surgery at that time because his Aortic valve was functioning ‘OK’ (apparently 25% performance is deemed OK!?) but if it was left too long there might be too much damage to his heart and then he would be unable to have the surgery. So the fact that they don’t want to monitor him is naturally a bit worrying.
T has been researching other options. He first looked into being transferred to another UK hospital but they all have long waiting lists for NHS patients. Although going private could probably expedite the surgery to a few weeks, the cost in the UK is prohibitive. He’s now considering going abroad for private surgery, which, including return flights for two and accommodation, is about half the price of having the operation done in the UK (still a lot of money though). I have told him he needs to investigate what the insurance cost will be as I’m sure it will be very high with all of his other health problems which all have to be declared. I want to be sure that if he needs a medivac flight to get home one will be available.
Naturally I am very anxious about all of this (the delay, the lack of ‘customer service’ from the team at Southampton, the difficulty of getting care from the NHS – due to years of underfunding from successive governments, etc. etc.) and I am pleased he will be seeing the two local professional people who know him and appear to care about him.
When I’ve managed to find a bit of ‘me time’ I’ve been trying to finish a Junk Journal I started in 2014 as well as making a box to contain it. It’s completely made from junk and rubbish and I’ve filled it with quotes that are meaningful to me (the delightful content). I’ve just got one more page to finish and a few tags to decorate and then I can mark that one as ‘complete’ too. Hopefully I will get it done before the end of the year as I’ve already noted on the box that it was started in 2014 and completed in 2025 🙂 Here is a little glimpse of the inside and the box:
Yesterday we had our very last session of the Arts and Craft group run by CarersIW. It’s a bit sad it has come to an end because it was a lovely group of carers and we all supported each other through difficult times. Often the room was filled with laughter. Yesterday we decorated cardboard gingerbread men for a community Christmas tree.
Back Row L-R Cheryl, Debbie, Denise and Julie Front Row L-R Lucy (who led the group until recently) Marcus who took over from Lucy, Sarah and me!
The group used to be a lot bigger but in recent months the numbers have dwindled and the decision was taken to bring it to an end. Very sad but I think it was the right decision. I have been invited to join another group on a different day. The Self Care Cafe is centred more on the individual and includes things like mindfulness, breathing, meditation, calming music and sometimes there is also a craft element. This week we made ‘natural weaves’. My effort is at the top of this post. The frame is made from driftwood tied together, the warp is made from paper string and the weft includes all sorts of bits and pieces collected from the beach and gardens and some extra bits tied on. It was a really lovely exercise to do and I was quite pleased with the result of mine. Everyone did something different and they were all lovely.
The weather in the UK got colder recently and I remembered some time ago (probably a couple of years) I purchased everything I needed (fabric and mechanisms) to make two Roman Blinds for T’s room. He has 2 large windows in his room one south facing and the other east facing. They already have curtains but the blinds will improve the insulation. I thought making the blinds would be a quick and easy task afterall it just involves sewing straight lines, but it’s turned into a bit of marathon.
Part of the problem is getting into his room, because he sleeps a lot I don’t like to disturb him but I also need daylight for measuring and fitting, there’s a bit of drilling and hammering involved, climbing up and down step ladders and quite a lot of groaning and swearing! Currently it gets dark at about 4pm so my window of opportunity to get the job done is limited! Sometimes he stays in bed until early afternoon! Today I should get the first blind competed and then I am hoping that the second one will be quicker as I now know what I need to do and hopefully won’t make as many mistakes. The blinds have blackout and thermal linings to keep the heat in during the winter and out during the summer. If I ever need more blinds I’ll pay someone else to make them. I’ve realised that now I am a ‘senior’ things that used to be quick and simple take much longer and seem more complicated!
My other exciting news that I will tell you about nearer the time or maybe after the event is that I have signed up for a 5 day Art Retreat in the south of France with my favourite artist next summer. It sold out almost immediately and I was lucky to get a place. I am so excited about this 🙂 ❤
That’s all for now, keep creative friends 🙂 Big love from me AJ xxxxx ❤❤❤
There is an exhibition of art by the Street Artist Banksy in London at the moment and we went to check it out.
I was going to go on my own just for a quick day trip, but then I asked T if he would like to come too. He said he’d like to come but wouldn’t be able to manage it in one day so it turned into a mini trip. Because T can only walk short distances we had to take his wheel chair which in some respects made things easier, but in others much harder. We spent far more money than we normally would have done, but as this was the first time we had any adventure away from home for years, we felt that we deserved a bit of spoiling.
We left home late morning on day 1, got to London by mid afternoon, checked into a hotel in South Kensington that was near to where the exhibition was and went out for an evening meal at lovely Indian restaurant.
On day two we had a very expensive breakfast in a lovely ‘cafe’ (it was much more ‘upmarket’ than the cafe’s we have where we live)! The bill for the breakfast came as a bit of a shock to us, but the service was very attentive and the whole experience was very nice. Then at 12 noon we were booked in to see the exhibition. The people running the exhibition were all very lovely to us and made sure we got to see everything and T was well looked after.
Smiley Reaper, spray paint on cardboardGet our why you Can!One for the flag waving ‘Patriots’!An iconic imageTony Walton, Geriatric, Disabled, Non-digital, Anarchist – Free Palestine!
The Banksy exhibition was good, you never know really what to expect of a Banksy exhibition because he never authorises, approves or curates exhibitions like this so it’s all done without his input. A few years ago we went to a similar Banksy exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam which I have to say was probably better than the one currently in London, but if you like Banksy it’s still worth going to the one in London.
At the same venue there was also a photographic exhibition by the Danish photographer Søren Solkær, he is more commonly known for his photography of musicians and as a fashion photographer. But for 10 years he worked on a personal project – to photograph iconic street art and to try and track down the artists and take photos of them with their works. Of course many street artists do not wish to be identified because often they create art outside of the law, but Søren’s exhibition is truly stunning and it well worth a visit. Below are a few shots from his show.
French artist Invader in front of some of his pixelated mosaic workBorondo in front of his work Narcissus Blek le RatBrazilian-born street artist known as Pixote in front of some of his work
That evening we went for an even more expensive and delicious Italian meal at Rocco’s. Well worth the cost.
The next morning we were up early and making our way home. Unfortunately it took a lot longer than it should have done because our train was delayed by ‘a couple of horses on the tracks’ at some point that meant we missed connections. We got home exhausted at about tea time on day 3 but having had a very enjoyable time.
That’s all for now. Hope all’s good with you Big love AJ xxxx
My life’s been a bit chaotic again recently – Sometimes good, sometimes really not so good, but at least never boring.
I am managing to get some creativity in and that is good for me. I’m unsure about the results of my creativity in terms of success, but I know that even if the result is rubbish the act of being creative is definitely good for me. The image above is another page from my Paint and Doodle journal. Maybe next time I will remember to show you a before and after image, we’ll see.
T’s mood swings seem to be back with a vengeance and changing quite fast. When he’s up and happy he is being very creative and doing lots of music and writing projects. It is lovely to hear music filling the house again, it’s been a long time. He gets very little sleep at these times and that can trigger mania which currently presents as him being angry and ranty and then that is usually followed by a depressive episode. When he’s down he just switches off, shuts down and spends days in bed. It’s not lazyness but more like paralysis. It’s been the pattern for much of our lives together for the past 55 years … Still can’t quite get used to it although I think/hope I understand it better now.
On top of that T’s physical condition is not getting any better so there’s very little he can do around the house or garden, even when he is motivated to do so. Still no news as to when he might get his heart surgery! But all that aside his cognitive function is so much better now he is not taking all those psyche meds and if I catch him at the right time (when he’s not completely down in the dumps or so ‘up’ he can’t stop talking and ranting) we can now have fairly reasonable conversations. His memory is still shockingly bad but doesn’t seem to be getting any worse atm, and, to be honest, my memory is also not as good as it used to be. I guess that’s what happens with aging 😦 We make a right pair of confused seniors!
Every Friday I attend a ‘Creative Carers’ group. It’s a chance for me to spend time with others in a similar situations (i.e. we are all carers for a loved one) and to be creative in some form.
A few weeks ago we attempted to decorate some small chests of drawers (14.5 x 16 x 7cm). I painted mine with primary colours but I messed it up by applying too much paint and at the end of the session I couldn’t even get the drawers back into the cabinet! At the end of each session we have to take whatever we have worked on back home because all the available cupboard space in the Carer’s centre is full of art supplies and there is no room for our finished, or incomplete projects. Usually I throw out my attempts when I get home. I really enjoy the company of the other people there and I enjoy trying all the different things we do, but I rarely produce anything I would want to keep.
So I took my set of small drawers home but before I threw them out I decided to at least get the drawers to fit. I sanded everything down and then waxed the inside of the box until the drawers slid into place.
I still wasn’t that happy with the finished result so I decided to draw a mandala design on the front and onto the top and side and then colour it in with lots of bright colours using my Posca paint pens and some gel glitter pens. When it was finished I was quite pleased with it so I gave it a coat of matt varnish.
In an attempt to get my mojo back I have started a new journal to fill with doodles.
Whenever I use any sort of paint I like to use up any that is left over from what I’m doing and I tend to use it in a blank journal, in this case a board book. This means I’m not confronted by a blank page.
This page started off with paint smeers on it and I added some collage doodles and marks.
In the years that I neglected this blog everything seems to have become a lot more sophisticated and I’m feeling a bit lost with the technology and terms used. I think I’ll just have to keep playing about until I ‘get it’.
Hello… Am I back? Who knows? Anyway, if you do happen to be here, then welcome (or possibly welcome back) to my blog.
Here are some Twirly Ball things I made recently from recycled book pages and broken jewellery (English spelling 🙂 )
This blog has been dormant for a long time and I am going to TRY and reactivate it. The truth is I haven’t been very creative since my last post (in August 2019) and I’ve missed it a lot.
My (spare room) “studio” turned into a dumping ground for all the stuff I didn’t know what to do with, there were precarious piles of stuff on every surface and all over the floor leaving just a small pathway from the door to my computer, there was still a high risk of an avalanche, so the pathway had to be nagivated with great care. Earlier this year I decided I had to do something about it and it has taken months to sort it all out. I’ve got rid of loads of stuff (don’t worry I still have more art supplies than I need), reorganised everything, sorted my art supplies into smaller and lighter boxes, and labelled everything. It seemed to take for ever but I finally got it done and my studio now feels spacious and airy (for now). Unfortunately I don’t have a good track record for keeping my space tidy, but I’m going to try!
A lot has happened in the past 6 years or so and TBH it’s been, and continues to be, really tough.
Here is a summary of some of the challenges I’ve faced:
We all had to deal with the Covid pandemic and lockdowns in 2020. Around about that time T’s health was in serious decline with multiple issues – he’s had 5 surgeries (2 of them redos of previous operations that went wrong)! and many hospital admissions. He developed cognitive problems that took well over a year to be sorted out with a change of medication. He’s still physically unwell but at least now we can have sensible conversations again. He currently has memory and mobility problems and is now in advanced heart failure. He’s been waiting for heart surgery and hopefully it will be done sometime in the next year, we are hoping it will be sooner rather than later because we were told it was urgent a year ago. My Dad’s health also declined and he had to go into care during the Covid lockdown he never returned home and passed away in Feb 2022. Mum and I were with him when he died. Mum has been lost without him and I really miss him too. They were married for 72 years. Because she knew I was dealing with a lot of issues too, she decided to move into a retirement home where she knew she would be looked after. That happened sometime in 2023 she is in a home that is close to where I live so I visit her whenever I can. I spent a lot of time last year sorting out and emptying her home so that it could be sold. She tried to help me at first but it was too upsetting for her going back to her old home. In the end I did most of it on my own. I spent hours in that house on my own crying, packing things to be taken to chatiry, sorting and cleaning, it was heartbreaking and exhausting! The house finally sold a year ago. I retired from work in August 2020 after working for the same company for almost 30 years. In all those years I had attended, and even organised some, retirement parties, they tended to be lovely events. However Covid regs meant my retirement party was restricted to just 6 of us meeting outside and having a picnic. Fortunately it was a lovely sunny day, the location was lovely (on top of a reservoir site) and the people I shared it with were some of the favourite people I worked with, but it still felt a little bit flat and disappointing. We both caught Covid in November 2023, ironically when we went to Southampton hospital for T to have a brain scan. I wasn’t too bad but was positive for 2 weeks, T was very poorly and had to go to hospital. He was discharged on Christmas Eve but he was still unwell and had to be readmitted on Boxing Day. It wasn’t a good Christmas! Then last year T spent about 5 weeks in hospital over Christmas waiting for Heart Surgery that (for various reasons) never happened. In May this year I had my 70th Birthday!!! I’m definitely beginning to feel a bit ‘creaky’ now but on the whole I think I’m in good health which is fortunate because I am now T’s main carer. I do get help – he employs a lovely lady C (who previously cared for my Dad and then my Mum) she comes for 10 hours a week. She is a fantastic carer, for both of us, and now she has become a close friend.
So with all that above (and more) going on in my life I haven’t really had the time or the inclination to be very creative. Recently I’ve begun to realise how much I miss it and have decided to try and re-establish some sort of creative routine. The ‘Studio’ is finally sorted out, organised and doesn’t feel so claustraphobic so I’m hoping to get back to being a ‘creative person’ again.
While I was tidying and reorganising the ‘studio’ I found loads of projects that I had started with enthusiasm but never finished. So I’m going to try and complete at least some of those before starting anything else? I don’t think I’ll ever have to buy any more art supplies for as long as I live (but in all honesty I probably will – it’s an addiction)! One thing I did finish recently was the Tikis and Totems Journal I started in 2015 as part of the Artstronaut’s Club run by Teesha and Tracy Moore. Here are the images from the completed journal: If you have followed my blog before you will have seen some of these images and if you follow me on Facebook you will probably have seen all of them recently. You can click on the arrows to see all 12 pages.
Front Cover
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Back Cover
I’ve upgraded my blog and now have my own domain name ajs-art-journal.com I’m not sure what difference that makes but you can find this blog by using that link or the old one (I think) AJsartjournal.wordpress.com. Actually I am struggling a bit at the moment, I’ve been away from this site for so long I’ve forgotten how to do lots of stuff. So if it all looks a crazy jumble I apologise, I think I will have to watch all the training tutorials again! But please let me know if when you view it things are not right and I’ll try to sort it out.
That’s all for now folks I hope to be back soon definitely sooner than 6 years next time.
I finally completed a whole project, it took a year but I’m chuffed with it. In July 2018 I was doing my regular trawl around all the local charity shops looking for a bargain when I found this book. I can’t tell you just how excited I was 🙂
It’s chunky book to help young children learn the alphabet, the pages are thick board covered in a plastic wipe clean surface.
First of all I carefully removed the cover and put it aside to reconstruct it later. Then I stripped all the plastic from the pages, it pealed off really easily and left me with a pristine blank book. To strip the pages gently start rubbing at one of the corners until the plastic begins to separate from the board page, then, if you are careful (and a bit lucky) you can usualy pull the whole plastic covering away from the backing.
Because blank pages are a bit scary I coloured every page with a random colour and then starting at A and finally finishing at Z I made my very own personalised ABC of Me. I used quotes and words that I find inspiring and to keep my spirits lifted. After I had removed the cover I was able to work on each spread flat, which made the job so much easier,
Once it was finished and because I still wanted to be able to open the book out flat I strengthened the spine with fabric and PVA glue, I also covered the front and back covers of the book with fabric and then stuck the first and last pages to the covers with more PVA glue. I made the titles for the front cover and the spine from an old piece of bandage which I coloured with ink and used alphabet rubber stamps for the lettering on the cover.
Here is the completed book, it took me a year to finish it: If you click on the Vimeo link you can watch it full screen, you will probably have to pause it if you want to read all the words. I have tried to attribute the quotes to the appropriate author, but didn’t manage with every one of them.
If you would like to create your own ABC book, the original My Big Alphabet Book is available from Amazon (and presumably other suppliers) at a reasonable price.
That’s all for now folks, take good care of yourselves and I’ll be back here sometime soonish I hope.
I hope you are keeping well and happy. I didn’t realise I’d been away so long again, I am struggling to get back into regular blogging. Also very little time for making art, which is a shame because the more I make art the easier it becomes and when I don’t do it I find it difficult to get back into my flow. But sometimes there are more important things to do in life and that’s OK.
So I thought I would share the image above with you, it’s a project I finished over a year ago. The picture is about A3 size and I made it as a house warming present for some young friends who had just bought their first home.
The project started when I bought a children’s book about dinosaurs:
It’s a lovely book with great illustrations and and a wonderful colour pallette.
First I created a background.
Then I added a collage border and focal point using bits cut out from the dinosaur book.
Next I added shading using Inktense water colour pencils.
Then outlined everything with black ink.
Using paint pens I altered all the collaged elements. Although I use elements cut from books I use them as inspiration but I always want to make them my own with my own mark making.
Finally I added the beautiful Apache Blessing and some swirly bits and put it in a frame. I hope they like it, they said they did, but people are very polite and to be honest I wasn’t entirely sure about it. I do love the colours of this piece though and and the Apache blessing. “Walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life”.
It’s summer and the weather is hot, I LOVE it! The garden is thriving, it takes a lot of watering which is time consuming but worth the effort. Whenever I can I use water from the water butts and when they are emtpy the plants get a splash of tap water, just enough to keep them going until the next rain.
Our cats are as gorgeous as ever and I am happy to have them in my life.
Jack in his castle, it’s an ornate tomb in the cemetery, but he’s claimed it as his own.Bill just wants his tummy tickled 🙂
I am TRYING to blog more regularly, but at the moment failing spectacularly, I’ll try harder!
I am trying to stay off politics because the situation in the UK (and the world) is driving me crazy. It really does feel like the lunatics have taken over the asylum. I could easily slip into full raging rant mode, but I won’t.
I’ll be back when I can and in the meantime take good care of yourselves.
AJ's Art Journaling 