Author Archives: ajsartjournal

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About ajsartjournal

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

Circles

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Mandala 1Hello friends

I hope your week is going well, mine is.  I couldn’t post yesterday because my computer was being so slow it took me over three hours to just get my emails and when I tried to get onto the blog is just ground to a halt!  Instead of getting annoyed and depressed I switched it off and did some art instead so it was a happy result in the end 🙂

The image above is from the Circles of Wisdom book I made for Dion Dior’s workshop on 21 Secrets last year.  The book is a child’s board book measuring about 5″ x 5″ and with the plastic stripped off the pages.  This is something I learnt from my friend Gretchen Miller’s workshop on 21 Secrets in 2011.  The book has 7 pages, not including the cover so there are 16 mandalas in total.  The board books make fantastic journals, they are cheap to buy in charity shops, have sturdy thick pages and the small ones like this one fit in your bag easily.  Sometimes it requires a bit of work to get the plastic off the page, but it’s worth the effort because when you’ve finished you have a complete blank book to work in.

Drawing mandalas is a very centering and calming thing to do.  You just start in the middle of the page and work your way out and around, the possibilities are endless.

Have a go it’s great fun!

21 Secrets is a great place to learn techniques from some fabulous teachers and I think it is really good value for money.  I have really enjoyed being involved with it for the past two years.  This year though I’m not doing any online workshops that require payment because I’m saving my money to go on another art retreat (hopefully) later in the year.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Nourish your Spirit

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Nourish your eye and spiritHello friends

I hope you are doing well.  We have just returned from our trip to London and I am feeling quite tired.  It was a good trip and we enjoyed eachother’s company.  Yesterday evening we went for a lovely meal in a vegetarian restaurant and then to the excellent John Prine concert at the Barbican.  The hotel we stayed in was very comfortable and we had a good night’s sleep.

The trip back wasn’t quite so good, the heating on the coach was on full and the little things in the ceiling that are supposed to blow cool air at you didn’t work.  I felt like I was in a slow cooker and began to feel a bit queazy.  When we got to Southsea, the last stop, we had just missed our connection to the Island by seconds and had to wait an hour.  I just wanted to get home because I thought I was going to be sick, but it was so good to get off that stuffy coach and be out in the fresh air.   It was a beautiful sunny day so we took a stroll along the promenade and slowly I began to feel better and the hour passed.  The hovercraft trip only takes 15 minutes and T had arranged for a taxi to collect us and bring us home.

It’s good to be home!  I think I will be having an early night tonight 🙂  Hopefully snuggled up with Billy Kat if he ever forgives me for going away for a night and leaving him – he’s being a bit aloof with me at the moment!

So, above is another page from my second Teesha Moore inspired journal.

Have a good week everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Fruit of the Tree of Life

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Fruit of the Tree of LifeHello friends!

Greetings on a very cold day in the UK!  I’m dreaming of being somewhere warm right now.   To be honest that will probably just be an early night in a warm bed snuggled up with a cat!   Before we adopted our two cats we used to go away on holiday in February to somewhere warm (usually the tropical paradise of Tobago) and I am missing that winter sunshine now.  We can’t go on holiday now because my husband won’t hear of ‘the boys’ being put ‘in prison’ just so we can get away, and I do think they would be very upset it we did that to them. Oh, but I could really do with some sunshine right now.  Still, spring can’t be far away can it?

Here is another page inspired by the wonderful Teesha Moore, I hope you like it 🙂

We are off to chilly London for an overnight stay at the weekend, our friend Matt is coming to cat sit for us, I’ll try and post on my blog when I get back if I’m not too tired.

Stay warm and safe people

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

Welcome!

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Welcome to my worldHello friends!

I hope all is good with you, I am a little under the weather today and spent the morning in bed.  Then I started to feel better so I got up and got showered and dressed and went to visit Mum and Dad.

I think the reason for feeling poorly is that yesterday afternoon I went into town and bought all the National Geographic magazines that I could find in the charity shops.  I didn’t realise how heavy they were until I got about half way home.  I suspect the weight of them hanging off my shoulder has disturbed the alignment of my neck and given me a headache.  Still at least I got some good supplies for cutting up and collaging 🙂

Yesterday evening we had a social get together of Ryde Social Heritage Group including a Murder Mystery.  I had to play the part of a nun (which I wasn’t too pleased about) but at least I wasn’t the victim or perpetrator of the crime!  It was an excellent evening with good food and lovely people.

The spread above is the last page to do in my 6×6 journal and is the inside cover and first page.  It has lots of layers and looks a bit grungey  but I am reasonably happy with it.  The stencil and sprays I used I won on a competition on my friend Caroline Dube’s blog.  Thank you Carolyn!  The only thing left to do now is the cover.  That is always exciting for me and I hope I don’t mess it up.

I am progressing well with the preparations for my workshop, the poster and information sheet are almost finished and I’ve ordered a whole load of new pens for the participants to use on the day.  I have drafted out the instruction leaflet they will be able to take away with them and need to start thinking about what else to include in their welcome pack.

I have to go now, we are having a friend visit us this evening and he has just arrived, so I need to go and be sociable.

See you soon

Big love
AJ 🙂

Imperfection is Beauty

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Imperfection is BeautyHello friends!

How are you?  I hope things are good with you.  Here everything is ticking along nicely.  I am working on several creative projects at once and it feels good.

I have started to prepare a poster and leaflet for the first Art Journaling workshop I am going to run as part of Ryde Arts Festival.  I am looking forward to sharing my passion for art journaling with others, I think it will probably be at the end of April I am just waiting to hear when the venue will be available for me to use.  The work we produce will be part of an exhibition for Ryde Arts Festival week in July.  I am excited and a little apprehensive about it, I’ve never done anything like this before, but something tells that I just need to do it 🙂  I just want to be well prepared…

The page above is from my second Teesha Moore inspired journal.  Things seem to be getting a bit surreal now in my artwork, but in all honesty, I don’t have a lot to do with that, I just go with the flow and see what happens.  Sometimes the result is beautiful and sometimes just downright weird 🙂

Have a good week everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

One Little House challenge Abstract with Discarded Material

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Sweet Dreams

CLICK ON IMAGE TO SEE FULL SIZE

Hello friends!

This spread in my recently started ‘Altered book journal’ is a response to a challenge over at One Little House.  There is a free group called One Little Book Club and Jeanette, our host, was inspired by Mary Beth Shaw’s book “Flavour for Mixed Media”.  I have to be honest here and say I’ve never heard of this book before and never read it.  However Jeanette created a fantastic page and I was inspired to respond.

I went though my rubbish bag and also through the piles of mess on my work desk and this is what I found:

The StashThe journal already had paint on the pages becasue I had some left over from another project, and I found some used (paint covered) baby wipes, old photos, bits of torn map, some jigsaw puzzle pieces, an old letter, a bingo card, some die cut scraps, a quote cut out from a magazine, various scrap papers and some pieces of ribbon. I began to collage it all onto the pages:

CollageAfter that I randomly added gesso, paint, texture paste, stamping, some plaster tape and glitter.  Towards the end of the process I decided to add the thin black ribbon.  It was really difficult to get it to stick to the pages and to be honest with you I thought I had ruined the whole spread.  It did not look good.  So I just added more ribbon and in the end I was pleased with the results.  I hope you like it.

I have had a very productive weekend – I am making progress with sorting out the mess in my art room and today I took 4 big bags of rubbish to the local landfill site.  T and I have made a start at redesigning the kitchen, it’s  difficult as the kitchen is long and very narrow, but we think we have worked out how to maximise on the space.  It is going to be hugely expensive and disruptive once we start, but at least we now have a plan. 🙂 Today I’ve done some housework and we purchased a lovely oak dresser which will eventually have a home in what will be our ‘rustic’ kitchen.  We had also planned to go and get a new computer for T, but after buying the furniture it was too late so maybe we will do that tomorrow?  We need to get it while it is still on Sale price.  Anyway we have both been feeling quite well this weekend so all is good.

I hope your weekend has been productive too.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Let Your Heart Soar

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Let Your Heart SoarHello friends!

It’s the middle of the week already!  Thank you all for your kind wishes.  I am feeling much better, T is still suffering and the doctor says it is some gastric problem and has prescribed some tablets which will take a while to start working.  In the meantime he feels sick whenever he eats and is having to drastically alter his diet.  Fortunately his mood has improved though.  It is always a worry when he is physically ill as it can trigger a bipolar episode, usually a massive low.

Today I went to our head office at work and met my manager for the first time.  He talks to me on the phone several times a week but today was out first face to face meeting.  I got a good vibe from him.  I spent the rest of the day with one of the team who showed me some of the complexities of the database I use.  Wow!  I was really impressed, what an amazing woman!  It was a good day.

The snow has just about gone now which is good but it’s really cold and wet now (not so good), I’m looking forward to spring and some warm weather.

The spread above is from my 6×6 journal, it’s actually the last page in the book.  I only have the first page and cover to do now and it will be complete. 🙂

I hope you are all keeping well and happy

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Weird & Wonderful

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Weird & WonderfulHello friends

I hope all is good with you.  We have had a little snow here which meant I struggled to get in to work on Friday.  I called my boss to explain the problems I was having and he agreed I could take the day as annual leave.

I spent the day tidying up my art room and achieved quite a lot, it’s going to take at least another full day though before it has any semblance of being ‘tidy’.  Unfortunately since then we have had sickness in the house, both of us have been quite poorly.  It’s hard to say who has been the worse.  I spent the whole day in bed yesterday being sick everytime I moved, which rates as quite bad in my books.  T, on the other hand, has been feeling poorly for much longer than me and he has now sunk into a very bad depression which is horrible on top of feeling nausious all the time.   I am hoping he will get himself to the doctor tomorrow.  I am feeling a lot better today, I have manged to eat some food and not been sick once, but my head is still feeling a bit odd.  I reckon I will be fit enough for work tomorrow.

I have to go and visit my parents now as I haven’t seen them since before it snowed and they might be in need of provisions.  I am hoping they are just staying in and keeping warm, they are too old and frail to go out on slippery pavements.

So above is another page from my 2nd journal inspired by Teesha Moore I hope you like it.

Take care and I’ll see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Sparkle!

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Sparkle and RadiateHello friends!

Well this is a very strange spread in my 6×6 journal, it was an experiment and I’m not sure it was successful.  I did a background on the pages that I LOVED, and then I did something that ruined it and I HATED it.  I didn’t know what to do with it.  Then I had this crazy idea to try using fusible film on top of the horrible background.  I painted the pages with PVA glue, and cut some fusible film that was bigger than the pages.  I scrunched it up one one side and folded it on the other and tried to stick it on the pages.  Not an easy task!  When it was loosely fixed I used the heat gun to shrink the film and meld it together.  Then I die cut some borders and flourishes and added the quote.  I don’t really like the end result, but it was an interesting process and something I shall try again at some point, probably.

I hope you are all keeping well and happy.  I am feeling good, at last I seem to be getting on top of things at work and I am feeling a lot happier about the situation.  I look at some of my colleagues who have really stressful jobs and are expected to work all hours of the day and night  and I think that actually there are a lot of advantages to having a mundane and repetative role.   So all is good 🙂

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Be Audacious!

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Be Audacious!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE IT FULL SIZE

Hello friends!

Wow it’s a beautiful sunny but cold winter’s day outside, the perfect day for taking a walk and taking photos, but I really have to stay in and do some housework today.  I need to try and get some sort of order into my art room, the chaos is even getting to me now and generally I can put up with quite a lot of chaos!  I think the problem is that I am trying to squeeze too much into too small a space.  I keep trying to use stuff up, but ‘someone’ keeps buying more supplies and starting more projects!

So I hope you are all well and happy and have had a great start to the New Year.  I am doing fine although I have been a bit under the weather.  I had to take Friday off work as I was sick all day.  I was in bed all day, I hate it when that happens it feels like such a waste of a day!  But I needed time to rest and restore and I am sure that my imagination was working overtime.

Yesterday I had to chair a meeting of the Local History group in the morning and I wasn’t sure I was up to it, but once I was up, showered, dressed and prepared I really enjoyed the meeting.  Despite really horrible weather lots of people turned up, everyone was really friendly, our guest speaker was fantastic and we all had a great time.  I LOVE being part Ryde Social Heritage Group it is so rewarding to work with people who are so enthusiastic and helpful.  We make a great team!

Above is the second page of my second journal inspired by the lovely Teesha Moore.  I have that quote printed out and stuck on my phone at work … because sometimes I just need to remind myself.

Have a great week everyone.

Big love

AJ 🙂