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

Little things can make me so happy

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The Bees KneesHello friends

We had snow on Monday and it’s been even colder than it was before.  The snow has gone now and the sun came out today which was lovely, but I’m still longing for some warmth.

Today the postman brought me a parcel of pure joy!  These pens are just so fabulous.  I had them delivered to my workplace and after I unpacked them I lined them up on my desk and excitedly showed them to everyone.  None of my colleagues could understand why I was so excited, but then I don’t understand why they are all so fascinated by the boring game of football.  I’m sure it’s a very good thing that we are all different and I’m glad to be the ‘odd one out’ in the office.  🙂

Short post tonight because we have to go out to a surprise 60th birthday party for a friend in a minute.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Madness

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Madness in LoveHello friends!

Woo! What a good weekend I am having.  I’ve done loads of art – I’ve have four journal pages in various stages of completion to use in my workshop to demonstrate the process AND I’ve started a new (Teesha inspired) journal and have completed the collage, shading and outlining on four pages.  I love doing the collage but I really love doing all the penwork and lettering.  So let the fun begin 🙂

Yesterday I went to a friend’s 80th birthday party and that was great fun.  An afternoon spent in good company with excellent food and a fun quiz thrown in too!

Today is Mother’s Day in the UK so Happy Mother’s Day to all you Mums out there.  T and I are taking my Mum and Dad out for lunch.  We were intending to go for a walk afterwards, but I’ve just been outside and it is very cold again, probably too cold for Mum to want to walk.  In fact they have forecast snow for tomorrow here!  What is happening?  It’s March for goodness sake, winter is supposed to be over by now!

The page above is the front cover of my second ‘Teesha inspired’ journal.  Thanks to my friend Jeanette House over at One Little House I also found another source of inspiration for this type of art journaling – Sandra van der Geest who does fabulous work.  Check this out : http://youtu.be/LpKUCC5CNmg It makes me happy 🙂  Sandra also has a great blog here.

I hope you are keeping well and happy.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Mandala time :-)

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MandalaHello friends

I hope your week is going well, I am feeling really great.  Yesterday we had a sunny and WARM day!!!!!  It was fabulous!  Today it’s been overcast and dull (but dry) and this evening it started to rain again.  But that doesn’t matter because we had a whole day of sunshine yesterday.

Normally in February the small pond in our garden fills up with frogs for their mating season.  I mean it really fills up so there is barely room for them to move and the croaking sounds they make are fantastic, but this year there haven’t been so many, probably because it has been so cold.   However T reported today that while he was in the garden he saw three frogs and a toad making their way from the hedge to the pond.  If this carries on we will have to put the mesh cover over the pond again to protect the frogs from the cats.  Jack and Bill like nothing better than fishing the frogs out of the pond and playing with them.  The frogs of course don’t enjoy the game one bit.

I’ve just ordered some more pens (like I haven’t got enough already) and I can’t wait to try them out.  I’ll let you know when they arrive 🙂  These are supposed to be the last pens I buy before the workshop in April, that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.  Some people have already signed up for the workshop 🙂  It’s still 7 weeks away and I’m already getting excited!

The page above is page 3 of my Circles of Wisdom journal.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

An Invitation

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Invitation

Hello friends!

I am now fully committed to running my art journaling workshop and some people have even signed up for it!   It’s quite good that for my first attempt at this type of thing I can do it without charging as Ryde Arts Festival are going to pay me to do it.  In return for this I and the participants in the workshop are going to produce pages that will be temporarily bound into a book that will form part of an exhibition during Ryde Arts Festival week June 28 to July 7.  After that everyone gets to keep the pages they contribute.

I am getting on with my preparations for the workshop and I just have a few more pens to buy so there are enough for eveyone to use on the day.  That is an excellent excuse for me really as I LOVE buying pens 🙂

I hope your weekend has been good, mine has been fairly productive but I am still wishing for warmer weather.  Come on!  It’s March and time to warm up!

Have a good week.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Have no Fear

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Have no FearHello friends!

Here is another mandala from my Circles of Wisdom book!

Things have been good for me this week, despite the fact that it is still very chilly in this part of the world and I really, really need some warmth now (please)!

I drove to Worthing this morning to get some training at our head office.  It is about an hour’s drive once I get across to the mainland.  The weather was dry but dull as I drove there, but when I was driving back this afternoon the sun was shining.  It was still cold, but that little bit of sunshine just made me feel so good.

Yesterday I met up with a friend who I haven’t seen for over 40 years.  We were ‘best friends’ for a time when we were at school and it was just amazing to meet up yesterday.  We spent a few hours chatting and trying to catch up.  We were friends, then we lost touch and our lives took different courses, but meeting up yesterday I think we both realised that even though we lost touch the bond of friendship was always there 🙂

Hopefully now we will be keeping in touch, I hope so.

See you soon my friends

Big love

AJ 🙂

Play!

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Play

Hello friends!

Well that’s another weekend over with and it went very fast.  I delivered the poster for my Art Journaling Workshop and the information sheets to the local library on Saturday, but the poster won’t go up until the manager returns to work mid-week and (hopefully) approves it.  Because I work full time I need somewhere in the daytime where people could go to enrol for the workshop.  The library seemed the best place.  I spoke to the manager a couple of weeks ago and she said it would be fine, but she wasn’t there on Saturday.  It has been put on to her desk awaiting her return to work.

Apart from that I’ve been producing display sheets for an exhibition being put on by Ryde Social Heritage Group later in the year and I’ve been doing some work on the RSHG website.  This would all be so much easier if my computer wasn’t so damn slow!

The page above is the back cover of my second Teesha Moore inspired journal and it’s about the importance of play.  The hanging balls (which look a bit like Christmas decorations) actually started out as eggs!  And just to prove that here is the page before I started playing with the pens.  Actually looking at the page now I think it could do with a bit more penwork so it may well still change.

Eggs!

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

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 🙂