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 of Wisdom

Posted on January 9, 2013 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

I hope your week is going well, I am doing fine and I have been feeling a bit better about work this week. I am having problems with my computer at home though, it just seems to be getting slower and slower so everything I do takes double or treble the time I think it should. I am grateful that it is still working though as I don’t know what I’d do without it.

The image above is made up of 4 pages from my 6×6 journal. Last year on 21 Secrets I did a workshop with Dion Dior called Circles of Wisdom and I learnt to draw mandalas. It was a good opportunity for me to practice my doodles and there is definitely something meditative about creating mandalas. The pages in my journal already had gesso and paint on them and were not ideal backgrounds for the images. So after I drew these 4 I decided to make a whole book dedicated to Circles of Wisdom. I recycled a child’s board book which is 5.5″ x 5.5″ and I filled it up with 16 different mandalas, it’s a lovely little book and I will probably share it with you at some point in the future.

***** One of the gorgeous women I met at the Call of the Wild Soul Art Retreat last year, Jeanette House, has set up a new ning site called One Little House for art and craft e-learning. I think you should probably check it out, we are bound to have fun and Jeanette is both lovely and talented 🙂 *****

OK that’s all for tonight, I’ve got to print out a batch of cemetery maps for my friend.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Be of Good Cheer!

Posted on January 6, 2013 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

It’s Sunday morning and I am trying to catch up with a load of stuff that is really overwhelming me. What makes it worse is that my workroom is a total mess. I REALLY need to tidy up in here, I think it is becoming a bit of a Health & Safety issue, trip hazards on the floor and surfaces covered in precarious stacks of things! Why can’t I be ‘super tidy’ like my husband?

Anyway, even though I am surrounded by chaos and my ‘To Do’ list just grows and grows, I am still of Good Cheer today. Yesterday T and I completed a big project (well it was big for us). We relocated the washing machine from the kitchen to the cupboard under the stairs. We have done a load of washing and (so far) there are no leaks!!!! That’s stage 1 of the kitchen refurb complete… At the moment there is a horrible big hole under the worksurface where the machine was. We were going to put the freezer in there but it won’t fit! Well it would fit if we forced it past the water pipes that feed the boiler but we are too worried that that will cause a leak. Just getting the washing machine out of the space was scarey enough. One thing we have to make sure of when we finally do the kitchen is that that space is made bigger.

I am working on a number of creative projects at the moment – several differend journals and a 16″ x 20″ canvas.

The page is above is the first page from my second Teesha inspired journal. I LOVE this style of journaling and my collection of lovely pens is growing almost by the day. I need to find a good way to store pens, does anyone have any ideas about that? I like to store them flat so I need some sort of boxed racking (cheap). I think probably I could get something at Ikea but we don’t have a store locally that I can visit. Oh well I’m sure something will turn up.

Have a good week everyone, I’ve just been summoned to go and help measure the kitchen so we can start planning the next stage of the kitchen!

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Time for something new :-)

Posted on January 2, 2013 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

I completed my Calendar Challenge for 2012. Thank you Kate Crane for a great project I really enjoyed it and surprised myself by actually completing the whole year.

This year I am going to try something a bit different, I am going to try and make myself a Year Book. I never do proper journaling in my journals, if I use words they tend to be quotes that I find that resonate with me. I enjoyed writing on the little squares in the calendar challenge so this year I thought I would try and keep a diary and write some more about my life. I have made some signatures for the book by recycling Christmas cards, I sewed two or three together, then gesso’d them and then covered them with some of my enormous stash of scrap papers. The plan is that at the end of the year I will bind all the signatures into one big year book and it will be record of what happened in 2013. If I succeed I might show you a picture of the book in about a year’s time but I doubt that i will be sharing the content of the book because my life really is not that exciting and my writing style (and handwriting) is very poor. But I shall be interested to see if I can keep it up for a whole year. Don’t hold your breath though… 🙂

Today was my first day back at work after the long Christmas holidays and it was a bit of a struggle, but I am determined that I am going to keep positive about it and try to do the best I can. I am asking a lot of myself with this so wish me luck.

It’s a New Year my friends and I wish you success in all your endeavours.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Revo’lution 2013

Posted on December 27, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and I wish everyone a Happy and Healthy New Year!

I am really enjoying being off work for a few days and I’ve been doing art whenever possible. We spent Christmas day with my parents and yesterday we had Tony’s friend Nigel come for lunch. Today we have had a day on our own and tomorrow more family arrive.

When I have had time I have been working on my 2013 Revo’lution book. Last year the words in my Revo’lution book were: Inspire, change, kindness, authentic, gratitude and abundance. It is a book I pick up often and think about the intention behind making the book. All I can tell you is that it’s a fantastic exercise and (for me) much more beneficial than making New Year’s Resolutions, which I can never keep.

This year the words in my Revo’lution book are: connect, grow, focus, share and reflect. I wanted to have a line running through the book which would connect all the pages together. There are very few words or explantion of what the book means, that is because producing the book was almost like a meditation. On each page I gave the word intention in every action of producing the page. I can look at each page and know exactly what want to attract into my life.

To find out more about this excellent process please go over and visit my friend Gretchen Miller. Gretchen introduced me to this wonderful process in 2011. So above is the cover and below are all the pages of my 2013 Revo’lution book, which is a repurposed children’s board book:

Wishing you success in all your endevours in the coming year.

Big love

Happy Holidays!

Posted on December 24, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

Happy Holidays to you! I don’t have to go back to work until January 2nd and I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am just to have a break! On Saturday I decided to put up some Christmas decorations and attempt to get myself into the Festive Spirit. I went out to buy a Christmas Tree, I wanted a real one, and I honestly thought that having left it so late I would be able to get one at a reduced price. Wrong! They had sold out! So I bought the only artificial tree I could find and now that it is decorated I think it looks fine in the corner of the living room. The cats don’t seem to mind it either. The first Christmas we had the cats they were about 9 months old and they both completely freaked out when a large decorated tree materialised in the living room and until it was removed they refused to come into the room. Last year we did have a real tree but it was TINY (only about 1 foot tall) and the cats took no notice of it so this year is it in our new dining room. You can probably just about see it in the corner 🙂 Fortunately this year ‘the boys’ are not at all concerned about the tree in the corner, they haven’t attempted to climb it yet but both of them have had a turn at sitting beneath it.

So my big news is that I have completed my A4 Journal which I started in October 2011. As always I did the cover last – I used texture paste in which I embedded some little mirrors, I sewed a big black button on the front to act as a sort of door handle and I used loads of different coloured acrylic paints to give it an ‘aged’ look. The title letters are from a word game – coloured with distress inks and topped with glossy accents. Finally I decorated the wire spine (which I have come to hate) with ribbons. It feels so good to have it completed :-). My 6×6 journal is also just a few pages away from completion and, because a new year is coming up soon, I have made a start on my 2013 Revo-lution book and I will be sharing both with you soon.

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy and Healthy New Year.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Operation Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Swap :-)

Posted on December 19, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends

I recently took part in Operation Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Swap which was hosted by 6 Degrees of Creativity and my friend Gretchen Miller. Over 100 Sock Monkeys from 18 states across the US and from New Zealand, Canada, UK, and Italy came together before being sent to their final destination: The Boys and Girls Club in Hoboken, New Jersey.

If you click on the links you can find out all about the project.

Above are my two sock monkeys, I had to make them before I could commit myself to participating, they were fun to make. The pink one was sent to Gretchen to be sent to the Boys & Girls Club in Hoboken and the grey one was sent to Katarina Thorsen in Canada. Katarina is an amazing artist and I recommend you check out all of her blogs :-). You can find out all about Operation Sock Monkey here. I love their motto which is ‘Sending smiles across the miles’.

And here is the sweet monkey I received in the swap. It was made by Katie in Connecticut. Thank You Katie! Once Billy Kat gets used to having ‘a stranger’ on the bed Monkey will fit in nicely and have a good home here 🙂

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Strange Creature

Posted on December 16, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello Friends!

Sorry I missed my mid-week post again this week. On Wednesday I took the day off work and did my Christmas shopping. I left home at 10am and didn’t get back until 6pm. My husband said “What have you been doing all this time?”. He does all his shopping online or just buys vouchers for people! Anyway I can’t say I was full of festive spirit, but I bought a lot of stuff and spent a lot of money and now it’s all wrapped up it looks OK.

I am disappointed that this year I haven’t had time to make presents for my friends, but I just didn’t feel up to is in November and then ran out of time to even start in December.

My mood has improved this month and I will be glad once Christmas is out of the way, it’s not really my favourite time of year but at least I am having a long break from work so I’m bound to have time for some art. I am hoping too that T picked up on those massive hints I dropped for new art supplies.

We have some family coming to stay just after Christmas so yesterday I decided to do some housework, and managed to put my back out within about an hour, I was only bending over to pick something up too and it wasn’t even heavy. Fortunately it’s not too bad and the painkillers are helping to relieve it so I can carry on with my tasks. Today’s task is to clean the grout between the tiles in the bathroom. It has to be done because recently I’ve been standing in the shower looking up at the tiles and thinking ‘Yuk, that looks horrible’! The truth is I’m not really cut out for domesticity, if I did it more often it wouldn’t have got into such a state, but unfortunately I can always find more interesting things to do than clean and tidy 😦

However I promise you that by the time I finish today it will SPARKLE!

So this page is the last page in my A4 journal which I started in October 2011 and is a page I did for Traci Hanson’s Journal Quest on 21 Secrets. I found a Big Bird and a Polar Bear cub in my painting. Strange eh!

Have a great week everyone

Big love

AJ 🙂

A Bit Strange & One of a Kind

Posted on December 9, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

I hope you are well, I’ve just realised I forgot to post mid-week and I’m not sure what happened there? I must have just been busy which seems to be my natural state these days!

This post is dedicated to the memory of “Razzle” (Nick Dingley), drummer with the band Hanoi Rocks, he was killed in a car crash in America in 1984 just a few days after his 24th Birthday. You made a big impact on our lives man, and we won’t forget you, you will stay forever young!

Here is the front cover of my Teesha Moore inspired journal which is now complete. I have actually finished another journal since I completed this one and I have also restarted working on my the very first journal which I started in February 2011 also inspired by Teesha. I got so far with it and then other things took over and it’s been neglected for months now.

Things seem to be better in December than they were in November. BUT I’ve made no preparations for Christmas yet and haven’t even started shopping, so I am beginning to feel pressured about all of that.

Yesterday I spent the day at St Thomas Heritage Centre for Ryde Arts Festival’s ‘Green Festive Wreath’ making day. I volunteered to serve the teas and coffees all day. It didn’t get warm in the building all day, but it was lovely when a group of children from a Dover Park school arrived and sang Carols for us.

I also had all my completed art journals on display. I wanted to see if there would be any interest if I run a one day Art Journaling workshop for the Arts Festival in the summer. A few people showed some interest which was good and best of all I met Sami! We have been friends in blogland for a while and here is her blog which is called Luna. Sami lives in the same town as me but we have never met before. It was lovely to meet her and her son. I got a good warm vibe from both of them. Yes Sami, let’s meet up for coffee and a chat soon!

Afterwards I watched my beautiful friend Gina, founder of www.starmystique.com, do her fire dancing in the town square, she was great!

Gina has a huge amount of talent, is a great performer with a winning smile and flashing eyes, and as I am sure you can see she is a very sexy lady, but more than that she just exudes positive energy, she’s lovely!

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

It’s the 1st Day of the Last Month of the Year!!!

Posted on December 1, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

Wow I can hardly believe how fast this year has flown by and here is my final page for Kate Crane’s Calendar Challenge. I couldn’t resist and went with traditional Christmas colours of red and green for the background and for the days I used some Christmas paper that was free with a magazine last year and some chipboard embellisments. The lettering for the month and days of the week were cut from glossy magazines, and the numbers for the days are stickers.

And below is my completed November spread. This has not been the best month of the year for me so I am hoping things improve in December.

I hope all is good with you in your part of the world, it’s bloomin’ chilly here at the moment! Proper wintery!

Stay warm and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Who We Were Born To Be

Posted on November 28, 2012 by ajsartjournal

Hello friends!

Happy Wednesday, I hope your week is going well. I am still struggling with health issues and a fluctuating mood. How I hate being miserable, I keep telling myself, it’s my choice and I can actually just decide to be happy, but it doesn’t always work. The situation at work doesn’t help and I suspect if I took my blood pressure it would be sky high at the moment. I had to do some calming deep breathing this morning before I left for the office, I was so wound up just by the thought of it. I think things got better during the day and I managed to get quite a bit done and then the database I was working on decided to drastically slow down, I mean REALLY slow down, I was waiting for up to two minutes for each change I made just to register in the system. I stand no chance of meeting my deadlines at this rate and staring at a computer screen just waiting for something to happen is such a waste of time! Anyway enough of this whining! Where is my ‘positive’ head?

Here is the back cover of my Teesha Moore inspired journal, I hope you like it.

Have a great week

Big love

AJ 🙂

AJ's Art Journaling

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.

Author Archives: ajsartjournal

About ajsartjournal

Circles of Wisdom

Be of Good Cheer!

Time for something new :-)

Revo’lution 2013

Happy Holidays!

Operation Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Swap :-)

Strange Creature

A Bit Strange & One of a Kind

It’s the 1st Day of the Last Month of the Year!!!

Who We Were Born To Be