Author Archives: ajsartjournal

Unknown's avatar

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

Time for something new :-)

Posted on by
5

December completeHello 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 by
6

Cover-smallHello 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:

Page-1-smallPage-2-small

Page-3-smallPage-4-smallPage-5-smallWishing you success in all your endevours in the coming year.

Big love

AJ

Happy Holidays!

Posted on by
5

Finished-journal-cover

Hello friends!

PICT0285Happy 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.  Christmas TreeThe 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.

A4 Journal finishedFinished Journal 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 by
3

MonkeysHello 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 🙂

Monkey-and-Bill

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Strange Creature

Posted on by
2

Imagination is a Strange CreatureHello 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 by
2

A Bit Strange & One of a KindHello 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!

Gina Lighting up the NightAfterwards 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 by
7

DecemberHello 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.

November complete

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 by
3

Who We Were Meant to Be

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 🙂

Quantum Entanglement

Posted on by
3

 

Quantum EntanglementHello friends!

I hope you are having a great weekend.  I must admit I am not feeling too good at the moment, so I am not going to blog (it would just be full of self-pity and whining if I did), so here is a spread from my 6×6 journal instead.  I hope you like it.  The theory of Quantum Entanglement, also known as Einstein’s theory of “spooky action at a distance”, is really too much for my tiny brain to take in, but that doesn’t stop me from being interested in the subject.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Just Keep Breathing

Posted on by
5

 

Just Keep BreathingHello friends!

How are you?  I am fine although I had a bit of a melt down at work yesterday.  I was doing OK until this lovely woman phoned me up and asked me how I was getting on in my new job.  I had to tell her I wasn’t very happy because it was so tedious and then it was like the flood gates opened.  Unfortunately I can be very emotional and my voice was breaking up, I started crying and I guess she knew that even down the phone line.   Anyway she was very encouraging and supportive and I think my discontent has now been passed up the chain a bit.  I don’t know if anything good will happen as a result of this though.  I am still trying my hardest to do a good job even though I find it totally boring and I am trying to stay positive about it.  It’s a challenge!  Anyway I felt a bit better today.  Sometimes it’s just good to talk and unload some of the crap.

So here is another bright and happy page from my ‘weird and freaky’ Teesha Moore inspired journal.  The quote is by Oprah Winfrey and is something I really need to keep telling myself.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂