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

Good Old Days?

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Good Old Days?Hello friends!

It’s a wet, windy and dismal day here on the Isle of Wight and I’ve been struggling with a low mood, actually been on the verge of tears a couple of times, and I have no idea why.  I’m not normally a depressive person but I let things at work get to me today.  Two days of having computers not working hasn’t helped because it has put me behind with stuff. I have let other stupid little things get to me too.

Coming home, doing some art and stroking Billy Kat has helped a lot.  Cats are such good therapy 🙂  There is a big meeting at work on Friday with a lot of senior managers, and I really need to get a positive head on for that.  Today if anyone had asked me how things are I’d have struggled to say anything positive and that’s not good.  Sometimes I just get days like this and hopefully I can turn it around tomorrow – I must remember I can make a choice to be happy, breath and smile 🙂

This spread is from my 6×6 journal.  I started with a smooth gesso’d background, painted it with a brown acrylic then collaged some ripped vintage pages (that Alicia from Altered Bits sent me) and some scraps of old maps of my town.  I don’t actually use the real maps, but scan them, print them on photographic paper and age them with tea so they look like the real thing.  Then I used some blue acrylic paint and some white ink dabbed through punchinella and wrote the quote (in my poor handwriting) in white ink and highlighted (or do I mean lowlighted it) with black.

I have become aware recently how much people look at the past through rose tinted glasses.  Especially at work, things were always better back then, in the Good Old Days, although when that time was differs from person to person.   I also know that rather than aching for the past and what was, we should all try and live more in the present.  As Oprah says, “this moment is the only one you know you have for sure”.  So we’d better enjoy it.

Thanks for listening, just putting this all down has helped me to lift my mood, I think tomorrow is going to be fine.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

The Power Within

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Hello Friends!

I am really enjoying the weekend and hope you are too.

We had a fantastic meeting of the local history group yesterday and afterwards I went to a felt making workshop to help make squares for a ‘Friendship Quilt’ that will be displayed in Ryde Library for Ryde Arts Festival at the end of June beginning of July.  I made two squares that were only ‘squarish’ ha, ha, ha.  Lovely group of people and we all had fun.

The spread above was made late last year for 21 Secrets 2011 in Tamara Laporte‘s workshop called Collage Paint Soul.  Do you know about Tamara?  She is lovely, check out her blog.

My journal page already had Adirondak Colorwash spray on it from where I had put a wet stencil between the pages and I collaged scraps of paper with inked edges on top, and two images cut from a magazine to make up a girl.  Then I painted over the top with acrylic paints and stamped with various stamps including a Tim Holtz number stamp and I also used some glitter glue.  The thing I loved about Tamara’s workshop was learning that you can take a face from a magazine and paint over it.   I am hopeless at drawing people and faces, and clearly I need more practice, but this is a good way to learn.

I know the head is far too big for the body, believe it or not that was intentional.  Years ago I did an photo/art project called ‘The Big Head Project’ it involved taking photos of people’s faces, printing them out super large on my printer, cutting the face out and sticking it on cardboard to make a mask and then taking another photo of the person with the Big Head.

Here is an example, the colours look odd because the film was cross-processed.

I added the quote from Lord Buckley to finish off the spread.  Here is what it looked like before I started painting:

That’s all for now, I’ve got to get on – places to go, people to see, things to get done.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

Spring Sunshine

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Spring sunshineHello Friends!

I hope everyone is good and fine today.

It’s a bit ironic that I am posting this spread tonight because it is pouring with rain outside!  We did have about two weeks of glorious almost summer weather, and even today between the showers the sunshine was bright.  I do love the lighter days and the sunshine.  The light does bring joy to my heart 🙂

On this spread, in my 6 x 6 journal, I gesso’d the pages, then painted with acrylic paint.  I collaged a ripped up Daffodil bag I picked up at the local garden centre.  You were supposed to fill the bag with bulbs and buy them but I only wanted the brown paper bag.  There is also a little bit of artist tape I made following my friend Carolyn’s instructions.  Pop over to Carolyn’s blog A Colorful Journey to find out more about making your own tape – be warned though it’s addictive 🙂  The flowers are die cut baby wipes I had used to wipe back paint on other pages.  The font for the text is called “Jellyka Delicious Cake” it’s a free font I found on the internet.  I’ve been practicing my writing skills but I’m still never really happy with my own handwriting.  I think the black shading is a from a set of cheap oil pastels I bought.  They are not good so this week I ordered some Portfolio Oil Pastels and I am hoping I will have more success with those.

My life is hectic again at the moment.  I have a meeting this Saturday I need to prepare for  – including writing a report and transferring a load of photographs into a presentation for our guest speaker, but this evening my computer decided to go sloooooooowwww and it took several hours to sort out.  Mind you while it was running System Mechanic and fixing the problems I was able to do some art so I shouldn’t complain should I?

I am loving the workshops over at 21 Secrets and just wish I had more hours in the day to play.  Some of my friends tell me that if they didn’t have a job they would be bored, I can’t believe it, I would never be bored at home would you? However I would be broke if I didn’t work, so needs must 😐

That’s all for now  “It’s time for Bed”, said Zebedee

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Curiouser and curiouser!

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Curiouser and curiouser!

Hello friends!  I hope everyone is having a good weekend.

I am enjoying the long weekend and getting a few things done, not as many as I really should do as I keep getting distracted by ‘art projects’ but my massive ‘to do’ list is a little shorter than it was at the beginning of the weekend.

The page above is from my A4 journal.  I have always loved everything to do with the Alice books, I just like the weird, other wordlyness of the stories.  I really love the background colour on this page.  The chequer board is from a stencil I cut myself from a sheet of acetate (I didn’t get it quite right as is shown on this image, but since then I have added some tape to make the perspective look better.)  I tried to do an image transfer of Alice, but it didn’t work, you can just see her in the background.  When that didn’t work I painted over the image and surrounding area with yellowish glitter paint.  Then I printed a new image of Alice, cut her out, coloured her in and stuck her on.  The cards are from a sheet of Graphic 45 Halloween in Wonderland paper.  I can’t remember where the little chipboard hearts came from or why I stuck them on.  The quote about not knowing where you are going is from the Cheshire Cat and “Curiouser and curiouser”  is what Alice said just after she had eaten the cake:

“’Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). ’Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!’ (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).”

I am about half way through checking out all the workshops on 21 Secrets and I have made a start on 2 of them already – Connie Hozvecka’s “Flow” and Dale Anne Potter’s “Personal Acts of Kindness”.  There is such a lot of good stuff to try and excellent teachers I know I am going to have 9 months of fun!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Big love

AJ 🙂

Cycles and Circles

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Circles within CirclesHello friends,

Happy Wednesday!

21 Secrets started on Sunday and I am so excited, there is so much choice I really don’t know where to start.  At the moment I am just browsing before I make a decision.  The playground is open for 9 months which seems like a long time, but it will soon fly by.  In three months last year I only managed to do about 4 of the workshops, so realistically I will probably only complete half of what is on offer this year so I need to choose wisely.

The weather is still sunny here in the UK but not as warm as it was last week.  It’s going to be a huge shock when it eventually rains as I can’t remember the last time that happened.  I hope it’s not until after the weekend as we have a four day break this weekend for the Easter holidays.

The spread above is from my 6 x 6 journal and was created after I watched a YouTube video on circle fractals, unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the video now and I can’t find it again.   But when I was doodling one day I thought I would give it a go and I really enjoyed it.  After I had drawn all the circles I coloured them with my inktense pencils and when they were dry added the white dots and finally the words.

Hope all is good with you

Big love

AJ

This is April!

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AJ's AprilHello friends!

I hope all is good with you.

What a busy day I’ve had since I posted That Was March this morning, I’ve been scanning negatives and uploading photos to my lomohome.

I stopped taking photos with my Lomo LCA camera a while ago because I couldn’t find anywhere to get my film processed.  Yes, I still use my analogue camera and film for my own personal photos (although I use a digi camera for photos for the history group).  Anyway there still are some places that will develop film, but I love to use slide film and get it processed as a normal negative.  Most photo developers look at you like you are completely nuts if you ask them to do that, or worse still like you are some sort of criminal and on the whole they refuse to do it.

Developing film in this way is called cross-processing and it has an ‘interesting’ effect on the end results.  Different films get different results.  My favourite film to use is/was Agfa Precisa CT 100 iso, but the production of it stopped years ago (in 2009 I think), I bought up a load of it at that time and it takes up a fair bit of space in the fridge (much to my husband’s annoyance).  However what I could buy then was already passed it’s ‘use by date’ so now in 2012 we are waaaaaaaaaay past that date and I thought the film might be not worth using, especially if I couldn’t get it developed.  Then a couple of weeks ago I found a place willing to cross process for me, I gave them 6 rolls film.  Two needed to be cross-processed and the other 4 (ordinary negative film) I had no idea what, if anything they had on them, so I told the developer “Just develop them and roll the film, no prints, no CDs”  Still cost me nearly £50!!!!

So today I have been scanning the first roll on my negative scanner, it takes ages as I have to use the highest resolution possible and then do some cleaning of any specks of dust that got on the film between me taking it out of the packet and putting it in the scanner, then resizing the photos and uploading them to the website.

I don’t think anyone else will be that impressed with the shots, but I am so pleased

a) that there was actually something on the film

b) that the Agfa Precisa, even though it is years out of date, still delivers the colours I want and

c) I can load up my camera again and get back into my other arty love – lomography 🙂

So today is April 1 and the start of 21 Secrets I am so looking forward to learning for all those great teachers, I think it is really good value for money considering the quality of the teachers and the number of workshops you can participate in once you sign up.  Maybe I’ll see you over there?

Sorry, I’m rambling on a bit aren’t I?  Above is my journal entry for April for the 366 Calender Challenge over at The Kathryn Wheel. Hopefully I got all the numbers in the right place and sequence this month!

I’m off to play, see you soon

Big love

AJ

That was March!

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That was March!Hello friends

What an interesting month that’s been – I gave some presenations at work (something I couldn’t have imagined myself doing a few years ago), we’ve had some sickness, some worries at work, glorious summerlike weather, met Royalty and a fantastic Party on the Pier yesterday.

Above is my completed journal entry for March and below is how it looked at the beginning of the month.  I didn’t notice until I got to 12 March but I’d completely messed up with the numbering!  No wonder I got myself into such a pickle at work adding things up – sometimes I think I have number blindness, or maybe I’m just plain stupid?!  Oh well it all came good in the end.

I hope you had as interesting a month as I did.

March

Big love

AJ

Let’s Play! Blog Tagging!

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Life is a Game, Play itHello friends,

It’s time to play 🙂  My friend Cat at seaskystone has tagged me in a game of blog tagging, and I’ve decided to play along. 🙂

The Rules
…you must post the rules
…answer 11 questions the tagger posted for you
…create 11 questions to ask the people you tag
…tag 11 people
…let them know you’ve tagged them

Here are the questions Cat asked and my replies:

  1. What’s the first art you remember making as a child? A roman style plate made of papier mache at infant school
  2. Pick a bouquet: Roses or wildflowers? It would have to be cultivated roses as wild flowers should be left where they choose to grow.
  3. Do you speak more than one language? Sadly I only speak English and I’m not even very good at that!
  4. How many unfinished projects are on your art table? It’s hard to tell as it is so cluttered, but there are at least 5 projects on the go at the moment!
  5. Peanut butter: extra crunchy, crunchy or creamy? Crunchy 🙂
  6. What’s your “if-you-were-stranded-on-a-deserted-island-and-could-only-have-one-song” song? Oooh this is difficult, I think it would have to be song called Afraid of the Dark written by my husband about 30 years ago.
  7. Reading preference: fiction or non-fiction?  I’m not reading much at all at the moment, but when I do read I like both fiction and non-fiction it’s the quality of the writing that counts.
  8. The smell of bread baking, or the smell of freshly ground coffee? Definitely coffee, I’m an addict.
  9. In five words or less, what does creativity mean to you? Expressing the inner me.
  10. What animal do you think you most look like? A pig
  11. What art techniques have you never tried, but want to…? Scrap metal sculpture.

And here are my 11 questions:

  1. Which artist (dead or alive) would you most like to have a 1 to 1 with?
  2. How do you silence your inner critic?
  3. If you could only use three colours which would you choose?
  4. If you could own any one piece of art in the world (money no object) what would it be?
  5. What is your most treasured inanimate possession?
  6. Given the choice of fruit or chocolate which would you pick?
  7. Where in the world would you most like to visit?
  8.  Is your art room tidy or messy?
  9. What gets you up in the morning?
  10. What makes you laugh out loud?
  11. If you could time travel which period or event in history would you like to experience?

And these are my Tagees, chosen from blogs I visit regularly and love (and not duplicating any chosen by Cat).

  1. Wendy @ a girl and her brush
  2. Alicia @ altered bits
  3. Gretchen @ creativity in motion
  4. Eileen @ The Scrap Pit
  5. Mary @ Time for Dabbling
  6. Nancy @ Delight-Filled Leaves Art
  7. Dana and Christopher @ St John Studio
  8. Brian @ a paper bear
  9. Sami @ Luna
  10. Elizabeth @ The Glowing Wheel
  11. July @ Itsaworkofart

I have checked the links and they work OK for me, but if there are any problems please let me know.

Please Note: There is no obligation to play along, I know people are busy with other stuff, so please don’t feel pressured because I tagged you, I just love your blogs so I wanted other to see them too.

The image above started off as just a purple glittery page, I didn’t like it so I drew black ovals all over it, didn’t like that either, so I took some of the lovely vintage pages Alicia sent me, ripped them and coloured them with blue distress ink and stuck them on, beginning to like it a bit now, then I got some gesso on my finger and drew around some of the black ovals and around the edges of the page, like it even more now. Then I took some printed vellum ripped and inked the edges with purple ink and stuck them on and dripped acrylic ink over the page.  Finally in honour of this game I printed the quote on.  Finally I really like the page and hope you do too 🙂

Big love

AJ

Life is Good

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Hello Friends!

We changed the clocks this weekend so tonight it was lighter for an hour longer, the weather has been glorious and everywhere there are signs of spring.  I took my parents out for a drive this afternoon and the magnolia trees have just come into bloom, they look beautiful.

The page above is from my A4 journal, it looks a little ‘muddy’ as there are loads and loads of layers of gesso, acrylic paint, scrapbook paper, some Tim Holtz stamps and then more of the same.  It took a lot or work to arrive at something I was happy with – sometimes that’s how it goes.   The words sum up how I am feeling at the moment.

At the beginning of the month I said that I knew of 2 exciting things happening in March and the first happened last Friday.  My local history group was invited to a Royal event, the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Ryde Pier Act.  I think that my American friends will be much more impressed by this than any of my English friends.  I don’t know many English people who are ardent Royalists, but it was great for my hard working team to get some recognition for all the unpaid work they do researching and documenting the history of our town.  Prince Edward (the Queen’s youngest son) was very pleasant and easy to talk to and we had a fantastic day.  If you are intersted you can read about it here.

The second exciting thing is going to be the Party on the Pier next Saturday, we did it last year and our historical display attracted many people.  We are looking forward to having another wonderful day.

I hope life is good for all of you.

Big love

AJ

Out of the blue, I found you

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Out of the Blue...Hello friends, happy Wednesday 🙂

I created this bluish spread with gesso, Derwents Inktense blocks, a Tim Holtz reflection script stamp, some scraps of scrap book paper and edged the pages and the papers with irredescent purple ink.  The phrase ‘Out of the blue, I found you”, kept coming into my mind so I stamped it with some tiny alphabet stamps I got from Hobbycraft.

I was thinking how lucky I was to meet my soul mate when I was still at school and how over time (over 40 ears) the relationship has changed in nature but is still constant and true.  Then I found this amazing quote by Sir Hugh Walpole.  You probably can’t read it from the image but it says:

“The most wonderful of things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase.  This progressiveness of love between two humans is a marvellous thing; it cannot be found by looking or by passionately wishing for it.  Its a sort of divine accident”

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂