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

Mothers Day and Intuitive Cats

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Mothers Day

Hello friends

I Hope everyone is well.

Mothers Day – It’s Mothers Day in the UK (I’m not sure if it is in other parts of the world).  My mum was 80 a few weeks ago and I wanted to do something special for her for Mothers Day.  I realised recently that I make things for lots of other people, but I’ve never made anything for Mum, so this week I converted a box, which originally contained chocolates, into a sort of Mothers Day card which I gave her today.  In the middle are two photos of Mum and me when we were both much younger.  I was lucky then to have such a loving Mum and I’m still lucky now.

Intuitive Cats – Usually my two cats get me up at about 5:30am because they want to go out, in fact they are desperate to go out.  I don’t mind because I like getting up early, it gives me time to do some art or local history group work before I set off for my day job.  But sometimes at weekends I could do with a break, that doesn’t usually happen.

Today I wasn’t woken up – no-one scratched at the base of the bed, ran over my head or whined in my ear to tell me it was time to get up.  When I realised this in my half awake state I thought that Tony must have let them out while I was still asleep.  So I had a peaceful lay in bed this morning and when I eventually decided to get up at 8am (very late for me)  I was surprised to see that both cats were still on the bed:  Jack Kat was on the pillow next to Tony’s head just gazing at his sleeping face, and Bill Kat was stretched out full length alongside him.  Yesterday Tony was unwell – he had a change of medication recently and the change has proved difficult to adjust to – I think the cats knew, I think they were watching over him making sure he was OK.  Fortunately he has been a lot better today.

That’s all for now, I’ll be back soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Past, Future and Present

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Past, Future and PresentHello Friends

This is a quick post because it’s early morning (although I’ve already been up an hour and a half) and I have to get ready for work.

Right now I am full fo anxiety.  Something has happened at work, I am totally unsure exactly what happened, but it means that either I have messed up, or one of my colleagues has been very dishonest.  I really think it is more likely to be the former than the latter, but either way I am in an uncomfortable situation.

The spread above from my small journal is about the past and the future, I used a lot of collage on this one, old book pages, old maps, and some old adverts.

I quite like the quote, but for now I need to go and face the present.  Wish me luck!

Big love

AJ

Let your heart lead the way…

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Let your heart lead the wayHello friends

It has been a glorious weekend in my part of the world, warm and sunny and, for me, extremely busy.  I hope you have had a good weekend too.

On Saturday morning I did some shopping then spent the afternoon working with my local history group in the Heritage & Learning Centre.  When I got home I decided to clear out  the space underneath our decking.   My house is really old, it was built in about 1860, and underneath the house is a huge space like a cellar but with an earth floor.  Underneath the decking area is what was originally a small yard with two cubicles – one I think was where the outside toilet was and the other I suspect was where there were originally steps going down from the kitchen to the yard.

We have lived in the house for almost 16 years now and the yard and both cubicles had gradually filled up with bits of wood because they ‘might come in useful one day’.  Recently I began to realise that even if the wood could be reused, it was going to be impossible to get to any of it except those bits balanced precariously on the top of the stack.  So yesterday I decided to clear it all out.  I swept the area clean and then put back the very few bits that actually will be useful.

Today I got up early and, after typing up an article for the Local History group and before T was awake, I loaded up the car and took most of the wood to the local tip.  When I got home T was up and I got washed and changed into clean clothes and we went to pick up his friend N.  N has severe learning difficulties and is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but he is lovely and T usually spends time with him one day during the week.  Last week was N’s birthday so for a special treat today we took him out for a walk and then for lunch.  We all had a great time.  By late afternoon we were back home  and I went to visit my parents who are both doing well.

I managed to work a little on a couple of art projects during the day too, so that was a bonus 🙂

This spread above, which I make a while ago, is in my 6″x6″ journal.  I’m not sure if you can read it, but on one page it says “Let your heart lead the way” and on the other it says “Your heart will find treasures your eyes can’t see“.   There are lots of layers of gesso, acrylic paint, scrapbook paper and Adirondak colorwash spray.  I wish I could remember where the scrapbook paper with the butterflies on came from, because it’s lovely.  It could be from the stash I bought when I was in LA last year, unfortunately I can’t remember for sure.  Anyway I was pleased with how this spread turned out.

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ

Queen of HeARTs

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Hello friends!

I hope everyone is well.

It’s been a week since I last posted, couldn’t post at the weekend due to various other tasks that had to be done.  I am getting behind with things at home and at work.  I spent the first part of the week at work preparing for two presentations I had to give today.  I’m glad I spent the time on them because I think they went well.  My presentations were on Employee Engagement and I was trying to be motivational to a group of people who were not really that interested, but I did OK and I was pleased with how I handled it.   But tomorrow I will have to try and catch up with over a week’s backlog of emails and other stuff I should also have been doing.  Oh well that’s life I guess, and I am pleased to say that although I am not managing to keep on top of things I’m not getting freaked out by that fact either.  There was a time when I’d have been full of anxiety and stress at the thought of my workload, but now I’m just going to try and work my way through it and eventually it will get done.

This page is from my A4 art journal and there is a bit of a ‘royal’ theme to it.  The page was gesso’d, then there are layers of acrylic paint.  I used white acrylic paint to make the ‘drippage’ lines which I thought gave a sort of tartan effect. The blue paper with the crown is a scrap book paper by Teresa Collins (torn and edged with blue distress ink).  Then I stamped over the page with a cheap foam crown stamp in black and some small hearts in red.  I stamped Queen of HeARTs with black Stazon but it looked odd so I edged and dotted the letters with a white gel pen.

I’m not sure what the significance of this page is, except it was one of those experimental and learning processes.

Big love to you all

AJ

That was February

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That was FebruaryHello friends

Here is my February calendar completed, it’s strange to write something about every day, but I like how it turned out.  Here is what it looked like at the beginning of the month:

Here comes FebruaryNot much to write today as I had a tooth extracted on Monday and it’s giving me a lot of pain right now.

I’ll be back as soon as I can with my new page for March.

Big love

AJ

Bright Colours

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Bright Colours

Hello friends!

It’s been a bright and sunny day here today and I had intended to go for a long walk this afternoon, but T asked me to help him in the garden so I did that instead.   I didn’t get my walk but at least I got some exercise and was out in the sunshine all day.  I am tired now, but in a good way.

This spread is from my 6×6 journal.  It’s not my greatest achievement and in fact I messed it up so badly I had to gesso over about half of it to redo it.  The grey areas are actually very sparkly glitter paper.  I never can capture the sparkle with a camera or scanner so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  The symbol with the swirls is the symbol for an open mind (according to something I found on the internet).

One of my favourite quotes is from Sir Thomas Dewar (1864 – 1930) he was a Scottish whiskey distiller and salesman.

“Minds are like parachutes… they only function when they’re open.”

That’s all for now, I have to go and iron my work clothes ready for another week of work and I have a cat demanding some urgent tummy tickling too.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Glow

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GlowHello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy 🙂

Well it’s mid week and I’m still struggling to find time to do my ever growing list of ‘things to do’, know how it is…

My dad is recovering well from his operation now, he’s pretty tough for someone who is going to be 90 this year.  Yesterday, my eldest brother, his wife, Tony and I took Mum and Dad out for a meal to celebrate mum’s 80th birthday.  We had a lovely time.  This weekend my other brother and his family are coming over from France to see us all.  It will be a short visit but nevertheless a treat for Mum and Dad.

The page above is from my A4 journal and is a page I did for Rachel Whetzel‘s workshop ‘Silent Messages’ in last year’s 21 Secrets.  Rachel recommended using Creative Paperclay to add texture to a page.  I couldn’t find any in the local shops so I used Fimo Air Light, I think it worked about the same.  You smooth a thin layer of the clay onto a wet page of your journal so it sticks to the paper and then make impressions in the clay.  When it’s dry you paint over the whole thing with gesso and then just treat it like a normal journal page.  I put the clay onto the page without thinking about what I could use to make impressions.  I was stumped for a while so I just grabbed a round, wooden carved pot from my desk and rolled that over the wet clay.  When it was dry and gesso’d I used acrylic paints, scrap book paper and printed tissue paper to add layers.  I finished the page with gold Rub ‘n’ Buff on some of the edges and stamped the word glow with gold metalic acrylic paint.

When the clay dries it does warp the page quite a bit.  That might bother some people but I like it.

You can find out about this year’s 21 Secrets here.  It’s a great place to get inspiration 🙂

That’s all for now, catcha later

Big love

AJ

Revo-lution 2012 – Abundance

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Abundance

Hello Friends!

I hope everyone is well and happy.

I’m sorry I missed my mid-week posting this week, mainly due to the fact that on the day I would have posted my dad wasn’t well and I had to help mum. Fortunately things are improving so I should get back on track again now.

This spread is from my 2012 Revo-lution book and follows on from the last spread about Gratitude.  I love the scratchiness of the page and I love the quote by Wayne Dyer.  We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by advertising telling us of all the things we should have to make our lives better.  But the reality is we don’t need lots of things to make our lives full.

Through much of the 1990s my husband was very ill.  His Bipolar Disorder was out of control until he finally got a correct diagnosis and treatment that helped instead of aggravated the problem.  In 1999 we took a much needed holiday to the beautiful Island of Sunny Tobago.  The choice of Tobago was really random but, as it turned out, could not have been better.  We have come to love this tropical paradise and more especially the people who live there.  In February 2007 we got married there on top of Mount Dillon.  There were six of us at the wedding, The Minister, our friend Paul, Horace and Susan Jackson (two local friends), Tony and me.  Tony wore shorts & a tee-shirt and I wore a Sarong.  To my great surprise (as,to be honest, I really couldn’t see the point of getting married after 34 years of living together) it was a magical day.

Me and MarlonThe very first time we visited the island we met Marlon, a rastafarian.  He climbed up a tree, picked a coconut, cut off the top and gave us the coconut water to drink, it was delicious.  Then we sat and talked for an hour or so (this is known as liming in Tobago and is a very important part of their culture).  He spoke in very lyrical rhyming patois which was difficult to understand at times.  It was clear that he was not a rich man, he lived in a simple wooden house and got work when he could, but for him life was good.  He said “Da sun shine ev’ry day, I have roof over me head, dere’s fish in da sea and fruit on da trees.  What more a man need?  Evr’y t’ing is cool.”  Marlon was totally tuned in to the abundance of his life.  I often look at this photo and think “Yeah right mon – ev’ry t’ing is cool!  We have more than enough, life is good”

Have a good day you all and I’ll be back (hopefully) mid week.

Big love

AJ

Cut not the wings of your dreams…

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Cut not the wings of your dreams ....Hello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy.

This spread is from my 6″ x 6″ journal.  I covered the pages with printed tissue paper then coloured them with yellow and green sparkly paint, the same batch that had set to a thick jelly and I thought would be unuseable.  Then I added the borders with red acrylic paint.  I know, I know another strange colour (Eng. spelling :-)) combination from me, but I like it.  The background text is from a Tim Holtz reflections stamp. The two patches under the images are some translucent paper I coloured and edged with  distress inks.  The image of the man’s head is from the Graphics Fairy‘s blog.  The girl with the wings may also be from the Graphic Fairy.

The wonderful quote is from Flavia.

That’s all for now.

Big love

AJ