Category Archives: Inspired by Teesha

Build Your Wings

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Build Your Wings

 

Hello friends

I hope all is good with you, I am very well and happy.  We had a proper summery day today and it lightened my mood.

I really like this page from my journal, in fact I have a copy of it on my office wall at work. It’s there to remind me that if I don’t like my job I can actually leave, I can take a leap. When my boss saw it he liked it too and I gave him a copy.

So I am back at work this week and it’s just the same old stuff, but at least I have my own nice little office now and I can listen to Radio 4 all day.

I’ve got to give a speech at a conference in London in a few weeks time about Ryde Social Heritage Group.  I’ve got to get that written before this weekend!   I’ve just about written the words, no doubt they will be ‘tweaked’ a few times before I’m entirely happy, but now I’m working on the images to go with it, I thought if I had images on a screen then people wouldn’t have to look at me all the time, and the images will show the work of the group better than anything I can say.  But I need to send the images to the conference organisers soon just to make sure they are compatible with their software and equipment.

Ryde Arts Festival starts next weekend and I’ve still got a few things to sort out for that. Tomorrow is the last of my workshops at The Foyer making the Matchbox Momentos and I think we will just have enough to fill the display case for the exhibition.  I’ve been trying to think of other things I can do with the group.  Of course I would like to teach them about Art Journaling, but I don’t think they are ready for that at the moment.  I’ll talk to them about it tomorrow.  One idea I have is making jewellery from rolled paper beads, I wonder what they will think of that?  I am going to have to take a break before I work at the Foyer again, I think I need to have the whole of July off just to try and catch up with things I’ve been neglecting and maybe I will work with them again in September.  That is if they want me to.

I have finished making the Art Journal book from the pages created at my workshop in April and I’ve been trying to make an e-book, unfortunately that wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated (either that or I’m an idiot – not sure which). So now I’ve decided to make a movie of the images instead.  If I am successful I will post it on the blog so you can see the great work the class did.  Once the Arts Festival is over I will take the book apart and return all the pages to the people who created them.

I have to collect up all the Family History Shrines made by Ryde Social Heritage Group last week and deliver them, and some sort of heading, to the exhibition space by the middle of next week.  Gosh it’s all go here!!!

Right, that’s all for now, I’m tired and off to bed.  

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Another Teesha Inspired Journal

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Another Teesha Inspired journal :-)

Hello friends, I’m back – I think.

I have my new computer and, as we all predicted, at first it caused more problems than it solved, but gradually it is getting sorted out and at least this one is not crashing all the time and eventually I will sort out all the glitches, it all just takes time which is something I seem to be a bit short of.

Today I did a workshop with some of my colleagues from Ryde Social Heritage Group and we made Family History Shrines based on a free ebook I found on Aisling.net here is the link if you are interested: http://www.aisling.net/freebies/family-hist-shrine.pdf

I got together with 8 friends who have all researched their family histories and I showed them how I create my mixed media backgrounds using acrylic paints, stamping, stencilling etc. and everyone created lovely 3-fold books.  Unfortunately we ran out of time but at least they left with lovely backgrounds and now they will be working at home to put details of their families into the books.  I completed my book a few months ago and then I showed it to my friends and asked if they would like to make books about their families too.  I was delighted when they all said yes and we had a great day today.  At the end of the month our work will go on display in an exhibition called The Unfolding Story for Ryde Arts Festival week.  In fact the work produced at all three of my workshops – Art Journaling, Matchbox Momentos and the Family History Shrines will be in the exhibition.  Woo Hoo that’s just great.

I am not at work this week well I went in on Monday, but took the rest of the week as annual leave.  The main reason for this is that this weekend is the big Isle of Wight Music Festival and it causes a lot of disruption for me getting to and from work, so this year I decided to avoid the hassle and take time off.  Unfortunately the weather has turned wintery again which is not good considering the time of year, but I am getting a few things done and it’s good just away from the daily grind for a few days.

The page above is the front cover of my fourth Teesha Moore inspired art journal a style, which you know I completely love.  I think and hope that my personal style is now beginning to show.  Anyone looking at my art would know it is inspired by Teesha, but I hope a bit of me shines through too.  Anyway after today’s mixed media workshop I realised it’s been a while since I played with acrylic paints, stencils and stamping and  I think I need to get back into that again soon.  I’ll have to find the time some how….

It’s late, I’m cold (it’s supposed to be mid-summer for goodness sake!) so I’m going to bed now to try and get warm, hopefully Billy the cat will come too – he’s a bit like a living hot water bottle.

Take care my friends and I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Big Mouth :-)

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Big MouthHello friends!

Sorry I went AWOL last weekend, well I didn’t really go missing, just ran out of time!  Nothing new there then!

I’ve got some exciting news though.

I spend a bit (lot) of time searching for inspiration and uplifting ideas on the web and one of the sites I have frequently visited to find excellent quotes and motivation is “Tiny Buddha – Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives”.  So I was surprised and delighted when Lori from that site contacted me about using some of my images, of course I said Yes!  You can find them under the Fun and Inspiring section.  It’s strange I get a lot of inspiration from other people but it never occurred to me that my art might be inspiring to others. Thank you Lori and thank you universe.  Being included Tiny Buddha has made me very happy.

Today I had a meeting with a friend who runs a hostel for young homeless people in the town and I’ve agreed to run 4 short workshops with them making ‘matchbox momentos’.  Of course I really don’t have time to take this on, but I’ll just have to squeeze it into my busy schedule some how!  It’s going to be good. 🙂

Today was my last day at work until next Tuesday, that makes me happy too.   I finally got up to date and cleared my inbox before I left this evening and everything was in order, that’s a really good feeling as sometimes it feels like I’ll never catch up.

For the next two days I will be working with my friends to set everything up for our Open Days in the cemetery on Saturday and Sunday.  We will have exhibitions and lots of interesting historical stuff on display, I will be leading guided tours and taking part in a ‘Character Walk’ where I will dress up and tell the story of someone from the past.  There is lots to do I just hope the sun shines and we get lots of visitors.

The page above is the back cover of my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  I found the Big Lips and the banana that I wanted to use and the rest of the page just came together.  I decided that my quote should be about the big mouth so it says “If you did not see it with your own eyes and hear it with your own ears, don’t invent it with your small mind and share it with your Big Mouth”.  It’s not exactly a positive quote but true nevertheless.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Ignite your Fire

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Ignite your fireHello friends!

I hope everything is bright in your area of the world, here all is good.

The page above is from my third Teesha inspired journal.  I really LOVE this style of journaling.  The words on the page are a quote by Osho “Your life spark fires from within your inntermost temple, no-one can reach there but you.  It is your inner sacred sanctum, you are your own master there, only you can reach and ignite your fire”.  So, go on, Ignite Your Fire 🙂

This is a short post because a mountain of ironing is calling to me and has to be done before I go to bed tonight.

Take care everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Humanity

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HumanityHello friends!

I hope you are all well and, if you are in the UK, enjoying the spring weather.  Today especially has been glorious – sunny and warm.

I was supposed to be helping T put in the new concrete gate posts to replace the wooden ones that rotted away at the bottom.  He finally managed to drill out all the old concrete with the pneumatic drill borrowed from a friend and today was the day to put the posts in.  Unfortunately I woke up with a blinding headache and didn’t get out of bed until about mid-day.  By that time he had completed the job on his own.  What a star!

Gradually my headache wore off and as I felt better and it was a nice day I took Mum and Dad out for a drive and a short walk along the beach at Bembridge.  I think it wore them both out even though we didn’t walk very far, but then Mum is 80 and Dad will be 91 in a couple of weeks time.  However I also know they appreciated being taken out for a couple of hours.

I have been receiving lots of lovely feedback from my workshop last week and requests to do more.  I will do more, but I need to pace myself, because I work full time, have commitments at home, have commitments to Ryde Social Heritage Group and I want to have time for my own creativity.  So it’s not something I’m going to rush in to.

I am having major problems with my email at the moment.  My ISP introduced some ‘improvements’ to the mail service recently and ever since then my email has been messed up.  I was receiving some emails but not all of them.  Yesterday I had a long, and sometimes difficult conversation with a support technician.  I think he may have been in India, at least he had an Indian accent.   He spoke very good English, but his voice kept fading in and out and he had to repeat himself lots of times before I understood his instructions.  I thought he had sorted it out, as I received 150 emails while he was talking to me, but today I’m still having problems.  I am pretty sure I should have received more than one email today and I haven’t been able to send any!   I know I just have to make another call to fix it, but today I’ve either been too ill or too busy.  Maybe tomorrow…

The page above is another page from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  It’s a little dark, but I do like the images I used.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Nonsense!

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NonsenseHello friends!

I am so happy, my art journaling workshop is now fully subscribed!  So in just over a week’s time I will be sharing my love of art journaling, and especially the style of Teesha Moore, with 12 lovely ladies.  Gosh!

The Mermaid Circus online workshop is now into it’s second week and we have already been given loads of stuff to work on.  This is really taking me out of my comfort zone in so many ways, I am finding it quite a challenge, but I am also enjoying it very much.   Teesha and Jane both have a similar philosophy to encouraging people to be creative and both are very generous in sharing their knowledge.   This week’s challenge is drawing faces, something I would normally avoid doing, because that annoying little voice in my head tells me I can’t draw faces.  Well I’ll show you!

I would be enjoying the Mermaid Circus a lot more if my computer didn’t misbehave all the time. 

This evening when I got home from work T said to me “If I can’t fix your computer I’m going to buy you a new one, no-one should have to struggle like that with technology”.  He is on holiday from work this week and he logged on to my computer today to quickly (or so he thought) print something and couldn’t believe how problematic everything was. 

I did get a slight reprimand from him too, he said “You know your computer is like your art room – it’s just full of clutter and rubbish”!   I honestly thought that the maintenance software I have cleared out all the rubbish, but apparently it doesn’t.  T has cleaned up a lot of things for me and it does seem slightly better this evening, but I still think I might get a new machine for my birthday in a few weeks time.  (Fingers crossed)

The page above is another page from my third Teesha inspired journal with a wonderful quote by Dr Seuss.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

Confusion Reigns & the Universe Delivers

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Unquestionable WonderHello friends!

Because I work full time having bank holidays is a special treat and this weekend especially as we had Friday and today (Monday) off work.  But the change of pattern confuses my brain.  In the UK we changed to British Summer Time this weekend, the clocks were supposed to go forward on Saturday night, but in this house we put them forward on Friday night.  I think this was because Friday felt like Saturday to me and I convinced T to alter the clocks.  Consequently we spent the whole day on Saturday in a different time zone to everyone else!

I’ve had a busy weekend though.  Lots of art on Friday, on Saturday we went to the local DIY store.  We couldn’t understand why there was hardly anyone there, but now realise it was because we arrived just after it had opened.  Then I spent the rest of the day breaking up a large lump of concrete so we can replace the rotten wooden gate post with a concrete one.  Oh my that was hard work!  It totally wore me out and I had a hot bath and realy night that day.  Yesterday I also felt exhausted all day but I went to a Cemetery Open Day in another town on the Island and then visited my parents in the afternoon.  T had a go at breaking up the other piece of concrete holding in the other gate post, but it was too difficult for him.  We have been wondering if any of our friends have a pneumatic drill, it doesn’t seem likely does it?  Today I’ve had time for more art :-).

The weather this long weekend has been bright and sunny, but still very, very cold, I’m beginning to think I’d like to emigrate to a warmer climate, but then there are the cats to consider…

Talking of the cats, the Bengal Boys were three years old this weekend and had a special fish supper to celebrate.  For the past 6 months there has been a bit of a power struggle going on between them as to who is Top Cat.  I wish they would sort it out because I don’t like it when they squabble.  They are both still very sweet, but not with each other.

Early this afternoon we were visited by our friend Russ who we have known for at least 30 years but hardly ever see.  He said, “I was just passing so I thought I’d drop in and see you”.  He stopped and had a cup of tea with us and said he noticed we had been breaking out the concrete by the gate posts.  T explained what problems we are having and  Russ said “I’ve got a pneumatic drill I can lend you”, he went away and has just called back to deliver it.  It seems so unlikely that that could happen all I can say is “Thank you Universe and Russ”!!!

The page above is the from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  I also got some inspiration from the sculpures of one of my favourite artists Jean Miro.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

You don’t have to be perfect

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You don't have to be perfectHello friends!

OK I am officially obsessed with the weather and it is still very, very cold here.  Fortunately we have not had snow again, but other parts of the country have.  It is however still very wintery and I don’t like it!

On Saturday I was going to do some work in the cemetery, recording inscriptions from memorials,  but it was just too cold and wet.  Instead I spent the day with my friends in the Learning Centre setting up display boards for our next exhibition.  It was an enjoyable day spent with lovely and enthusiastic people.  Even though we had the heating on all day, it never warmed up.  We had to keep our coats on all day!

This weekend I have had to download a copy of the history group‘s website to my external hard drive (because we are moving it to another host).  The website is so huge that it took from 7pm until nearly midnight on Saturday and from 7am till 6pm on Sunday.  I didn’t want to do anything else on my computer while it was downloading just incase it messed things up.  So I didn’t have time to post to my blog yesterday.  I spent the time preparing some more pages for a new art journal.  There is always a good side to things that seem a problem 🙂

On Saturday I went to the Library to see how registration for my workshop is going and was delighted to hear that there are only four spaces left.   It would be great if all 12 places were taken up, as I have prepared goody bags for 12 people.

The page above is the second page of my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  As you can see another strange creature  popped up to join me on this page.  I have no idea where they come from but I suspect there are plenty more just waiting to materialise themselves as soon as I give them a chance 😉

Have a good week everyone and if you are in the UK I hope you are managing to keep warm.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

See the world through fresh eyes

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Fresh EyesHello friends!

It’s the middle of the week and all is well here. It is officially the start of spring and we even had some sunshine 🙂  I have been enjoying myself at work which is somewhat surprising considering how boring and repetative my current job is.  This just helps to prove to me that being happy is definitely a choice I can make.   I hope life is being good to you too.

The page above is the front cover of my third Teesha inspired journal.  The journal was finished before I got the new Molotow pens to play with.  So how are the new pens?  They are lushious!   (I know that is now how it’s spelt but this spelling seems more appropriate to me).   I don’t know if the Molotow  are better than Sharpies or Uni Posca pens, but there are more choices of colours AND they are refillable so those are two points in their favour.  I just love pens of all kinds, it’s good to have a variety and selection and, personally, I don’t think it’s possible for me to have too many pens.

My exciting news is that I signed up for the Mermaid Circus an eight-week online workshop with Teesha Moore and Jane Davenport.  It starts in April and I’m looking forward to it immensely.  The workshop I did with Teesha at the Art Retreat last September was the best and I really would love to spend more time with her.  Teesha is not only a great artist but she is a beautiful,  lovely and generous soul.  It’s unlikely I shall be able to afford to get over to Seattle where Teesha lives so an online workshop is going to be the next best thing for me.  The workshop starts on Monday 8 April (that’s 20 days away) and  I am sure that it is going to be a good investment for me.

I made a little video of my completed 6×6 journal:

That’s all my news for now folks, 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 🙂