Hello friends, I’m back!
I hope all is good with you, what a busy week I’ve had!
On Monday I spent most of the day preparing for a presentation I had agreed to give to senior management at work. I agreed to do it because it’s not really something I feel very comfortable with, and I am determined to be more fearless. I thought this would be a good challenge to help me be braver.
On Tuesday I spent the whole day working on the lifting inspections project. This project was given to me as an ‘add-on’ to my normal work, but it’s taking up far more time than I thought it would and nothing is simple, I keep coming across problems and difficulties, but at least it’s not boring and it gets me out of the office, so I’m not complaining.
On Wednesday I travelled to the mainland (remember I live on an Island) to meet up with a colleague and we rehearsed our presentation once before going and delivering it to the bosses. It went OK, the management team were very kind to us and didn’t seem half as scary as I thought they would be. My presentation was not ‘word perfect’ but I was happy at the end of it.
When I got back home we went out for an evening meal with my Mum & Dad and my eldest brother and his wife to celebrate dad’s 90th birthday. My brother and I had arranged for Dad to have a flight in a glider for a birthday treat and the weather was good enough for him to have the flight actually on his birthday. He had a really great day. My other brother and his family are coming over from France next weekend to see us for a short visit.
On Thursday and Friday I had leave from work and I spent the whole of both days, setting up stuff for the RSHG Open Days and Jubilee Celebrations in Ryde Cemetery. On Thursday I was mostly on my own, but on Friday others came to help. After a lot of hard work, finally every thing was ready.
We had two glorious days of sunny weather and lots of visitors. There are three old chapels in the cemetery and we had all three open, in one, the Learning Centre, we had refreshements available and all of our research folders for visitors to browse. We were also able to help many people with their family history research and to locate graves of their ancestors. In the two other chapels we had display boards with historical information about our town. One display was about Royals and Ryde and as well as display boards we also had artefacts, and a Royal tableau consisting of a young Queen Elizabeth dressed in her coronation gown and robe complete with crown and orb (made by me) and along side her was an older Queen Victoria. It all looked really good.
Me as Hannah Harvey
At 2pm on both days we performed some living history in the form of a ‘Character Walk’. The visitors lead by a guide and commentator went for a short stroll in the cemetery and met some of the characters from Ryde’s past. We had loads of fun performing our characters and everyone said they enjoyed the walk very much. When the character walk was over we invited all the visitors to join us for a Royal Tea party. We had a fantastic bunch of volunteers helping us. Now it’s over and everything is tidied up and packed away we are all very tired but satisifed that it was worth the effort.
Well you were probably not interested in any of that, so now to the spread above, it’s from my 6×6 journal and was done at the end of April this year. I started off with gesso which I textured, then coloured with orange and purple acrylic paint and then stamped with my flower word stamp. A good friend recently gave me some delightful floral papers, the papers are all about the size of a playing card and are packaged together with a neat paper binding. It was such a lovely gift I wasn’t sure I would be able to break into the stash, but I took a deep breath, selected some of the papers, tore the edges and edged with orange and purple ink and stuck them on the pages, then I finger painted with orange glitter paint and used some flower stamps to put in the bottom border. I coloured the stamped images with glitter pens and finally added the quote “The day comes when the risk of remaining tight in a bud is more painful than the risk it takes to open and blossom” by Anais Nin.
Oh! my other exciting news is that it was my birthday yesterday and my lovely husband said that I could book myself on to the Call of the Wild Soul art retreat in September. So I am going to have three wonderful days being taught by Teesha Moore, Orly Avineri and Flora Bowley.!!! I am soooooo excited! And as an extra special treat for me I will get to see Tracy Moore, Teesha’s husband, again. I met Tracy a few years ago at a Lomographic convention in London. He is just the sweetest, kindest, warm-hearted man ever.
What a fabulous birthday present and what a fabulous week!
Hope you are all having a good time too.
Big love
AJ
AJ's Art Journaling 