This is The Book made by the participants at my Visual Journaling workshop in April.  Well done all involved, it’s fabulous 🙂

Hello friends! 

I hope all is good in your part of the world, here things are fine.  The Arts Festival started on Friday evening with a lovely classical concert at St Thomas Heritage Centre.  The Heritage Centre is actually a big, old disused church and it has been opened up for the week for the Arts Festival.  An art exhibition has been curated there portraying various artists’ interpretations of aspects of the town’s history it’s called Chalk Talks. 

Yesterday morning we had the grand opening of Reading Spaces in our local library, the exhibition includes a page turning machine; scrolls which reach from the ground floor to the first floor and are turned by rotating a wheel on the side; a beautiful book made by the reading group and the visually impaired group – this book has embossed pages instead of words, so it’s tactile and tells the story of Little Red Riding Hood, there is also an amazing installation made from old books, lightbulbs, corks and windmills, a reading nest for small children made of wicker, there is so much there you really need to go and see it youself, failing that visit the Ryde Arts Festival website.  Upstairs at the library the gallery is full of art contributed by local artists which is amazing!

There was a big Art Parade through the town yesterday afternoon, many local schools and groups participated and the theme was art and artists.  There were some great costumes and the weather stayed warm and sunny (for a change) 🙂

The Never Ending Story exhibition also opened at the Depozitory yesterday and it features the art of Lucia Para, who has created beautiful canvases which all seem to tell their own story.  Visitors are invited to write the stories they see in the images and post them into little bird boxes provided.  

This exhibition also includes the work produced at my three workshops.

Hopefully above you can see the movie of the book produced at my Introduction to Visual Journaling workshop held in April.  YouTube has been causing me lots of problems today, making the images look fuzzy.  It’s been VERY annoying.  If the images look fuzzy to you, as they might if you view full screen, you need to click on the little gear icon at the bottom of the screen and change the resolution, then go back to the beginning and restart the movie.  I found it worked best for me set at 480p but you may have to play around with it.

The exhibition also includes the Matchbox Mementos made the Foyer, the Family History Shrines made by  Ryde Social Heritage Group members and some of my journals.

Yesterday evening there was a Chalk Talks Salon at the Heritage Centre with music, poetry and performance where the artists opened and explained the exhibition, it was a great evening.

Today I’ve had a day off, which was fortunate as I woke up with a very sore throat, at first I thought I was coming down with a cold, but the constant sneezing and eye-streaming has made me realise it’s Hay Fever.  Today has probably been the loveliest day of the year so far, the sort of day when you shouldn’t be stuck indoors, but that’s where I’ve been most of the day battling with YouTube!  This is the first time I’ve had Hay Fever this year and I’m hoping it will pass soon.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Hello 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 🙂

Hello friends!

I’m back from my amazing weekend away at the Call of the Wild Soul Art Retreat.  Wow!  What an experience: being with 60 amazingly creative and lovely women, a fabulous location in Exmoor, great food and workshops with Flora Bowley, Teesha Moore and Orly Avineri.  What more could a creative Wild Soul ask for?

I need to absorb the whole experience before I write any more about it – it was awesome!

So here is my new spread for October for Kate’s Calendar Challenge and below is my completed September spread.

September was a hectic month for me with the big exhibition and 10th anniversary celebrations for Ryde Social Heritage Group earlier in the month, all the upset at work and the Art Retreat that I’ve just come home from.  I am hoping for a more restful October, but I somehow don’t think that will happen 😉

I’m off to have a bath and an early night now as I am very tired and have to go back to work tomorrow.

See you all soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

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