Tag Archives: AJ art journal

Operation Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Swap :-)

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MonkeysHello friends

I recently took part in Operation Sock Monkey and Sock Monkey Swap which was hosted by 6 Degrees of Creativity and my friend Gretchen Miller.  Over 100 Sock Monkeys from 18 states across the US and from New Zealand, Canada, UK, and Italy came together before being sent to their final destination: The Boys and Girls Club in Hoboken, New Jersey. 

If you click on the links you can find out all about the project.

Above are my two sock monkeys, I had to make them before I could commit myself to participating, they were fun to make.  The pink one was sent to Gretchen to be sent to the Boys & Girls Club in Hoboken and the grey one was sent to Katarina Thorsen in Canada.  Katarina is an amazing artist and I recommend you check out all of her blogs :-).  You can find out all about Operation Sock Monkey here.  I love their motto which is ‘Sending smiles across the miles’.

And here is the sweet monkey I received in the swap.  It was made by Katie in Connecticut. Thank You Katie! Once Billy Kat gets used to having ‘a stranger’ on the bed Monkey will fit in nicely and have a good home here 🙂

Monkey-and-Bill

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Strange Creature

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Imagination is a Strange CreatureHello Friends!

Sorry I missed my mid-week post again this week.  On Wednesday I took the day off work and did my Christmas shopping.  I left home at 10am and didn’t get back until 6pm.  My husband said “What have you been doing all this time?”.  He does all his shopping online or just buys vouchers for people!  Anyway I can’t say I was full of festive spirit, but I bought a lot of stuff and spent a lot of money and now it’s all wrapped up it looks OK.

I am disappointed that this year I haven’t had time to make presents for my friends, but I just didn’t feel up to is in November and then ran out of time to even start in December.

My mood has improved this month and I will be glad once Christmas is out of the way, it’s not really my favourite time of year but at least I am having a long break from work so I’m bound to have time for some art.  I am hoping too that T picked up on those massive hints I dropped for new art supplies.

We have some family coming to stay just after Christmas so yesterday I decided to do some housework, and managed to put my back out within about an hour, I was only bending over to pick something up too and it wasn’t even heavy.  Fortunately it’s not too bad and the painkillers are helping to relieve it so I can carry on with my tasks.  Today’s task is to clean the grout between the tiles in the bathroom.  It has to be done because recently I’ve been standing in the shower looking up at the tiles and thinking ‘Yuk, that looks horrible’!  The truth is I’m not really cut out for domesticity, if I did it more often it wouldn’t have got into such a state, but unfortunately I can always find more interesting things to do than clean and tidy 😦

However I promise you that by the time I finish today it will SPARKLE!

So this page is the last page in my A4 journal which I started in October 2011 and is a page I did for Traci Hanson’s Journal Quest on 21 Secrets.  I found a Big Bird and a Polar Bear cub in my painting.  Strange eh!

Have a great week everyone

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

A Bit Strange & One of a Kind

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A Bit Strange & One of a KindHello friends!

I hope you are well, I’ve just realised I forgot to post mid-week and I’m not sure what happened there?  I must have just been busy which seems to be my natural state these days!

This post is dedicated to the memory of “Razzle” (Nick Dingley), drummer with the band Hanoi Rocks, he was killed in a car crash in America in 1984 just a few days after his 24th Birthday.  You made a big impact on our lives man, and we won’t forget you, you will stay forever young!

Here is the front cover of my Teesha Moore inspired journal which is now complete.  I have actually finished another journal  since I completed this one and I have also restarted working on my the very first journal which I started in February 2011 also inspired by Teesha.  I got so far with it and then other things took over and it’s been neglected for months now.

Things seem to be better in December than they were in November.  BUT I’ve made no preparations for Christmas yet and haven’t even started shopping, so I am beginning to feel pressured about all of that.

Yesterday I spent the day at St Thomas Heritage Centre for Ryde Arts Festival’s ‘Green Festive Wreath’ making day.  I volunteered to serve the teas and coffees all day.   It didn’t get warm in the building all day, but it was lovely when a group of children from a Dover Park school arrived and sang Carols for us.

I also had all my completed art journals on display.  I wanted to see if there would be any interest if I run a one day Art Journaling workshop for the Arts Festival in the summer.  A few people showed some interest which was good and best of all I met Sami!  We have been friends in blogland for a while and here is her blog which is called Luna.  Sami lives in the same town as me but we have never met before.  It was lovely to meet her and her son.   I got a good warm vibe from both of them.  Yes Sami, let’s meet up for coffee and a chat soon!

Gina Lighting up the NightAfterwards I watched my beautiful friend Gina, founder of www.starmystique.com, do her fire dancing in the town square, she was great!

Gina has a huge amount of talent,  is a great performer with a winning smile and flashing eyes, and as I am sure you can see she is a very sexy lady,  but more than that she just exudes positive energy, she’s lovely!

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

It’s the 1st Day of the Last Month of the Year!!!

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DecemberHello friends!

Wow I can hardly believe how fast this year has flown by and here is my final page for Kate Crane’s Calendar Challenge.  I couldn’t resist and went with traditional Christmas colours of red and green for the background and for the days I used some Christmas paper that was free with a magazine last year and some chipboard embellisments.  The lettering for the month and days of the week were cut from glossy magazines, and the numbers for the days are stickers.

And below is my completed November spread.  This has not been the best month of the year for me so I am hoping things improve in December.

November complete

I hope all is good with you in your part of the world, it’s bloomin’ chilly here at the moment!  Proper wintery!

Stay warm and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Who We Were Born To Be

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Who We Were Meant to Be

Hello friends!

Happy Wednesday, I hope your week is going well.  I am still struggling with health issues and a fluctuating mood.  How I hate being miserable, I keep telling myself, it’s my choice and I can actually just decide to be happy, but it doesn’t always work.  The situation at work doesn’t help and I suspect if I took my blood pressure it would be sky high at the moment.  I had to do some calming deep breathing this morning before I left for the office, I was so wound up just by the thought of it.  I think things got better during the day and I managed to get quite a bit done and then the database I was working on decided to drastically slow down, I mean REALLY slow down, I was waiting for up to two minutes for each change I made just to register in the system.  I stand no chance of meeting my deadlines at this rate and staring at a computer screen just waiting for something to happen is such a waste of time!  Anyway enough of this whining!  Where is my ‘positive’ head?

Here is the back cover of my Teesha Moore inspired journal, I hope you like it.

Have a great week

Big love

AJ 🙂

Quantum Entanglement

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Quantum EntanglementHello friends!

I hope you are having a great weekend.  I must admit I am not feeling too good at the moment, so I am not going to blog (it would just be full of self-pity and whining if I did), so here is a spread from my 6×6 journal instead.  I hope you like it.  The theory of Quantum Entanglement, also known as Einstein’s theory of “spooky action at a distance”, is really too much for my tiny brain to take in, but that doesn’t stop me from being interested in the subject.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Just Keep Breathing

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Just Keep BreathingHello friends!

How are you?  I am fine although I had a bit of a melt down at work yesterday.  I was doing OK until this lovely woman phoned me up and asked me how I was getting on in my new job.  I had to tell her I wasn’t very happy because it was so tedious and then it was like the flood gates opened.  Unfortunately I can be very emotional and my voice was breaking up, I started crying and I guess she knew that even down the phone line.   Anyway she was very encouraging and supportive and I think my discontent has now been passed up the chain a bit.  I don’t know if anything good will happen as a result of this though.  I am still trying my hardest to do a good job even though I find it totally boring and I am trying to stay positive about it.  It’s a challenge!  Anyway I felt a bit better today.  Sometimes it’s just good to talk and unload some of the crap.

So here is another bright and happy page from my ‘weird and freaky’ Teesha Moore inspired journal.  The quote is by Oprah Winfrey and is something I really need to keep telling myself.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Home, a place of safety

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Home, a place of safetyHello friends!

I hope you are all well and happy.  I have had a busy weekend.  Yesterday I had to make myself go and do the voluntary work in the cemetery, it was hard because I knew RoseMarie wouldn’t be there, but I also knew it’s what she would want me to carry on.  It was a lovely sunny morning and my friend Kate came to join me and we spent a pleasant couple of hours recording inscriptions from some of the memorials.

In the afternoon I went shopping, I was hoping to be able to buy some old National Geographic magazines cheap from one of the charity shops, but I couldn’t find any 😦  However in one of the charity shops I did find a rather fabulous scrap book of newspaper cuttings someone (unknown) made in the 1930s, I probably spent more than I should have done on it, but I couldn’t resist!  In the same shop I also got some good artist brushes for a bargain price.  Well you can never have too many brushes can you?

It is now 6:30 pm and this is the first time I’ve sat in front of my computer today.  I had to resist switching it on because I had chores to do today.  I got up early this morning and started to clear out and tidy up the cupboard under the stairs.  Eventually we intend to move the washing machine in there to free up some space in the kitchen.  It’s hard to believe that so much stuff could be crammed into such a small space.  I was ruthless and threw of lot out!  When my husband got up (much later than me) we spent time working out how we are going to deal with the plumbing and then we went to a big DIY store to buy the materials we will need.

It was too late to start by the time we got back so I went to see Mum and Dad, who are both fine, and I’ve just got back from that visit.

This image above is a single page from my A4 size journal and was done fairly quickly (I guess you can tell that) as part of the Fall Fearless and Fly challenge:

Headline prompt: Security, what makes you feel safe and secure? What rattles your sense of security? Where do you go for comfort and refuge?

Color prompt: Cool colors (blues, greens, violets, etc)

Quote prompt: You can’t make a place for yourself in the sun, if you keep taking refuge under the family tree. Helen Keller.

Well, my home and my art room make me feel safe and secure so that’s where I go for comfort.  I managed to get my two cats into the image, but not my husband, he is probably around the back of the house tending to the garden, either that or he is upstairs haveing a nap 🙂  By the way my house is not as big as the one depicted on the page.

I’m not sure who to attribute the quote I used to, I have seen several similar quotes attributed to different people, but nevertheless it is what I feel about home.  I feel that I ruined it with the terrible writing, but never mind…

Have a good week everyone and I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

So Do It!

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So do it!Hello friends

I hope your week is going well, I am doing pretty good 🙂

Here is another page from my Teesha Moore inspired journal, I am totally hooked on this at the moment…

I don’t have time to write a blog post at the moment, it’s late and I need to get to bed, but I hope you like my page.  I showed my journal to one of my friends and he said “It’s a bit ‘freaky’ and a bit weird”.  Oh well that’s me I guess 😉

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Focus on the Journey

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Focus on the JourneyCLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Hello friends!

I hope you have had a great weekend, mine has been OKish.  I woke up with a horrible headache on Saturday morning and that kept me in bed all morning.  I finally managed to get rid of it and at lunch time I got up to make myself some toast.  The phone rang and my husband told me it was a friend wanting to speak to me.  I groaned as I really didn’t feel like talking to anyone but he had already told her he would get me so I answered the call.  Then I was hit by a bombshell, I was told that another friend had collapsed and died that morning.  It was completely unexpected, I had only seen her the previous Saturday when she came and volunteered in the cemetery with me, helping to record inscriptions from the memorials.  She has been helping me do this for several years.  In all that time I hadn’t really got to know her that well as she was a very private person, but gradually she began to open up and chat, especially when it was just the two of us working together.  She was a kind, caring, thoughtful soul who did much to help other people.  The last time I saw her she cheerily said “See you in a couple of weeks”.  As far as I know she had not been ill and her death was sudden and unexpected, she was only in her early 70s.

Rest in peace Rosemarie, dear kind soul, I will think of you and miss you every time I go into the cemetery to work.  The work you did will be appreciated by many people from all across the world who carry out research into their ancestors from our town.

She has been on my mind a lot ever since I heard, I had to phone several other people to impart the sad news and then I spent the rest of the time working on my art which has helped me to stay grounded.

The page above is from my A4 journal and was completed in August.  I used  pieces from an old cycling map as the background and then gave it a wash of watered down gesso and acrylic paint.  The bicycles in the bottom r/h corner were an image transfer.  The image and quote on the left hand page I found on the internet and it made me smile as I can imagine how precarious it was to ride a pennyfarthing bike.  The photograph of the girl is me aged about 18 on a bike ride in Nepal.  I stamped on the page with a Tim Holtz reflections text stamp and a number stamp.  I think I probably used Portfolio water soluable oil pastels to edge the page.  The quote sums up what I feel about art journaling – the process is more important than the end result – It’s All Good even if it’s not always good art 🙂

Have a good week my friends and I will see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂