Tag Archives: AJ art journal

The Journey

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The JourneyHello friends!

I hope you are having a good week.  Mine is going fine.

For this spread in my 6×6 journal I started with a page that had some horrible dark green paint on it and the opposite page had dabs of pink ink.  Not a great combination!   I collaged copies of old maps and papers from the Papermania Bookprint collection onto the pages.  I coloured them with Inktense blocks and water.  Where I had used Mod Podge to stick the papers down it acted as a resist to the colour – a nice effect.  I finger painted the whole spread with an ‘eggyolk’ yellow acrylic paint and then added the circles by stamping brown acrylic paint using bottle caps.  I thought it needed some contrast so I stencilled blue acrylic paint through punchinella and a big dot stencil.  Finally I added the words using brown Stazon and a set of tiny letters I purchased at Hobbycraft a while ago.

Making the spread was a bit of a journey, I had no idea where I was going with it when I started and I wasn’t sure where I was when I finished.  It was good fun though 🙂

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Big love

AJ 🙂

As We Grow Up

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As We Grow Up

Hello friends

Well we finally had some sunshine, and oh boy! doesn’t it make a difference, everything looks and feels better when the sun shines.

Yesterday I did a lot of work in the garden.  The only area of responsibility I have in the garden is cutting the grass, but because I don’t do it very often, the two grassy areas are more weed patches than grass and look very scruffy.  This contrasts very badly with the rest of the garden which is very neat and tidy, as are most things in my husband’s life (apart from me).  I really don’t know how he puts up with me, he is obsessive about tidiness, and I live my life surrounded by clutter and stuff!

Anyway I cut down the two weed patches and they now look slightly more respectible, however I am pleased to say I have finally convinced T that we should do away with the grass altogether.  The area at the back of the house where we occassionally sit on the rare occasions when it’s warm enough will be paved (when we can afford it) and the garden at the front of the house is going to have raised beds so T can grow even more vegetables.  This is a huge relief for me I can tell you, and gives him more growing space – he loves his home grown veg.

Today was even more glorious but I woke up feeling poorly and spent most of the morning in bed.  When I did get up there were chores to do and then a visit to my parents.  Fortunately I have a day off work tomorrow so I will be able to enjoy a day that I felt like I missed today – if you see what I mean?

This spread is from my A4 journal, it looks a bit busy, but I was pleased with how it turned out.  I did it a while ago so I can’t really remember the whole process, but there are ripped and die cut old book pages, acrylic paints, gesso, stamping and a really cool, but very long quote I found.  It starts “As we grow up” and ends “live in the moment because every second you spend angry or upset is a second of happiness you can never get back”.

I think if you click on the image you should be able to see it big enough to read the whole quote  – it’s a good one.  I use all these quotes because I am really trying to improve myself – to improve in my art and in my attitude and outlook.  I don’t always succeed and I definitely do have negative periods, but I’m trying and slowly I feel that I am getting to grips with it.

I hope you are having a great weekend.

Big love

AJ 🙂

The Moment is Now!

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The Moment is NowHello friends!

Happy Wednesday to you I hope you are all well and happy.  I am fine, but I’m feeling physically exhausted at the moment – in a good way I think.

I’ve been doing something completely different at work last week and this week, it’s interesting but tiring for me.

This is a spread from my 6×6 journal.  I started by collaging some images I’d printed but because my printer was running out of ink the colours came out really strange.  Rather than throw them out I decided to use them as a base for a journal page.  I also ripped up some of the local newspaper the was lying on my work table and stuck that down too.  Then I finger painted with blue acrylic, I used a handcut stencil and some blue distress ink then I over collaged with scrapbook paper and the quote which I hand wrote.  I know I should credit the author, but I’m sorry I can’t remember this time.  Finally I overstamped with a paisley stamp and black Stazon and a flower stamp and blue Stazon and I edged the pages with the blue ink too..

Right, I’m off to bed now to get some rest before another busy day of site visits.

I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Be Grateful to People Who Make us Happy…

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Be Grateful to People Who Make us HappyHello friends!

I hope everything is good with you.  We are in the middle of a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK and it’s unseasonally cold.  At least it has stopped raining for the time being, but a little warmth and sunshine would be appreciated… maybe tomorrow?  I mean we are well into May now!

This spread is from my A4 journal.  You are probably getting the idea by now that one of the things I love to use in my art is torn paper – books, adverts, old maps, receipts, scrap book paper, etc. I just love paper!  I also love script and especially script I can’t understand.  I can only speak English so all other languages look fascinating to me.

I also like the idea of my soul blossoming, so thank you Marcel Proust for the lovely quote.  Fortunately there are quite a lot of people in my life who make me happy.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

A Beautiful and Incredible Place

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A Beautiful & Incredible Place

Hello friends

Gosh, it’s mid week already, I just don’t know where the time goes, but then they do say ‘Time flies when you are having fun’ 🙂

This spread is from my 6×6 journal and I used stuff that was just on my work table – scraps of paper, images from magazines, old maps, even a bit of packaging from a Tim Holtz mask I purchased.  The pages already had gesso on them which I had textured by putting the wet pages together and then pulling them apart (I love that effect), I finger painted with yellow acrylic paint and then collaged the paper scraps on top.  I edged some of the paper with black ink and some with yellow ink.  I added more gesso to the edges of some of the images to push them back to the background.  The quote is by Ole Osterkamp and I wrote it on some cream vellum, tore the edges, inked them with yellow ink and stuck the pieces on.  I have started putting dates on my finished pages, because I am having trouble remembering when I did what, if you know what I mean 😉  I liked the end result.

The journal is actually wire bound, but I am in quandry about continuing to use wire bound journals.  There are pros and cons.  The wire binding allows for expansion as the pages and journal thicken up and also allows for a lot of decorating, with fibres, charms etc,  of the outside of the spine when the journal is completed.  But the wire binding really distracts and disects the images I make across two pages.  That is why I scan the two sides of the spread and stitch them close together without the wire binding showing.  Is that cheating?

I hope all is good with you my friends and I’ll be back again soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Here comes May and that was April.

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May 2012Hello friends!

I hope everyone is well and happy.

Here is my calendar page for May all ready to go, I’m excited because I think it’s going to be a good month.

April was apparently the wettest on record.  I know they say ‘April Showers’ but this was more like a monsoon at times.  It’s ironic because much of the south of England is currently under a drought order which basically means the use of hose pipes, sprinklers, etc. for domestic purposes is banned and we are being encouraged to be careful not to waste water.

People struggle to understand when we have had so much rain there is still a shortage of water, but two winters of less than average rainfall have left the ground water very depleted.  Although a drought in English terms has no comparison to a drought in Africa.  Here it means we have less water than we would like, in Africa it means there is no water.  The truth is that most of us take water for granted.  All my life I have been used to turning on a tap and clean water coming out of it.  I am sure that if I had to walk for hours a day and had to carry the water I needed, which even then would not be clean enough to drink, I would still treasure every drop.

Below is my completed page for April.

April 2012 completeSee you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Bunting

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BuntingHello Friends

Tomorrow I will be posting my April (finished) and May (ready to go) pages for the 366 Calendar challenge, but I wanted to post something today, it being Sunday and my usual day for posting on my blog.  So here is some bunting I made yesterday for the Jubilee Celebration event Ryde Social Heritage Group is holding in the Heritage Centre in Ryde Cemetery on 26 & 27 May.

I bought some blank cardboard die cut flags and a pack of Portobello Road papers from Papermania and I got some Union Jack material and some red ribbon from the local habidashery shop.  I painted one side of each flag in either red, white or blue acrylic paint and added the RSHG logo.  At first I tried to cut a stamp of the logo from an old mouse mat, it wasn’t bad, but not good enough so finally I cut a stencil  and I stamped RSHG on all the flags and then inked the edges.  Then came the fun part – decorating the front of the flags with either material or paper.   My mum gave me her sewing machine a while ago and that made everying so much easier.  I am pleased with the results although I am a little worried that the cardboard will rip where the machine needle has made holes.  The bunting is for indoor use only.

We are having the kind of weather that makes people complain, high winds and lots of rain.  I really don’t mind this kind of weather because it means I can stay in my art room all day and not feel guilty that I should be outside enjoying the sunshine.

I hope you are all having a great weekend.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Your Life Story

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Your Life StoryHello Friends

It’s a wet and windy Wednesday in the UK.  The cats got me up at 5am today.  The fact that the wind and rain were battering at the windows but Jack made it perfectly clear he wanted to go out (my cats are generally ‘fair weather cats’).  I knew he wanted to go to the toilet and I put him in the litter tray about 10 times and tred to encourage him to use it, but he was having none of it and instisted I opened the door.   Jack really does not like using the litter trays at all whereas Bill is quite laid back about it, in fact Bill sometimes comes in from the garden just to go to the toilet!  But if Jack was going out so was Bill.  At 5:30 I relented and let them both out.  They were both back in the house within 5 minutes, presumably having done their business outside.  It was too late for me to go back to bed then so I caught up with some emails before getting ready for work.  Now at 10:30pm, after a day at work, I am really tired and off to bed soon.

The spread above was done very quickly.  The pages were already gesso’d and had some paint on them.  I stuck down some ripped book pages and some images of old typewriters I found in a magazine at work the other day.  I painted over the top with gesso and some lovely russet acrylic paint, which I then wiped back, and the text is made up from some stickers I bought from the bargain bin at Hobbycraft the a few weeks ago.  I’m not sure you can read the text, it says: “The story of your life is exactly as you write it” which is another message to myself about the choices I make.

Just like the art this post was done in a rush.

Hope everyone is doing well and I’ll see you soon 🙂

Big love

AJ

Have Beautiful Dreams

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Have Beautiful DreamsHello friends!

Warning: the last two sentences of the third paragraph are a bit rude, so please don’t read that paragraph if you are easily offended.

I hope you are having a good weekend, I am and I am also managing to get a few things done so that’s good, it eases the pressure a little.

The spread above is from my A4 journal.  I painted the pages with some really old pink and orange fluorescent paint I found in my art box (it must be at least 20 years old).  Then I stamped the pages with a Tim Holtz reflections script stamp and a Tim Holtz heart.  I added some gold leaf to one of the pages.  Then I collaged with scraps of paper of all sorts, some images of vintage ladies, some die cut dots, and various other pieces I found in my stash.  The lovely quote is, I believe, by Eleanor Roosevelt and it is to remind me that if I follow my dreams all will be good. 🙂

On Friday all the big bosses came for their meeting, it was strange, for most of the day they were crammed into the meeting room (which was really too small to accommodate the numbers that turned up) and it must have been very uncomfortable for them.  At lunch time they came out and ‘talked to the troops’.  A buffet lunch was provided which I had been tasked with providing.  I am not sure why I was asked to sort it out as catering is really not my speciality.  Anyone who knows me would tell you that.  I suspect it was more to do with the fact that I don’t have a pair of testicles and all my colleagues do.  I’m thinking of asking my mum to knit me a pair 😉

The lunch time chat was really more of a case of ‘the troops’ complaining about how things are run and some of them were quite aggressive.  All the managers acted very professionally, were very reasonable and promised to look into every complaint.  It remains to be seen whether or not they actually do.  After a couple of hours they said they had to go back into their meeting and asked if anyone had anything else to say.  No-one said anything and I thought ‘someone needs to say thanks to them for coming here today’, so I forced myself to say something.

As soon as I started speaking a felt a rush of blood from my feet to my head, I was hot, felt like my face must be the colour of a beetroot and my voice was really shakey, to the point where I almost couldn’t get my words out.  I did my best and I hope it was good enough.  I think it’s important when people make an effort that they are acknowledged and thanked.  It’s one of the complaints we make about our bosses – they never say thank you to us.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Good Old Days?

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Good Old Days?Hello friends!

It’s a wet, windy and dismal day here on the Isle of Wight and I’ve been struggling with a low mood, actually been on the verge of tears a couple of times, and I have no idea why.  I’m not normally a depressive person but I let things at work get to me today.  Two days of having computers not working hasn’t helped because it has put me behind with stuff. I have let other stupid little things get to me too.

Coming home, doing some art and stroking Billy Kat has helped a lot.  Cats are such good therapy 🙂  There is a big meeting at work on Friday with a lot of senior managers, and I really need to get a positive head on for that.  Today if anyone had asked me how things are I’d have struggled to say anything positive and that’s not good.  Sometimes I just get days like this and hopefully I can turn it around tomorrow – I must remember I can make a choice to be happy, breath and smile 🙂

This spread is from my 6×6 journal.  I started with a smooth gesso’d background, painted it with a brown acrylic then collaged some ripped vintage pages (that Alicia from Altered Bits sent me) and some scraps of old maps of my town.  I don’t actually use the real maps, but scan them, print them on photographic paper and age them with tea so they look like the real thing.  Then I used some blue acrylic paint and some white ink dabbed through punchinella and wrote the quote (in my poor handwriting) in white ink and highlighted (or do I mean lowlighted it) with black.

I have become aware recently how much people look at the past through rose tinted glasses.  Especially at work, things were always better back then, in the Good Old Days, although when that time was differs from person to person.   I also know that rather than aching for the past and what was, we should all try and live more in the present.  As Oprah says, “this moment is the only one you know you have for sure”.  So we’d better enjoy it.

Thanks for listening, just putting this all down has helped me to lift my mood, I think tomorrow is going to be fine.

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Big love

AJ 🙂