Tag Archives: art journal

Sometimes you just have to go with it!

Posted on by
7

Doing your best!Hello friends!

It’s another wet weekend in the UK!  Oh well don’t have to feel guilty about staying in all day doing art 🙂

This page almost didn’t make it to the blog, because I’m really not that happy with it.  I was tempted to just paint over it with gesso and start again, but I spent so much time getting it to this sorry state it probably deserves to be just as it is.  I always try to do the best I can, but I’m not a perfectionist, I reckon if that’s the best I can do at this time then I should be satisfied.  It’s a bit of a struggle with this page because it’s ugly, but I hope it might grow on me.

There are so many layers I couldn’t even begin to tell you the whole process, but the page includes textured gesso, acrylic paint, stamping, acrylic ink, lots of torn paper (of course),tissue paper, holographic paper and rub on lacey bits.  I bought some small letter dies to cut the letters from holographic paper for the quote.  The dies were cheap, and unfortunately they don’t really work in the Big Shot, so I had to improvise and add layers of card until eventually the letters punched out.  The words ‘Best’ and ‘Moment’ are stamped with some vintage letter stamps that were being thrown out at work, there is not a full alphabet but I didn’t realise until I tried to find the N so I had to use Z on its side!  I stamped with Perfect Medium and used black embossing powder.

Because of the way the light from the scanner reflects on the holographic paper you may not be able to read the quote, it says: Doing your Best in this moment, puts you in the best place for the next MOMENT.

That’s all for now, hope you are all enjoying your weekend, next time I will post something that I think is prettier.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Trying to be Fearless!

Posted on by
5

Braver

Hello friends!

I hope all is good in your part of the world.

This will have to be a quick post because it’s waaaaay past my bedtime and I have to get up earlier than normal tomorrow.

This year I have been trying to be braver and to build up my self-confidence.  A friend of mine who is training to be a life coach tells me that when I talk to him I make lots of self-limiting statements.  I’d never thought about it before but I guess he is right.  All my life I felt that I wasn’t quite good enough in many aspects of my life.  So now I’m telling myself more and more that actually I am good enough.  I am putting myself outside of my comfort zone and doing things that I’d have been too scared to do a few years ago.  I still get scared and worried that I’ll mess up (and sometimes I do mess up) but at least I try now.

So I found this quote which I thought was PERFECT for my 6×6 journal and  I also have it pinned up along side my computer screen so I read it every day, it’s becoming a sort of mantra for me.  I had no idea where it came from so I ‘googled’ it and I was so ‘over the moon’ delighted to find out, this deep, philosophical quote is attributed to A A Milne author of the book Winnie the Pooh! I think Christopher Robin said it to Pooh.  How cool is that?!  The actual quote starts “If there is ever a tomorrow when we are not together, you must remember..”  and I don’t think it had the “and more loved than you know” bit at the end.  Someone must have added that on before I found it, but it’s still just perfect for me.  I really like this spread even though it’s a bit dark and difficult to read.

I’ve been so busy this last weekend I totally missed the whole Jubilee thing, but I hear it was a great success despite the typical English Bank Holiday weather.

I’ll be back soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Here comes Jubbly June!

Posted on by
12

Jubbly June

Hello friends!

That’s another month gone by and it’s time for Kate‘s Calendar challenge pages.  Here is June’s page.  It probably should be more red, white and blue considering it’s the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee (or The Jubbly as my husband calls it) this month, but when I made the page I wanted it to have a holiday feel.  I painted the background in sea colours, added a little boat and some bunting at the top.  I used copies of old ferry tickets for the date squares.

The local history group I am involved had our Jubilee celebrations last weekend and to be honest with you I doubt if I will take any more interest in the Jubilee now.  I don’t really get all that excited about Royal events.  However I am grateful that we get two bank holidays next week, and in fact I get the whole week off because I’ve booked the other three days.  Yay!

It will be interesting to see how the month pans out.

And below is my completed May spread.  A month when we had unseasonally cold weather, lots of rain and then some hot weather for a few days. Some days when nothing seemed to happen and others when I achieved good things.

May complete

I hope all is good with all of you my friends.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Perfection/Harmony

Posted on by
1

Perfection and/or HarmonyHello friends!

I hope everything is good with you all.

Here is my mid-week posting, it’s a page from my A4 journal.  Unusually it’s just a single page, not a spread and I’ve already shown you the opposite page here.

There are quite a lot of layers on this page, torn papers, images downloaded from the internet, home made washi tape (inspired by my friend Carolyn at a Colorful Journey), the stamps are by Lost & Found My Mind’s Eye range, I think the set might be called Rosy ‘Everything’, I stencilled black and red acrylic paint through punchinella and added the quote to finish it off.  The page was made some time ago at a time when I was struggling with some conflict in my life.

I have realised that making art like this really grounds me, I can sort stuff out in my head, breath, calm myself down.  I made a page that I think is pleasing to look at from a situation that felt really ugly and uncomfortable for me.  I hope you like it.

I hope the week is going well for you.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Caribbean Cool

Posted on by
9

Caribbean CoolHello friends

I hope you have all had a good weekend, mine has been busy.  Spent the last two days working in the Heritage Centre in the Cemetery helping to set up an exhibition on Royalty and Ryde for our two Open Days next weekend.  There is still quite a lot of work to do but nevertheless we made good progress and it will all look good.   Now we just have to hope some people turn up to make it worthwhile.

The spread above is about my wedding on February 2 2007, I’ve written about that event before so I won’t bore you with the details again, except to say that I absolutely love the Island of Tobago and in particular the quiet fishing village of Castara.  Our wedding was just before sunset on top of Mount Dillon overlooking beautiful Castara Bay, it was perfect.

To make the spread I first covered the pages completely with images cut from magazines, all the images were predominently an intense blue – the colour of the Caribbean sea, then I lightly gesso’d over the top, stamped and stencilled in red, yellow and green also colours of the Caribbean, and blue fishes.  Then I added three images;  the ‘Welcome to Paradise’ sign was on a tree outside Cascreole beach bar (where we had supper after our wedding), one image is of the wedding party – two locals, Susan and Horace Jackson (Horace was one of the witnesses), me, T and the lovely minister Brent Hart, the photo was taken by Paul T’s best man.  There was no-one else there.  The third photo is of one of the many beautiful sunsets you can see from the beach at Castara.  The blue heart is a die cut baby wipe I had used to wipe some blue paint.

This spread makes me happy.

It’s my Dad’s 90th birthday on Wednesday and we are going out for a meal to celebrate that night so I probably won’t be able to post anything until next weekend.

I’ll be thinking of you all and I’ll be back as soon as I can.

Big love

AJ 🙂

The Journey

Posted on by
4

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

Posted on by
4

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!

Posted on by
6

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…

Posted on by
2

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

Posted on by
5

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 🙂