Tag Archives: art journal

Bright Colours

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Bright Colours

Hello friends!

It’s been a bright and sunny day here today and I had intended to go for a long walk this afternoon, but T asked me to help him in the garden so I did that instead.   I didn’t get my walk but at least I got some exercise and was out in the sunshine all day.  I am tired now, but in a good way.

This spread is from my 6×6 journal.  It’s not my greatest achievement and in fact I messed it up so badly I had to gesso over about half of it to redo it.  The grey areas are actually very sparkly glitter paper.  I never can capture the sparkle with a camera or scanner so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  The symbol with the swirls is the symbol for an open mind (according to something I found on the internet).

One of my favourite quotes is from Sir Thomas Dewar (1864 – 1930) he was a Scottish whiskey distiller and salesman.

“Minds are like parachutes… they only function when they’re open.”

That’s all for now, I have to go and iron my work clothes ready for another week of work and I have a cat demanding some urgent tummy tickling too.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Glow

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GlowHello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy 🙂

Well it’s mid week and I’m still struggling to find time to do my ever growing list of ‘things to do’, know how it is…

My dad is recovering well from his operation now, he’s pretty tough for someone who is going to be 90 this year.  Yesterday, my eldest brother, his wife, Tony and I took Mum and Dad out for a meal to celebrate mum’s 80th birthday.  We had a lovely time.  This weekend my other brother and his family are coming over from France to see us all.  It will be a short visit but nevertheless a treat for Mum and Dad.

The page above is from my A4 journal and is a page I did for Rachel Whetzel‘s workshop ‘Silent Messages’ in last year’s 21 Secrets.  Rachel recommended using Creative Paperclay to add texture to a page.  I couldn’t find any in the local shops so I used Fimo Air Light, I think it worked about the same.  You smooth a thin layer of the clay onto a wet page of your journal so it sticks to the paper and then make impressions in the clay.  When it’s dry you paint over the whole thing with gesso and then just treat it like a normal journal page.  I put the clay onto the page without thinking about what I could use to make impressions.  I was stumped for a while so I just grabbed a round, wooden carved pot from my desk and rolled that over the wet clay.  When it was dry and gesso’d I used acrylic paints, scrap book paper and printed tissue paper to add layers.  I finished the page with gold Rub ‘n’ Buff on some of the edges and stamped the word glow with gold metalic acrylic paint.

When the clay dries it does warp the page quite a bit.  That might bother some people but I like it.

You can find out about this year’s 21 Secrets here.  It’s a great place to get inspiration 🙂

That’s all for now, catcha later

Big love

AJ

Revo-lution 2012 – Abundance

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Abundance

Hello Friends!

I hope everyone is well and happy.

I’m sorry I missed my mid-week posting this week, mainly due to the fact that on the day I would have posted my dad wasn’t well and I had to help mum. Fortunately things are improving so I should get back on track again now.

This spread is from my 2012 Revo-lution book and follows on from the last spread about Gratitude.  I love the scratchiness of the page and I love the quote by Wayne Dyer.  We live in a world where we are constantly bombarded by advertising telling us of all the things we should have to make our lives better.  But the reality is we don’t need lots of things to make our lives full.

Through much of the 1990s my husband was very ill.  His Bipolar Disorder was out of control until he finally got a correct diagnosis and treatment that helped instead of aggravated the problem.  In 1999 we took a much needed holiday to the beautiful Island of Sunny Tobago.  The choice of Tobago was really random but, as it turned out, could not have been better.  We have come to love this tropical paradise and more especially the people who live there.  In February 2007 we got married there on top of Mount Dillon.  There were six of us at the wedding, The Minister, our friend Paul, Horace and Susan Jackson (two local friends), Tony and me.  Tony wore shorts & a tee-shirt and I wore a Sarong.  To my great surprise (as,to be honest, I really couldn’t see the point of getting married after 34 years of living together) it was a magical day.

Me and MarlonThe very first time we visited the island we met Marlon, a rastafarian.  He climbed up a tree, picked a coconut, cut off the top and gave us the coconut water to drink, it was delicious.  Then we sat and talked for an hour or so (this is known as liming in Tobago and is a very important part of their culture).  He spoke in very lyrical rhyming patois which was difficult to understand at times.  It was clear that he was not a rich man, he lived in a simple wooden house and got work when he could, but for him life was good.  He said “Da sun shine ev’ry day, I have roof over me head, dere’s fish in da sea and fruit on da trees.  What more a man need?  Evr’y t’ing is cool.”  Marlon was totally tuned in to the abundance of his life.  I often look at this photo and think “Yeah right mon – ev’ry t’ing is cool!  We have more than enough, life is good”

Have a good day you all and I’ll be back (hopefully) mid week.

Big love

AJ

Cut not the wings of your dreams…

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Cut not the wings of your dreams ....Hello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy.

This spread is from my 6″ x 6″ journal.  I covered the pages with printed tissue paper then coloured them with yellow and green sparkly paint, the same batch that had set to a thick jelly and I thought would be unuseable.  Then I added the borders with red acrylic paint.  I know, I know another strange colour (Eng. spelling :-)) combination from me, but I like it.  The background text is from a Tim Holtz reflections stamp. The two patches under the images are some translucent paper I coloured and edged with  distress inks.  The image of the man’s head is from the Graphics Fairy‘s blog.  The girl with the wings may also be from the Graphic Fairy.

The wonderful quote is from Flavia.

That’s all for now.

Big love

AJ


Revo-lution 2012 – Gratitude

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GratitudeHello friends!

I hope everyone is feeling good.

I’m really pleased to say I am feeling much better this weekend and also that I’ve been given a new project at work which should be more interesting than the work I’ve been doing for the past year (although I will probably have to still do that as well).  I’m optimistic about it anyway, it seems like a good change for me.

Here is another spread from my Revo-lution 2012 board book.  Check out Gretchen Miller’s blog, Creativity in Motion, for more information about the thinking behind the Revolution book.

Sometimes things in my life are not exactly as I want them to be and if I allow myself I can get to feeling hard done by.  I’ve realised it does no good to just feel sorry for myself so my intention this year is to appreciate and feel gratitude for all the good things in my life.   When I think about it seriously it is obvious to me the good things far out-number the percieved bad, or problem, things in my life.

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments on my blog, I do try to answer everyone and visit your blogs too. Recently I’ve been having problems leaving comments on Blogger blogs.  I’m not sure if that’s a Blogger problem, a WordPress problem or (and this is much more likely) an AJ problem!  I’ll try and get it sorted.

My life can be a bit hectic –  I work full time and I am committed to the success of our local history group and need to keep the RSHG website up- to-date.  Now if I could just have … ooh I don’t know … maybe an extra 4 or 5 hours to each day … I might stand a chance of getting everything done.  I know I’m not alone and most creative people have the same dilemas juggling with the day to day stuff.  I am still managing to do some art every day, even if it’s only a teeny weeny bit, it’s good for my soul 🙂

Hope you are all being wondrously industrious with your creativity.

Big love

AJ

Advice from Albert Einstein

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Advice from AlbertHello friends!

Thanks for dropping by.

If you could meet anyone in the world (dead or alive) who would it be?  I really think I’d have liked to have met Albert Einstein.  A man of super intelligence but with that little glint of mischieviousness in his eye and crazy hair.  I think he must have been one cool dude.  He said so many deep and profound things and I love using his quotes in my journals.

This spread from my 6″x6″ journal  is on a textured gesso ground.  I bought some tiny tubs of glitter paint (old stuff) in a charity shop and when I got home and opened them the paint, instead of being liquid or creamy, had set like thick jelly.  At first I thought I’m not going to be able to use it, I stuck my finger in and a great glob of sticky paint stuck to it.   I wiped my finger on my book to remove the paint and magic happened.  This lovely luminescent orange glow transferred to the page.  It doesn’t really show up in the scanned image but that orange sheen is just fabulous.  For some reason, not even known to me, I added pink and purple to the page.  Colours that really shouldn’t go together or with orange but I love the way it turned out.  I added pink flowery torn paper edged with purple ink and stamped over with some flower stamps.   There is something about those particular flower stamps that reminds me of the early 70s when I was young, all my friends were hippies and we thought we could change the world…

I added the quote from AE to finish the spread off. I hope you like it.

Big love

AJ

Revo-lution 2012 – Authentic

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AuthenticHello friends!

Hope all is good with you, and those of you that are engulfed by snow – I hope you are keeping warm.

Here is another spread from my Revo-lution board book.  Check out Gretchen Miller’s blog, Creativity in Motion, for more information about the thinking behind the Revolution book, plus lots of other fabulous arty ideas!

This is a fairly simple spread about finding and being my authentic self.  I just used acrylic paints on the pages.  I started with green, then a dark blue around the edges and to create the lines down the pages, then red also around the edges, then a metallic bronze paint over the red.  I cut the swirls with my Big Shot from some thick dark textured paper and printed the three words with white ink.  Finally I outlined the letters of Authentic with dots using my white gel pen.  It was then I realised that instead of using the letter U I had in fact used an upside-down N, doh!  🙂

I had some good news yesterday, I won the Vintage Papers giveawy on Alicia’s Altered Bits blog.  Yeah!  That made me HAPPY!  I am also going to participate in her Tallest Handmade Book in the World Project and I hope that some of you will too.  It’s for a really good cause Alicia is starting a nonprofit art group for children with Asperger’s and Autism.  Click on the link on my sidebar (Yes I finally figured out how to add a button to the sidebar, it’s taken me almost a year to do that!) and find out the details of the project.  The end date of the project is 27 April 2012 which is her son Finn’s 9th Birthday, so there is still time to make some pages and get them to her.  I’m sure she could do with some more pages, and I am sure the end result will be an awesome book we can all be proud of.

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ

Writing in the Round

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Hello Friends

I hope everyone is well.  I am feeling much better and only had one day off work.  My husband is now poorly but not with the same thing.  He’s had a few days off work and has suffered much more than I did.  Hopefully we will both be back on track again soon.

The spread above is from my 6×6 (handbag size) journal.  I still don’t feel comfortable writing in my journals so I thought I would practice my lettering. I painted gesso in a spiral on the pages so that some parts were left without gesso and then I used Inktense block over the top to create the background.

I drew the ‘true love’ flowers in the middle and then started to write – from the inside out on the first page and the outside in on the second page.  I coloured the petals of the flowers with glitter pen so they sparkle, and drew the wobbly border all around – et voila!

Not much else to say really and I need to get on with my scanning of old photographs.   So far I’ve scanned and cleaned up 11 photos, only about another 100 to go!

Hope you all are having fun

Big love

AJ

Revo-lution 2012 – Kindness

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KindnessHello friends!

I hope everyone is well and happy.  I must admit I’m a bit under the weather at the moment and have spent most of today in bed.  It will pass I just need to rest up for a couple of days, so I probably won’t go to work tomorrow.

The spread above is from my 5″ x 5″ Revo-lution 2012 board book inspired by a workshop I did on 21 Secrets last year with Gretchen Miller.  Gretchen has information and an e-book all about the Revolution available on her blog here.

This image reflects my desire to become a kinder person.  I really like the way it came out.  I painted the pages with a pink fluorscent paint I found in my stash when I tidied up my work room recently.

The paint must be nearly 20 years old because I remember I originally used it to paint on big fabric hangings that were used to decorate walls at clubs and parties where my husband DJ’d.  When the hangings were lit with UV/black light the colours really glowed.  Anyway despite its age most of the paint is still useable so I’ve moved it into my paint storage drawers for easy access.

Also on this spread I transferred text from a book directly onto the page using gel medium.  Thanks to Donna Downey for the tip on how to do that, it’s really easy and the results are amazing, although I must admit you can’t see them too well in the picture.  I stamped over with my tiny flower and tiny dots stamps.  The hands are cut from a magazine, the letters are from a word game I bought in a charity shop and are stuck on over a piece of scrap paper.  The hearts were cut with my new BigShot 🙂 and I stuck the three words onto pre-made tags from K & Co which were attached with a decorative brad.

That’s all for now folks, I’ve exhausted myself and need to go and lie down again for a while.

See you later

Big Love

AJ 🙂

Doodles Unleashed – Playful Printmaking

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Hello friends!

Strathmore has some fantastic free online workshops at the moment and I decided to sign up for the wonderful Traci Bautista‘s Doodles Unleashed.

If I was a more disciplined person I wouldn’t have done this because there are other things I really should be doing right now, however, I am a hopeless addict to creativity and I couldn’t resist!  I watched both video turorials for week 1 Playful Printmaking and then created the above image.  It is in a big (12 x 16 inch) Daler Rowney 300 g/m water colour pad.

I was a bit out of my comfort zone creating this page, but I am happy with the way it turned out.  I had to laugh because my husband came into the room while I was working on it, he rarely comments on my art, but he looked at this page and said “Hmmm, that’s very psychedelic”!!  He didn’t say whether he liked it or now though?

Right, let’s see if I can get this report written before I’m tempted to start the second workshop Spontaneous Water Colour Backgrounds, it’s going to be tough so wish me luck 😉

Big love

AJ