This spread was inspired by some old music paper I found in an art magazine I bought years ago and never knew how to use before, fortunately I didn’t throw it away as I always knew it would be useful one day :-).

I did some layers for the background with acrylic paints and gesso and collaged torn pieces of the music score, some musical instruments I found in some vintage adverts on the internet and the laughing man, from an old advert for a comic act (I think).  I also used a Tim Holtz mini mask and I printed the heading on my computer.  I’m pretty happy with the finished spread, I like the light and dark effect.

I’m not sure I do live my life out loud though, generally I don’t like being the centre of attention I’m more the kind of person who just gets on and does things in the background.  Today though I did two things that did put me ‘in the spot-light’ (as it were) and whereas I would normally have been awkward and self-conscious today I felt confident and relaxed,  lots of people smiled at me and that made me feel good.

There is something in my life – a trivial matter but it causes me some anxiety and, even though I know it really is unimportant it still plays on my mind and I spend far to much time mulling it over.  It is almost becoming an obsession.  I know because I keep thinking about it in a negative way I now see the problem far worse that it actually is.  This is my note to myself that I just need to breathe and let go – concentrate on what I do that is good and worthwhile and stop stressing about things that don’t really matter.

That’s good advice if only I would listen to myself and actually do it 🙂

There are lots of layers on this spread.  Most of the images are from ‘free to use’ stuff from the web and the more I look at it the more I can see the significance of how all the images came together:  the time piece and the two ladies because ‘the problem’ is historic, the two funny heads that can be one thing or another (two faced), the squawking crows; the word Snappy in the background, the pointing finger and the big scissors because I just need to cut myself off from that part of my life.  The white bit in the centre of the first page is a metallic white paint I bought, it gives a nice glow and I’m telling myself it signifies the light at the end of the tunnel.

On the other hand I could just be reading far too much into a collection of random images I made and then gave a title to.

We’ll probably never know 🙂

Big love

AJ

I TRY to keep a positive attitude, I’m not always successful, but I know I have to keep trying, because nothing good comes from negativity.

I am really enjoying being creative again and playing around, trying to find out what works best for me, I’ve got several projects on the go at the moment.  I am loving working in books/journals because they can be both private and public.  I was wondering whether I should rename my blog ‘AJs Play Book’, because I’m not sure that anything I do could really be described as art and I haven’t written any personal journalling yet (I probably never will, that’s just not my style).  I don’t think it really matters though because as far as I can tell there are no rules to art journaling and that sounds good to me 🙂

Big love

AJ 🙂

There is something about fish that I really like, I love visiting aquariums and I’ll even walk into a pet shop just to have a look in the fish tanks with no intention of buying any.

Once I learnt to SCUBA dive just so I could dive on a reef just off Tobago.  It was fantastic, but not something I’ll ever do again.  I loved what I saw but there was something freaky about being so far under water.

Here is my art journal tribute to fish and the wonderful environment they live in.  I know the Octopus image came from The Graphics Fairy, maybe the shells too, but I can’t remember where the fish and the lady came from.  When I first started to collect images I thought they were just for my personal and private use, but now that I have decided to put my art journal pages online in future I will attempt to record and acknowledge my sources more accurately.