Tag Archives: collage

Love

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Hello Friends!

I hope everyone is well and being fabulously creative.

I have done very little art this weekend because I decided that it was way past the time that I should attack the mess and clutter that was my work room.  So far I have spent 6 hours on Friday, 6 hours on Saturday and 13 hours today and I’m still not finished!

Periodically my husband has peeked around the door to see how I’m getting on and has struggled to see any progress, at one point he said “It looks like there has been an explosion in here”.  But things had to get worse before they could get better.  I have slightly rearranged the room so that now I can get to the cupboards which were blocked in by boxes of history group stuff.  Lots of craft bits and pieces are now in labelled boxes and I found some really old jars of paint, probably over 12 years old.  Many of them had to be thrown away, even some that had never been opened, but I have put the ones that seem to be OK in my paint drawer and I will use them for backgrounds on my journal pages.  There is at least a car load of rubbish that I will have to take to the local tip next weekend and I reckon there is probably about another 6 hours worth of work before I’m finished.  I hope I manage to complete the job before I give up.  I have quite a lot of filing of personal and history group papers to do and I really hate filing so that’s going to be my weak point and where I am most likely to give in to the urge to make some art.

The sad thing is that my room won’t stay tidy for very long because I am an untidy person by nature.  Luckily my husband is obsessively and compulsively tidy so the rest of the house stays in order, but he doesn’t touch my room which seems to be a magnet for clutter of every kind.

Anyway here is a spread from my first journal that I did a few months ago.  It’s a bit different to my others: Gesso’d background, then acrylic paint and collaged papers, some old unused bandage, organza strips, I used some adhesive metal tape over the precut birdsong paper with a die cut frame from K & Co and some gold leaf.  The word love was a die cut from K & Co, I decided to spray it with Adirondak colorwash spray to darken it slightly, but the spray completely obliterated all the design and lettering so I had to redraw it with black and white ink.

It’s a bit of a weird one, but it was good learning process.

Take care everyone, see you soon

Big love

AJ

If you want to get ahead…

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Hello Friends!

I had the day off work today and I went to Chichester to do my Christmas shopping.  I left home at 7:30, drove to Fishbourne and got the ferry to Portsmouth then drove to Chichester arriving there at 9:30.  Chichester is a small city on the south coast, it has lots of interesting shops.  At first I didn’t think I was doing too well, I was doing lots of looking but not buying much.  Eventually I managed to get presents for most of the people on the list.  I also bought a few bits and pieces for myself: some trousers for work, some embellisments and charms from a £1 shop, and in a charity shop I found an A4 water colour pad for £2 and a large illustrated Victorian Songbook for £3 (it’s not actually Victorian that’s just what it’s about) it has some great illustrations that I will be able to use for my history group and also for my art.

I left Chichester at 1:30 and on the way back to Portsmouth I stopped off at Hobbycraft in Havant .  I always get excited when I go to Hobbycraft it’s a massive craft store and it’s so easy to spend lots of money there.

Before coming home I stopped off at a big shopping centre in Portsmouth and bought one last present.  Got the ferry back to the island at 4pm and was home at about 5pm.

My legs ache, my feet are sore and I’m shattered, but that’s the bulk of the Christmas presents out of the way, I just have a couple more to get then I can wrap everything and this year there should be no last minute panics.  I bought the present for my husband and also the present from him to me on the internet.  The present for him was delivered to my office at work and the present from him to me was delivered to home yesterday.  He has no idea what it is, so he says he is just going to wrap it up without opening it and at least that way one of us will be suprised on Christmas morning!

I had a long soak in the bath after I got home  then Tony served up delicious home made Leek & Potato soup and now I’m ready for bed.  I’ve got another day off work tomorrow so I might get time to do some art although I really should try and tidy up my room.

So anyway here is another grungy spread.  The images of the four lovely ladies in their hats is from the Graphics Fairy (thanks Karen), the other images may be as well (I’m sorry I can’t remember), the Graphics Fairy certainly is a wonderful source for the sorts of images I love.  For some reason the phrase ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat’ always makes me smile, probably because it appeals to my sense of the ridiculous, and it seemed a perfect title to the spread.  The spread has textured gesso, acrylic paints, stamping, collaging and inktense watercolours to brighten it up.

That’s it folks, I’m off to bed, see you soon.

Big love

AJ

Take a Breather

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Hello friends!

This spread turned out really grungy and not very pretty so I collaged some botanical illustrations I found on the internet on the top.  I like stamps with text on so I bought this one, with names of flowers, at a local craft store.  I also bought a set of tiny stamps of garden creatures and if you look carefully you will find a snail, dragonfly and bee in this spread.

The message is a reminder to me, and all you busy, busy people out there, that sometimes it’s OK to just stop, relax and smell the flowers, appreciate the view or just enjoy the moment.  We don’t have to be ‘doing’ all the time.  I added a white area for some journaling but I still don’t feel comfortable expressing myself in words on the page.  It’s OK on the internet, but for some reason the page is totally different.  It might be because I don’t like my handwriting or it could be just lack of confidence – I’m working on that one – so for the time being the journaling area remains blank.

Hope everything is good for everyone

Big love

AJ

Mother and Daughter

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Hello Friends

This spread came out a bit grungy looking but I really like it.  I textured the gesso, by sticking the wet pages together and then opening them while the gesso was still wet (a top tip from Journal Artista).  Then I layered over several different colours of acrylic.  The images on the first page are of my maternal grandmother and my Mum as young girls and the image on the second page is me at 6 months old.   I stamped small flowers and stuck die cut paper flowers from K & Co over the top.  I found the Graycie Herman quote and I loved it.   My Mum (and my Dad) have been loving and supportive to me and my brothers all our lives and I realise I am not always as grateful as I should be.

I know that many people (my husband for one) had a difficult and traumatic childhood, but for me, I honestly only have happy memories.  My parents didn’t have much money, my dad was a low wage earner and my mum had to stay home and look after three small children, but they both spent lots of time with us.  Although we didn’t have lots of things, or holidays, or gadgets, we did have lots of country walks, days at the seaside, picnics, encouragement to use our imaginations and follow our dreams and lots and lots of fun.

Now my parents are old it’s time for me to look out for them.

Hope everyone is good

Big Love

AJ

Back from my trip

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Hello friends!

I am back from my trip to LA and trying to re-adjust my internal clock.  The trip from door to door takes over 20 hours – taxi from home to pier, ferry to Portsmouth, taxi to Heathrow (hanging about at the airport), direct flight to LA, taxi from LAX to my friend’s house in Hollywood).  There is an 8 hour difference and it took me a couple of days to get used to being on the other side of the world.  The weather was fantastic but best of all was seeing my friend G to celebrate her 85th birthday.  We have been pen friends for over 30 years and have met several times both in the UK and US.  G used to travel a lot but now it’s all too exhausting for her so she’s settling down to being a ‘home girl’ from now on.  I was there 10 years ago for her 75th birthday and again four years ago.

G organised a gathering of friends and family for a lunch on her birthday and 60 people came from all over the states to be with her that day.  She is an amazing woman who has inspired me for most of my adult life.  She is funny, feisty, brusk, chatty, interested, opinionated, loving, caring, generous, inclusive, open, sometimes (quite often actually) foul-mouthed, smart – the truth is, she is a ‘diamond’ in my life and I love her.  You can see the gift I made for her on my Other projects page.

Having just got used to LA time it was time to come home and now I’m struggling again.  Today my husband woke me up today to ask if I was OK.  I thought it was a strange question, but he explained that it was well past mid-day!  I had no idea, I thought it was about 7am.  I usually get up at 6am and today I remember getting up around that time to let the cats out and thinking I would go back and get another hour’s sleep.  Well more than 6 extra hours as it turned out!  Still I haven’t got to go back to work for a couple of days yet, so I should be back to normal by then.

The image is another spread from my first art journal.  I like the colours and I had fun doing it, but the process was definitely more important than the end result…   When I was scanning the page I realised that I had used the image of the lady from the cigar box on a previous page and in almost exactly the same position.  How strange.

Hope everyone’s good

Big love

AJ

Searching

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Hello friends!

I really like this spread, I used masking tape on the pages, painted over the whole page with acrylics and gesso then removed the tape and added more in different places then painted over again with paint and gesso and kept on repeating.   There was also a lot of wiping back with baby wipes and I love the overall effect.  Most of the images are from the wonderful Graphics Fairy blog, so thank you Karen – you are very generous, inspiring and have so many fantastic images.  As soon as I saw the image of the beehive and the lady with the binoculars I knew I had to use them in a piece of art.  It seems to me the lady is searching for something so I found an appropriate quote (based on a quote by Joan Baez).

I try to live my life by searching always for ways to be better but also for being more content with who I am, if that makes sense.  Being creative certainly helps.

I found a sweet set of rubber stamps and I love the little shells.

Anyway I’ve had a very odd week, felt totally shattered after the successful Heritage Event.  I had to go back to work on Monday and it took the small team two days (and me two evenings) to get all the bunting down, the displays packed away and everything tidy again in the Heritage Centre.  Then having got all the boxes and stuff back to our various homes we all had to store it away.  One day we will, hopefully, have somewhere permanent to keep our growing archive of research, artefacts and display materails, but for the time being it all takes up room in several houses.  The more we get the heavier it is to keep moving about, and none of us are as young or as fit as we’d like to be!

Back at work we received the results of an employee opinion survey carried out some time ago by an external company.  The results showed that the vast majority of staff don’t feel valued by the company.  This seems to have come as a great surprise to our directors and senior management but was exactly what we all thought.  Fortunately the top bods have decided to try and improve things for us and I volunteered to sit on one of the focus groups to discuss how to go about this.  Most of my colleagues are very sceptical that there will be any improvements, but I figure we have nothing to lose by being involved and trying.  Also I am hoping it will give me a bit more visibility and confidence.

I really need to build my confidence at work.  I always thought I was capable of more than I was given credit for, but this week I made two very stupid mistakes – one was a miscalculation which gave the wrong results in a report and the other was a duplication of an order (although that one wasn’t entirely my fault).  It seriously made me wonder if I’m losing brain capacity and I’m not as sharp as I like to think I am, I actually got quite upset and emotional about it.

Then I came home and did some art and that made me feel much better and determined to keep on searching and improving.

Hope all is good with all of you.

Big love

AJ

Experiments in Life

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I love this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson and yesterday I used it to make myself do something that I wouldn’t normally have done.  I think I have said before that I never wanted to be in the spotlight.  When I was younger I was always uncomfortable doing something if there was an audience.   As a young child I learnt to play the piano and I was quite good at it, but as soon as there an audience I fell apart.  There was this loud voice inside my head telling me I couldn’t do it, and so of course, naturally I couldn’t.  The final straw came when my music teacher entered me into a local music festival playing in a trio.  It  was a total disaster and when the piece was finished (I think I was at least two bars behind the other two at the end) my two partners hated me for messing it up and I never played the piano again.

After that I never wanted to do anything that put me up front with people looking at me.  And that attitude governed my life for many years, I just wanted to do things in the background and be unnoticed.

Fast forward many years and with a small group of friends I set up the local history group, it was a great success.  Then something happened and the chairman resigned suddenly and unexpectedly and the group was in serious danger of folding.  The only way to save it was for me to step up and take the lead.  At very short notice I had to stand up and talk in front of a packed room of people to tell them what had happened.  I was shaking and my voice was breaking up, but I did it.  Ever since then year after year I have been voted chairman of the group and I am now much more comfortable speaking to large groups of people.

Yesterday we held an event in the Heritage Centre in our local cemetery, we had exhibitions of historical interest, research folders, an historic tableau with a sea-side theme and lots more.  I know lots of information about the people buried in the cemetery and I have become used to leading groups around and talking to them about the people and the part they played in the history of the town.

Yesterday we tried something different, we had a ‘Meet the Residents’ character walk.  This meant that one of our members led the group of people around and gave some background information.  Then as they came to interesting graves they met a ‘character’ in costume who told their story.  I was Mrs Cradock a wealthy socialite and prominent person in the town.  We had had no time for rehearsing or even learning our scripts and all of us were nervous and worried about doing it.  I am so glad we did it though, we had such a lot of fun.  It turns out we are all quite good actors, it was comical and informative and the audience enjoyed it.  We are doing it again today!

So anyway, the spread above has lots of layers of paper, stamping and acrylic paints, it was getting very dark and grungey looking so I decided to lighten it by gessoing through a paper doiley over the top and then I added the wonderful quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The Second of the Colorwash messes

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For this spread I used the Wild Plum and Cranberry sprays and the Papermania Birdsong cut paper as a stencil.  I really made a horrible mess on the page,  just a big purple splodge, nothing pretty about it at all.   So to try and retrieve it I cut some of the paper I had used as the stencil and collaged it on top.  The purple colour made me think of Purple Haze and Jimi Hendrix so I found a picture of Jimi and collaged it onto the page and I tore some pink tissue paper to collage over the top of that.  I used a really cheap, in fact it may have been free, foam craft stamp of a star, and then I wrote one of the verses from the song in white to finish it off.

To be honest in the whole journal I think visually, it’s my least favourite spread, but nevertheless it does say something important to and possibly about me…

… when I was 15 years old I saw Jimi Hendrix play live at the Isle of Wight Festival just a few weeks before his tragic death at the age of 27.  I was at that massive festival (about 65,000 people) on my own!  I think my brother, who was 17, and I lied to my parents and said we were going together, but of course he really didn’t want his baby sister hanging around and cramping his style.  So there I was wide eyed and innocent and all on my own.  My mum would have had a fit if she had known!  Anyway I came to no harm and I was close to the stage when Jimi was playing.   Always when I hear the opening riff of Purple Haze it takes me back to my youth.  Around about that time I met and fell in love with a boy, my soul mate – I still love him today.

The first of the Adirondak Colorwash messes ;-)

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Hello friends

Hope everyone is well & happy.

A while back I bought 4 bottles of Adirondak Colourwah sprays – Lettuce, Expresso, Wild Plum and Cranberry.  I was so excited to use them, probably over-excited, but all that happened was that I created a big, big mess.  This is the first spread I created using the Colorwash sprays and I mainly used Lettuce and Expresso with a touch of Cranberry:

Still without any stencils I used some more precut paper,  this time it was cut with big swirls.  In the end I did quite like how the spread turned out, it has a kind of surreal feel to it which is why I put the quote “It started out like any ordinary day”  Have you ever had days like that when everything starts out normal but things just get stranger and stranger?  No! well maybe it’s just me then. 😉

It took a lot of work before I was even slightly happy with the pages, there are layers and layers of paint, paper, gesso and stamping.  I can’t remember where most of the collaged images came from –  this is the troube with creating pages and then not putting them online until some time later, if I was organised I would keep a note of how each spread was made as this would help me to learn, I could give credit to others where it’s due and explain my process, but if you knew me you would realise that’s never going to happen, because ‘organised’ is not an adjective anyone would use to describe me!

I do know where the image of the Cheshire cat came from though, it’s from the Graphic 45 Halloween in Wonderland Collection. I bought 2 sheets of that paper when I purchased the colorwash sprays.  I had to take a deep breath before I could bring myself to cut into that beautiful paper.  I’ve always loved the Alice books and the image fitted in with the surreal feel to the pages.

Big love

AJ