Tag Archives: collage

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 🙂

New Year’s Revolution!

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Hello Friends

Happy New Year to one and all!

I’m not making New Year’s Resolutions any more, because to be honest they usually seem to be about giving up things and I rarely keep those kinds of promises.  So this year I am trying something new.

One of the workshops I did at 21 Secrets 2011 (now sadly ended) was Gretchen Miller’s Revo-lution workshop.  It’s all about exploring concepts of transformation, creating change and new possibilities through art.  You concentrate on key words that have meaning for you and you make a journal page to show that meaning visually.  You can find out much more about this process at Gretchen’s blog Creativity in Motion.  It’s a great thing to do and I highly recommend it.  I do believe it can be life-changing for the better.

I made one Revolution book during 21 Secrets which concentrated on Joy, Bravery, Harmony, Creativity, Confidence, Authenticity and Serenity and now I am making a new book for 2012.  The first page is about Inspiration – I want to be inspired and I’d like to inspire others.  The book is a 5″ by 5″ board book stripped back to the board and then gesso’d and I’ve used images that inspire me.  The couple on the left are my parents who have loved and inspired me all my life; the sunset at Castara bay in Sunny Tobago (one of my favourite places on earth); a bit of an old map of Ryde, the town where I live, it has a fascinating history; Albert Einstein – who was a genius, deep thinker and often a little playful, I would have loved to have met him; Images of work of Joan Miro and Keith Haring, two of my favourite artists.  The little image bottom right says Plant a Seed, because that’s what inspiration is – the potential for something great.  I’ve included ArchBishop Desmond Tutu because he is another highly intellegent man, deep thinker, has a heart the size of a planet and a ‘wicked’ laugh.  I would love to meet him.

My good news is that I am now signed up for 21 Secrets 2012 so this year I will be participating for the whole 9 months, (big smile).

I hope all your dreams come true in 2012.  Here’s to another art full year.

Big love

AJ

All wrapped up and Ready to Go

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Hello Friends

First of all I’d like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.  May all your dreams come true 🙂  I’ve added a little festive snow to my blog.

With just a week to go all the hand made presents are finished and ready to be delivered.  I hope my friends enjoy them, I had fun making them, so I hope that will show through.

I can’t tell you what’s inside the parcels yet, but I will show you after Christmas.

Now I can relax a bit and stop panicing.  I will be at work all this week and on Wednesday I am going to meet the other members of my team for the first time (I work in a remote location) and we will be having a Christmas lunch.  That should be fun, I’ve spoken to a couple of them on the phone and they sounded nice.

The spread above is another from my 6×6 journal – textured gesso ground, torn pages from an old dictionary, vintage images of women, acrylic paint, stamping and hand drawn swirls and writing.  Afterwards I thought it probably would have been better to have printed the words as, like many people, when I try to write by hand it hardly ever comes out as I expect and this was a style I’d not tried before.  I wasn’t entirely happy with the results, but hey-ho that’s how things turn out sometimes and I do like the message.  My life has been extraordinary so far, I’m grateful for that and hoping for more extraordinariness in the future, for me and for you too.

Oh, I just noticed the date 18 December 2011! Today is the 41st anniversary of my first date with my soul mate and life companion. Wow, now isn’t that extraordinary!

See you soon.

Big love

AJ

Feeding my Soul

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Hello Friends!

I hope everyone is well, happy and prepared for the festive season.  I’ve got all my shopping done, most of the hand made gifts are completed so I just need to wrap things up.  I am always very resistant to putting up decorations but I usually relent a day or two  before Christmas because I do like all the coloured lights.

This a spread from my second journal.  It’s a small 6″ x 6″ sketch book with a wire binding.  I like the journal because it’s small enough to carry around with me and the wire binding makes it fairly sturdy and expandable.  However I am beginning to dislike the way the binding disects the spreads in two, so for the image above I have scanned both sides and stitched them together (in Photoshop) without the binding showing.

Most of the journals I have started so far have wire binding so I’m going to have to look around for something else to use in the future.  I do have a lot of board books so maybe i will start using them.  There are lots of options to choose from 🙂

So yes I do a little bit of art every day now and it’s doing me a power of good.  Using inspirational and motivational quotes is also helping me to focus my mind more on the positives so that’s good too.

Happy December 8th everyone

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Completeness

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Hello Friends, I hope everyone is well.

So this is the final bit to show you of my first art journal – the cover.  I left the cover till last for two reasons, firstly so that I could carry the journal around with the plain cover so it would not attract too much attention (although it did start to intrigue people as it ‘fattened up’); and secondly because while I was working on the journal the cover got covered in paint and dirty marks and by leaving the decoration until the end it meant that I could make the finished journal look ‘pretty’.

One day a friend saw the journal on my desk at work and without asking grabbed it and started looking through it, it felt a bit like he had picked up my personal diary and started to read it.  I don’t think he was very impressed.  He said “Who’s done this?” and I replied “Me” to which he enquired “And how old were you when you did it?”

On front and back covers there is gesso, collage, stamping, acrylic and watercolour paints and distress inks.

On the Front cover I added a little bit of bling and a panel with the title ‘AJ’s Art Journal’.  I found some big cardboard floor dominos made for small children in a charity shop.  I actually liked the images that were on the dominos but I also found that I could peel the shiney cover off them, decorate them and for the cover title I used glossy accents to give it a shine.  I didn’t know how to make a closure so I sewed a flower bead on the front and back covers and used a bit of fibre to wrap around the beads and form the closure.  I also added fibres to the wire spine of the journal.

The panel on the back cover is something I found by the waste bin at work, it’s an identification plate for a pump, and I coloured it with stazon ink, put two brads through the screw holes and stuck the whole thing on with glossy accents.

I’ve shown this image before but this is the finished journal.  I really love it and I’ve had so much fun making, showing it and I’ve really appreciated the encouragement, lovely comments and the new friends I’ve made.

Creative people are just The Best!

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ

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