Tag Archives: collage

You are a divine being…

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You are a divine being

 

Hello friends!

It’s mid week and it’s muggy, we have had a little bit of rain, but really what we need is a fantastic electric storm to clear the air and then more sunshine.   Well that’s what I’d like anyway.  My head has been feeling fuzzy for the past couple of days and I am sure it has something to do with air pressure and atmospherics.

So this week I have been working on my secret project and I’m having LOTS of fun.  One day I will show you the results 🙂  I’ve also been researching and writing up display sheets for the history group about the town’s photographers from the mid 1800s, which is very interesting and I’m still doing the boring day job 🙂

Researching the photographers made me think that I really need to try and get back into photography again, I have two digital cameras which I use often and they are OK.  The good thing about digital is that you can take lots of photos and just delete the ones you don’t like and there are no processing costs, but, to me, there is something almost lifeless about the digital photos.

My BIG love is using film and my lovely Lomography LCA camera, it’s the perfect camera for me.  I love the way it sits in the palm of my hand and I love the way it vignettes the images.  The problem with analogue photography though is that it’s getting harder and more expensive to get the film developed these days.  My favourite process is to use slide film and get it developed as normal negative film.  This process (known as cross-processing) messes with the colours in a way that gives fantastic results.  Different films give different results.  Unfortunately many of the companies that are still developing film react in horror when I ask them to process the film with the ‘wrong’ chemicals and those that agree to do it charge a ridiculous, and unnecessary, premium for doing so.

Here is an example of a cross-processed image, so you can see what I mean about the colours – super saturated.

Waltzer

The page above is another from my fourth Teesha Moore inspired journal and the quote is from the late, great Terrence McKenna.  If you don’t know who T McKenna was then you are clearly not of my generation, or if you are around the same age as me but you still don’t know who he was, then your life took a completely different path to mine. 😉

Have a good week and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

COPYRIGHT

© Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 

 

A Moment of Calm

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A Moment of Calm

 

Hello friends

I hope you had a good weekend, mine has been fine – a little bit of gardening, a little bit of housework, some history research, some art, some good food, some time with my parents, catching up with emails, but I still made no progress with tidying up my room, it just never seems to get tidy and I never completely catch up with everything on my ‘to do’ list.  Perhaps that’s the whole point, there always has to be ‘something else’ to do just to keep the forward momentum.

So anyway, there is lots going on in my life and it’s all good and I’m happy.  I hope things are good for you too.

The page above is another Teesha Moore inspired page and I was practising with different lettering. It’s not as ‘busy’ as my usual pages but I am pleased with it nevertheless.

Right, it’s late here and I’m off to bed.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

COPYRIGHT

© Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Scattering Stars like Dust – Rumi

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Scattering Stars like Dust - Rumi

Hello friends!

It’s still tropical here on the sunny Isle of Wight and I’m loving it, even though I am not getting much of an opportunity to get out in it, it is just lovely to be able to walk outside and sit in the garden with my morning cup of coffee and we have been eating our evening meal out on the decking for a couple of weeks now.

I was at work for 4 days this last week and it was VERY warm in my office.  Almost every other office in the building has air con but my little cupboard doesn’t so I have been having the big window wide open all day with a dark cloth (actually it’s a sarong) hanging over it to keep the sunlight out and I have a fan switched on full all day.  It’s still slightly uncomfortable but I’m not complaining because I would rather put up with a little discomfort than have to share a cool office with all those noisy people 🙂

My mum went into hospital for day surgery on Thursday and is now back home, she seems fine but is a little tired.

Last Friday and tomorrow (Monday) I have taken leave from work.  On Friday I made an attempt to tidy up my art room, I wasn’t entirely successful, but it is slightly better than it was (my OCD husband may not agree with that statement, but it looks tidier to me).

On Saturday my French nephew, A, who has just finished his Engineering degree at Imperial College London and started a new, 2 year, design course at the Royal College of Art, came to visit my parents (his grandparents) which was lovely.  It is always a joy to have him visit.  On Saturday evening T was DJing at a small festival, the Rhythm Tree Festival, on the Island and he managed to get an extra ticket for my nephew so we took him along with us.  It was a SMALL festival, probably less than 3000 people there, so it wasn’t too crowded and had a good mix of ages and a very friendly atmosphere.  We saw a good reggae band when we arrived and then just had to wait an hour until T did his ‘world dance music’ set, which my nephew thought was ‘Amazing!  We all had a great time and my ancient knees have been aching today from all the dancing.   We met loads of the people we used to go partying with 20 years and more ago.  We are all much older and slower, but apparently not much wiser these days 😉

The page above is another from my fourth Teesha Moore inspired journal and I really like this page.  The quote is by Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic.

I am looking forward to another day off work tomorrow and I’m hoping to get at least a few things ticked off my ‘To Do’ list.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

COPYRIGHT

© Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

The Universe Says…

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The Universe says...

 

Hello friends

I hope all is cool with you.  We are having a tropical heatwave!  This weather reminds me so much of Sunny Tobago (which is probably my favourite place in the world).  Oh how I’d love to be “Limin’ wid de locals at Castara Village” right now.  In case you don’t know “Limin'” is the national past time on Tobago and it means hanging out and chatting. Tobagians are the friendliest people I’ve met they are so chilled, even though the temperature rarely drops below 20 degrees C.

Gosh what a busy week I’ve had!

On Tuesday I went up to London with three friends from Ryde Social Heritage Group to attend the annual conference of Community Archives & Heritage Group at University College London on Wednesday.  We had a great couple of days and the conference gave us the opportunity to meet with other local historians and professional archivists.  I even felt relaxed and happy giving my 10 minute presentation about the RSHG.  A big part of the conference was the presentation of awards and Ryde Social Heritage Group received an award for “Most Inspirational Community Archive”. We are so happy and proud that our little local group has been given this national award.

We didn’t get back from London until late on Wednesday night and then it was back to work for me on Thursday and Friday.  No-one does my work while I’m away so I had to try and cram in 4 days worth of work into 2 days.  I was only partially successful but as I made a decision a while ago that I was not going to allow work to stress me out at going home time on Friday I just switched off (computer and work head) and came home.

On Friday evening I had to prepare a presentation to give at Ryde Social Heritage Group’s quarterly meeting.

On Saturday we had the quarterly meeting and it was my pleasure to report to the members that we had received a national award for being Inspirational.  After the business of the meeting we had a fascinating talk by a guest speaker on Life in Roman Britain. Afterwards most of the committee went out for lunch but I had other things to do so couldn’t join them.  I hear they had a great time though.

Also this week I have started work on an exciting project which I won’t be able to tell you about until after the summer.  It is going to be fun and rewarding for me though :-)

The page above is another from my fourth Teesha inspired journal.  I don’t really like the lettering on this page, but I do like the colours and the words.

I hope you all have a great week.

Big love

AJ :-)

COPYRIGHT

© Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal, 2013. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Janette Gregson and ajsartjournal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

Deepest Depths

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Deepest DepthsHello friends

I couldn’t post anything yesterday because I couldn’t connect to the internet, not sure why, just one of those things that happens now and then.  T was getting very anxious about not being able to get on line, but I just did some art instead 🙂

I hope things are good for you where-ever you are.  Here all is fine, my chronic hayfever is much better, I’m no longer sneezing all the time and my eyes have stopped streaming, my head does feel quite congested though and I can only breathe easily though my left nostril, but that’s OK at least I am still breathing 🙂

The Arts Festival is going well, on Tuesday I went to an Open Mic Poetry evening at the library which was fun.  I’ve never written any poetry so I was only a spectator, but a lot of the poetry was very good and it was an enjoyable evening.   Yesterday Lucia Para was giving demonstrations at the Depozitory on how she creates her lovely art and in the evening there was an Accoustic Originals event at St Thomas but I had to miss both of those – due to work, shopping and trying to sort out internet problems..

Tomorrow I am sitting at the Depozitory all day, minding the Never Ending Story exhibition,  hopefully I will get some visitors and in any case it will give the chance to do some collaging 🙂  I have taken the day off work so that I could sit at the exhibition all day.

Yesterday I had an amazing email and potentially something very exciting will come from it.  I don’t think I can talk about it just yet, but it feels good and it feels like the Universe is being extra kind to me at the moment.

The spread above is a page from a journal I started working in during the Mermaid Circus workshop back in April this year.   I didn’t really achieve as much as I’d hoped during the workshop but the tutorials by Jane Davenport and Teesha Moore were wonderful.  For me it was well worth the cost just to spend some online time with Teesha, she is such an inspiration for me.

That’s all for now folks have a great week

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

Build Your Wings

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Build Your Wings

 

Hello friends

I hope all is good with you, I am very well and happy.  We had a proper summery day today and it lightened my mood.

I really like this page from my journal, in fact I have a copy of it on my office wall at work. It’s there to remind me that if I don’t like my job I can actually leave, I can take a leap. When my boss saw it he liked it too and I gave him a copy.

So I am back at work this week and it’s just the same old stuff, but at least I have my own nice little office now and I can listen to Radio 4 all day.

I’ve got to give a speech at a conference in London in a few weeks time about Ryde Social Heritage Group.  I’ve got to get that written before this weekend!   I’ve just about written the words, no doubt they will be ‘tweaked’ a few times before I’m entirely happy, but now I’m working on the images to go with it, I thought if I had images on a screen then people wouldn’t have to look at me all the time, and the images will show the work of the group better than anything I can say.  But I need to send the images to the conference organisers soon just to make sure they are compatible with their software and equipment.

Ryde Arts Festival starts next weekend and I’ve still got a few things to sort out for that. Tomorrow is the last of my workshops at The Foyer making the Matchbox Momentos and I think we will just have enough to fill the display case for the exhibition.  I’ve been trying to think of other things I can do with the group.  Of course I would like to teach them about Art Journaling, but I don’t think they are ready for that at the moment.  I’ll talk to them about it tomorrow.  One idea I have is making jewellery from rolled paper beads, I wonder what they will think of that?  I am going to have to take a break before I work at the Foyer again, I think I need to have the whole of July off just to try and catch up with things I’ve been neglecting and maybe I will work with them again in September.  That is if they want me to.

I have finished making the Art Journal book from the pages created at my workshop in April and I’ve been trying to make an e-book, unfortunately that wasn’t as easy as I had anticipated (either that or I’m an idiot – not sure which). So now I’ve decided to make a movie of the images instead.  If I am successful I will post it on the blog so you can see the great work the class did.  Once the Arts Festival is over I will take the book apart and return all the pages to the people who created them.

I have to collect up all the Family History Shrines made by Ryde Social Heritage Group last week and deliver them, and some sort of heading, to the exhibition space by the middle of next week.  Gosh it’s all go here!!!

Right, that’s all for now, I’m tired and off to bed.  

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Another Teesha Inspired Journal

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Another Teesha Inspired journal :-)

Hello friends, I’m back – I think.

I have my new computer and, as we all predicted, at first it caused more problems than it solved, but gradually it is getting sorted out and at least this one is not crashing all the time and eventually I will sort out all the glitches, it all just takes time which is something I seem to be a bit short of.

Today I did a workshop with some of my colleagues from Ryde Social Heritage Group and we made Family History Shrines based on a free ebook I found on Aisling.net here is the link if you are interested: http://www.aisling.net/freebies/family-hist-shrine.pdf

I got together with 8 friends who have all researched their family histories and I showed them how I create my mixed media backgrounds using acrylic paints, stamping, stencilling etc. and everyone created lovely 3-fold books.  Unfortunately we ran out of time but at least they left with lovely backgrounds and now they will be working at home to put details of their families into the books.  I completed my book a few months ago and then I showed it to my friends and asked if they would like to make books about their families too.  I was delighted when they all said yes and we had a great day today.  At the end of the month our work will go on display in an exhibition called The Unfolding Story for Ryde Arts Festival week.  In fact the work produced at all three of my workshops – Art Journaling, Matchbox Momentos and the Family History Shrines will be in the exhibition.  Woo Hoo that’s just great.

I am not at work this week well I went in on Monday, but took the rest of the week as annual leave.  The main reason for this is that this weekend is the big Isle of Wight Music Festival and it causes a lot of disruption for me getting to and from work, so this year I decided to avoid the hassle and take time off.  Unfortunately the weather has turned wintery again which is not good considering the time of year, but I am getting a few things done and it’s good just away from the daily grind for a few days.

The page above is the front cover of my fourth Teesha Moore inspired art journal a style, which you know I completely love.  I think and hope that my personal style is now beginning to show.  Anyone looking at my art would know it is inspired by Teesha, but I hope a bit of me shines through too.  Anyway after today’s mixed media workshop I realised it’s been a while since I played with acrylic paints, stencils and stamping and  I think I need to get back into that again soon.  I’ll have to find the time some how….

It’s late, I’m cold (it’s supposed to be mid-summer for goodness sake!) so I’m going to bed now to try and get warm, hopefully Billy the cat will come too – he’s a bit like a living hot water bottle.

Take care my friends and I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Big Mouth :-)

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Big MouthHello friends!

Sorry I went AWOL last weekend, well I didn’t really go missing, just ran out of time!  Nothing new there then!

I’ve got some exciting news though.

I spend a bit (lot) of time searching for inspiration and uplifting ideas on the web and one of the sites I have frequently visited to find excellent quotes and motivation is “Tiny Buddha – Simple Wisdom for Complex Lives”.  So I was surprised and delighted when Lori from that site contacted me about using some of my images, of course I said Yes!  You can find them under the Fun and Inspiring section.  It’s strange I get a lot of inspiration from other people but it never occurred to me that my art might be inspiring to others. Thank you Lori and thank you universe.  Being included Tiny Buddha has made me very happy.

Today I had a meeting with a friend who runs a hostel for young homeless people in the town and I’ve agreed to run 4 short workshops with them making ‘matchbox momentos’.  Of course I really don’t have time to take this on, but I’ll just have to squeeze it into my busy schedule some how!  It’s going to be good. 🙂

Today was my last day at work until next Tuesday, that makes me happy too.   I finally got up to date and cleared my inbox before I left this evening and everything was in order, that’s a really good feeling as sometimes it feels like I’ll never catch up.

For the next two days I will be working with my friends to set everything up for our Open Days in the cemetery on Saturday and Sunday.  We will have exhibitions and lots of interesting historical stuff on display, I will be leading guided tours and taking part in a ‘Character Walk’ where I will dress up and tell the story of someone from the past.  There is lots to do I just hope the sun shines and we get lots of visitors.

The page above is the back cover of my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  I found the Big Lips and the banana that I wanted to use and the rest of the page just came together.  I decided that my quote should be about the big mouth so it says “If you did not see it with your own eyes and hear it with your own ears, don’t invent it with your small mind and share it with your Big Mouth”.  It’s not exactly a positive quote but true nevertheless.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Ignite your Fire

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Ignite your fireHello friends!

I hope everything is bright in your area of the world, here all is good.

The page above is from my third Teesha inspired journal.  I really LOVE this style of journaling.  The words on the page are a quote by Osho “Your life spark fires from within your inntermost temple, no-one can reach there but you.  It is your inner sacred sanctum, you are your own master there, only you can reach and ignite your fire”.  So, go on, Ignite Your Fire 🙂

This is a short post because a mountain of ironing is calling to me and has to be done before I go to bed tonight.

Take care everyone and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Humanity

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HumanityHello friends!

I hope you are all well and, if you are in the UK, enjoying the spring weather.  Today especially has been glorious – sunny and warm.

I was supposed to be helping T put in the new concrete gate posts to replace the wooden ones that rotted away at the bottom.  He finally managed to drill out all the old concrete with the pneumatic drill borrowed from a friend and today was the day to put the posts in.  Unfortunately I woke up with a blinding headache and didn’t get out of bed until about mid-day.  By that time he had completed the job on his own.  What a star!

Gradually my headache wore off and as I felt better and it was a nice day I took Mum and Dad out for a drive and a short walk along the beach at Bembridge.  I think it wore them both out even though we didn’t walk very far, but then Mum is 80 and Dad will be 91 in a couple of weeks time.  However I also know they appreciated being taken out for a couple of hours.

I have been receiving lots of lovely feedback from my workshop last week and requests to do more.  I will do more, but I need to pace myself, because I work full time, have commitments at home, have commitments to Ryde Social Heritage Group and I want to have time for my own creativity.  So it’s not something I’m going to rush in to.

I am having major problems with my email at the moment.  My ISP introduced some ‘improvements’ to the mail service recently and ever since then my email has been messed up.  I was receiving some emails but not all of them.  Yesterday I had a long, and sometimes difficult conversation with a support technician.  I think he may have been in India, at least he had an Indian accent.   He spoke very good English, but his voice kept fading in and out and he had to repeat himself lots of times before I understood his instructions.  I thought he had sorted it out, as I received 150 emails while he was talking to me, but today I’m still having problems.  I am pretty sure I should have received more than one email today and I haven’t been able to send any!   I know I just have to make another call to fix it, but today I’ve either been too ill or too busy.  Maybe tomorrow…

The page above is another page from my third Teesha Moore inspired journal.  It’s a little dark, but I do like the images I used.

Have a great week and I’ll see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂