Tag Archives: Doodles

Mandala time :-)

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MandalaHello friends

I hope your week is going well, I am feeling really great.  Yesterday we had a sunny and WARM day!!!!!  It was fabulous!  Today it’s been overcast and dull (but dry) and this evening it started to rain again.  But that doesn’t matter because we had a whole day of sunshine yesterday.

Normally in February the small pond in our garden fills up with frogs for their mating season.  I mean it really fills up so there is barely room for them to move and the croaking sounds they make are fantastic, but this year there haven’t been so many, probably because it has been so cold.   However T reported today that while he was in the garden he saw three frogs and a toad making their way from the hedge to the pond.  If this carries on we will have to put the mesh cover over the pond again to protect the frogs from the cats.  Jack and Bill like nothing better than fishing the frogs out of the pond and playing with them.  The frogs of course don’t enjoy the game one bit.

I’ve just ordered some more pens (like I haven’t got enough already) and I can’t wait to try them out.  I’ll let you know when they arrive 🙂  These are supposed to be the last pens I buy before the workshop in April, that’s what I’m telling myself anyway.  Some people have already signed up for the workshop 🙂  It’s still 7 weeks away and I’m already getting excited!

The page above is page 3 of my Circles of Wisdom journal.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

An Invitation

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Invitation

Hello friends!

I am now fully committed to running my art journaling workshop and some people have even signed up for it!   It’s quite good that for my first attempt at this type of thing I can do it without charging as Ryde Arts Festival are going to pay me to do it.  In return for this I and the participants in the workshop are going to produce pages that will be temporarily bound into a book that will form part of an exhibition during Ryde Arts Festival week June 28 to July 7.  After that everyone gets to keep the pages they contribute.

I am getting on with my preparations for the workshop and I just have a few more pens to buy so there are enough for eveyone to use on the day.  That is an excellent excuse for me really as I LOVE buying pens 🙂

I hope your weekend has been good, mine has been fairly productive but I am still wishing for warmer weather.  Come on!  It’s March and time to warm up!

Have a good week.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Have no Fear

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Have no FearHello friends!

Here is another mandala from my Circles of Wisdom book!

Things have been good for me this week, despite the fact that it is still very chilly in this part of the world and I really, really need some warmth now (please)!

I drove to Worthing this morning to get some training at our head office.  It is about an hour’s drive once I get across to the mainland.  The weather was dry but dull as I drove there, but when I was driving back this afternoon the sun was shining.  It was still cold, but that little bit of sunshine just made me feel so good.

Yesterday I met up with a friend who I haven’t seen for over 40 years.  We were ‘best friends’ for a time when we were at school and it was just amazing to meet up yesterday.  We spent a few hours chatting and trying to catch up.  We were friends, then we lost touch and our lives took different courses, but meeting up yesterday I think we both realised that even though we lost touch the bond of friendship was always there 🙂

Hopefully now we will be keeping in touch, I hope so.

See you soon my friends

Big love

AJ 🙂

Play!

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Play

Hello friends!

Well that’s another weekend over with and it went very fast.  I delivered the poster for my Art Journaling Workshop and the information sheets to the local library on Saturday, but the poster won’t go up until the manager returns to work mid-week and (hopefully) approves it.  Because I work full time I need somewhere in the daytime where people could go to enrol for the workshop.  The library seemed the best place.  I spoke to the manager a couple of weeks ago and she said it would be fine, but she wasn’t there on Saturday.  It has been put on to her desk awaiting her return to work.

Apart from that I’ve been producing display sheets for an exhibition being put on by Ryde Social Heritage Group later in the year and I’ve been doing some work on the RSHG website.  This would all be so much easier if my computer wasn’t so damn slow!

The page above is the back cover of my second Teesha Moore inspired journal and it’s about the importance of play.  The hanging balls (which look a bit like Christmas decorations) actually started out as eggs!  And just to prove that here is the page before I started playing with the pens.  Actually looking at the page now I think it could do with a bit more penwork so it may well still change.

Eggs!

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Circles

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Mandala 1Hello friends

I hope your week is going well, mine is.  I couldn’t post yesterday because my computer was being so slow it took me over three hours to just get my emails and when I tried to get onto the blog is just ground to a halt!  Instead of getting annoyed and depressed I switched it off and did some art instead so it was a happy result in the end 🙂

The image above is from the Circles of Wisdom book I made for Dion Dior’s workshop on 21 Secrets last year.  The book is a child’s board book measuring about 5″ x 5″ and with the plastic stripped off the pages.  This is something I learnt from my friend Gretchen Miller’s workshop on 21 Secrets in 2011.  The book has 7 pages, not including the cover so there are 16 mandalas in total.  The board books make fantastic journals, they are cheap to buy in charity shops, have sturdy thick pages and the small ones like this one fit in your bag easily.  Sometimes it requires a bit of work to get the plastic off the page, but it’s worth the effort because when you’ve finished you have a complete blank book to work in.

Drawing mandalas is a very centering and calming thing to do.  You just start in the middle of the page and work your way out and around, the possibilities are endless.

Have a go it’s great fun!

21 Secrets is a great place to learn techniques from some fabulous teachers and I think it is really good value for money.  I have really enjoyed being involved with it for the past two years.  This year though I’m not doing any online workshops that require payment because I’m saving my money to go on another art retreat (hopefully) later in the year.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Nourish your Spirit

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Nourish your eye and spiritHello friends

I hope you are doing well.  We have just returned from our trip to London and I am feeling quite tired.  It was a good trip and we enjoyed eachother’s company.  Yesterday evening we went for a lovely meal in a vegetarian restaurant and then to the excellent John Prine concert at the Barbican.  The hotel we stayed in was very comfortable and we had a good night’s sleep.

The trip back wasn’t quite so good, the heating on the coach was on full and the little things in the ceiling that are supposed to blow cool air at you didn’t work.  I felt like I was in a slow cooker and began to feel a bit queazy.  When we got to Southsea, the last stop, we had just missed our connection to the Island by seconds and had to wait an hour.  I just wanted to get home because I thought I was going to be sick, but it was so good to get off that stuffy coach and be out in the fresh air.   It was a beautiful sunny day so we took a stroll along the promenade and slowly I began to feel better and the hour passed.  The hovercraft trip only takes 15 minutes and T had arranged for a taxi to collect us and bring us home.

It’s good to be home!  I think I will be having an early night tonight 🙂  Hopefully snuggled up with Billy Kat if he ever forgives me for going away for a night and leaving him – he’s being a bit aloof with me at the moment!

So, above is another page from my second Teesha Moore inspired journal.

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

Fruit of the Tree of Life

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Fruit of the Tree of LifeHello friends!

Greetings on a very cold day in the UK!  I’m dreaming of being somewhere warm right now.   To be honest that will probably just be an early night in a warm bed snuggled up with a cat!   Before we adopted our two cats we used to go away on holiday in February to somewhere warm (usually the tropical paradise of Tobago) and I am missing that winter sunshine now.  We can’t go on holiday now because my husband won’t hear of ‘the boys’ being put ‘in prison’ just so we can get away, and I do think they would be very upset it we did that to them. Oh, but I could really do with some sunshine right now.  Still, spring can’t be far away can it?

Here is another page inspired by the wonderful Teesha Moore, I hope you like it 🙂

We are off to chilly London for an overnight stay at the weekend, our friend Matt is coming to cat sit for us, I’ll try and post on my blog when I get back if I’m not too tired.

Stay warm and safe people

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

Imperfection is Beauty

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Imperfection is BeautyHello friends!

How are you?  I hope things are good with you.  Here everything is ticking along nicely.  I am working on several creative projects at once and it feels good.

I have started to prepare a poster and leaflet for the first Art Journaling workshop I am going to run as part of Ryde Arts Festival.  I am looking forward to sharing my passion for art journaling with others, I think it will probably be at the end of April I am just waiting to hear when the venue will be available for me to use.  The work we produce will be part of an exhibition for Ryde Arts Festival week in July.  I am excited and a little apprehensive about it, I’ve never done anything like this before, but something tells that I just need to do it 🙂  I just want to be well prepared…

The page above is from my second Teesha Moore inspired journal.  Things seem to be getting a bit surreal now in my artwork, but in all honesty, I don’t have a lot to do with that, I just go with the flow and see what happens.  Sometimes the result is beautiful and sometimes just downright weird 🙂

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

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Weird & Wonderful

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Weird & WonderfulHello friends

I hope all is good with you.  We have had a little snow here which meant I struggled to get in to work on Friday.  I called my boss to explain the problems I was having and he agreed I could take the day as annual leave.

I spent the day tidying up my art room and achieved quite a lot, it’s going to take at least another full day though before it has any semblance of being ‘tidy’.  Unfortunately since then we have had sickness in the house, both of us have been quite poorly.  It’s hard to say who has been the worse.  I spent the whole day in bed yesterday being sick everytime I moved, which rates as quite bad in my books.  T, on the other hand, has been feeling poorly for much longer than me and he has now sunk into a very bad depression which is horrible on top of feeling nausious all the time.   I am hoping he will get himself to the doctor tomorrow.  I am feeling a lot better today, I have manged to eat some food and not been sick once, but my head is still feeling a bit odd.  I reckon I will be fit enough for work tomorrow.

I have to go and visit my parents now as I haven’t seen them since before it snowed and they might be in need of provisions.  I am hoping they are just staying in and keeping warm, they are too old and frail to go out on slippery pavements.

So above is another page from my 2nd journal inspired by Teesha Moore I hope you like it.

Take care and I’ll see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Be Audacious!

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Be Audacious!

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE IT FULL SIZE

Hello friends!

Wow it’s a beautiful sunny but cold winter’s day outside, the perfect day for taking a walk and taking photos, but I really have to stay in and do some housework today.  I need to try and get some sort of order into my art room, the chaos is even getting to me now and generally I can put up with quite a lot of chaos!  I think the problem is that I am trying to squeeze too much into too small a space.  I keep trying to use stuff up, but ‘someone’ keeps buying more supplies and starting more projects!

So I hope you are all well and happy and have had a great start to the New Year.  I am doing fine although I have been a bit under the weather.  I had to take Friday off work as I was sick all day.  I was in bed all day, I hate it when that happens it feels like such a waste of a day!  But I needed time to rest and restore and I am sure that my imagination was working overtime.

Yesterday I had to chair a meeting of the Local History group in the morning and I wasn’t sure I was up to it, but once I was up, showered, dressed and prepared I really enjoyed the meeting.  Despite really horrible weather lots of people turned up, everyone was really friendly, our guest speaker was fantastic and we all had a great time.  I LOVE being part Ryde Social Heritage Group it is so rewarding to work with people who are so enthusiastic and helpful.  We make a great team!

Above is the second page of my second journal inspired by the lovely Teesha Moore.  I have that quote printed out and stuck on my phone at work … because sometimes I just need to remind myself.

Have a great week everyone.

Big love

AJ 🙂