My life’s been a bit chaotic again recently – Sometimes good, sometimes really not so good, but at least never boring.
I am managing to get some creativity in and that is good for me. I’m unsure about the results of my creativity in terms of success, but I know that even if the result is rubbish the act of being creative is definitely good for me. The image above is another page from my Paint and Doodle journal. Maybe next time I will remember to show you a before and after image, we’ll see.
T’s mood swings seem to be back with a vengeance and changing quite fast. When he’s up and happy he is being very creative and doing lots of music and writing projects. It is lovely to hear music filling the house again, it’s been a long time. He gets very little sleep at these times and that can trigger mania which currently presents as him being angry and ranty and then that is usually followed by a depressive episode. When he’s down he just switches off, shuts down and spends days in bed. It’s not lazyness but more like paralysis. It’s been the pattern for much of our lives together for the past 55 years … Still can’t quite get used to it although I think/hope I understand it better now.
On top of that T’s physical condition is not getting any better so there’s very little he can do around the house or garden, even when he is motivated to do so. Still no news as to when he might get his heart surgery! But all that aside his cognitive function is so much better now he is not taking all those psyche meds and if I catch him at the right time (when he’s not completely down in the dumps or so ‘up’ he can’t stop talking and ranting) we can now have fairly reasonable conversations. His memory is still shockingly bad but doesn’t seem to be getting any worse atm, and, to be honest, my memory is also not as good as it used to be. I guess that’s what happens with aging 😦 We make a right pair of confused seniors!
Hello… Am I back? Who knows? Anyway, if you do happen to be here, then welcome (or possibly welcome back) to my blog.
Here are some Twirly Ball things I made recently from recycled book pages and broken jewellery (English spelling 🙂 )
This blog has been dormant for a long time and I am going to TRY and reactivate it. The truth is I haven’t been very creative since my last post (in August 2019) and I’ve missed it a lot.
My (spare room) “studio” turned into a dumping ground for all the stuff I didn’t know what to do with, there were precarious piles of stuff on every surface and all over the floor leaving just a small pathway from the door to my computer, there was still a high risk of an avalanche, so the pathway had to be nagivated with great care. Earlier this year I decided I had to do something about it and it has taken months to sort it all out. I’ve got rid of loads of stuff (don’t worry I still have more art supplies than I need), reorganised everything, sorted my art supplies into smaller and lighter boxes, and labelled everything. It seemed to take for ever but I finally got it done and my studio now feels spacious and airy (for now). Unfortunately I don’t have a good track record for keeping my space tidy, but I’m going to try!
A lot has happened in the past 6 years or so and TBH it’s been, and continues to be, really tough.
Here is a summary of some of the challenges I’ve faced:
We all had to deal with the Covid pandemic and lockdowns in 2020. Around about that time T’s health was in serious decline with multiple issues – he’s had 5 surgeries (2 of them redos of previous operations that went wrong)! and many hospital admissions. He developed cognitive problems that took well over a year to be sorted out with a change of medication. He’s still physically unwell but at least now we can have sensible conversations again. He currently has memory and mobility problems and is now in advanced heart failure. He’s been waiting for heart surgery and hopefully it will be done sometime in the next year, we are hoping it will be sooner rather than later because we were told it was urgent a year ago. My Dad’s health also declined and he had to go into care during the Covid lockdown he never returned home and passed away in Feb 2022. Mum and I were with him when he died. Mum has been lost without him and I really miss him too. They were married for 72 years. Because she knew I was dealing with a lot of issues too, she decided to move into a retirement home where she knew she would be looked after. That happened sometime in 2023 she is in a home that is close to where I live so I visit her whenever I can. I spent a lot of time last year sorting out and emptying her home so that it could be sold. She tried to help me at first but it was too upsetting for her going back to her old home. In the end I did most of it on my own. I spent hours in that house on my own crying, packing things to be taken to chatiry, sorting and cleaning, it was heartbreaking and exhausting! The house finally sold a year ago. I retired from work in August 2020 after working for the same company for almost 30 years. In all those years I had attended, and even organised some, retirement parties, they tended to be lovely events. However Covid regs meant my retirement party was restricted to just 6 of us meeting outside and having a picnic. Fortunately it was a lovely sunny day, the location was lovely (on top of a reservoir site) and the people I shared it with were some of the favourite people I worked with, but it still felt a little bit flat and disappointing. We both caught Covid in November 2023, ironically when we went to Southampton hospital for T to have a brain scan. I wasn’t too bad but was positive for 2 weeks, T was very poorly and had to go to hospital. He was discharged on Christmas Eve but he was still unwell and had to be readmitted on Boxing Day. It wasn’t a good Christmas! Then last year T spent about 5 weeks in hospital over Christmas waiting for Heart Surgery that (for various reasons) never happened. In May this year I had my 70th Birthday!!! I’m definitely beginning to feel a bit ‘creaky’ now but on the whole I think I’m in good health which is fortunate because I am now T’s main carer. I do get help – he employs a lovely lady C (who previously cared for my Dad and then my Mum) she comes for 10 hours a week. She is a fantastic carer, for both of us, and now she has become a close friend.
So with all that above (and more) going on in my life I haven’t really had the time or the inclination to be very creative. Recently I’ve begun to realise how much I miss it and have decided to try and re-establish some sort of creative routine. The ‘Studio’ is finally sorted out, organised and doesn’t feel so claustraphobic so I’m hoping to get back to being a ‘creative person’ again.
While I was tidying and reorganising the ‘studio’ I found loads of projects that I had started with enthusiasm but never finished. So I’m going to try and complete at least some of those before starting anything else? I don’t think I’ll ever have to buy any more art supplies for as long as I live (but in all honesty I probably will – it’s an addiction)! One thing I did finish recently was the Tikis and Totems Journal I started in 2015 as part of the Artstronaut’s Club run by Teesha and Tracy Moore. Here are the images from the completed journal: If you have followed my blog before you will have seen some of these images and if you follow me on Facebook you will probably have seen all of them recently. You can click on the arrows to see all 12 pages.
Front Cover
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7
Page 8
Page 9
Page 10
Back Cover
I’ve upgraded my blog and now have my own domain name ajs-art-journal.com I’m not sure what difference that makes but you can find this blog by using that link or the old one (I think) AJsartjournal.wordpress.com. Actually I am struggling a bit at the moment, I’ve been away from this site for so long I’ve forgotten how to do lots of stuff. So if it all looks a crazy jumble I apologise, I think I will have to watch all the training tutorials again! But please let me know if when you view it things are not right and I’ll try to sort it out.
That’s all for now folks I hope to be back soon definitely sooner than 6 years next time.
I hope things are good with you, I’m feeling good at the moment (because I’m between treatment) and feel like I am achieving some things. Â I got signed off work for another two months which will allow me to have the radiotherapy treatment and give me time to recover before starting back at work (hopefully) in June.
I sent off one of the ‘give away’ packs to Sanje Sofar this week but I’m still waiting to hear from Lucydragon and Isisimaginings so I don’t know where to send their packs too. Â If either of you read this please see my last post and let me know your snail-mail address so I can send you your packs.
My computer screen died earlier in the week, at first I thought it was the computer itself but eventually I worked out it was just the screen.  T tried to fix it for me but was unsuccessful so I went out and bought a new one.  I love it, it’s a bigger screen than I had before and everything looks much better now 🙂
Today we went to the local hospice to visit a friend. Â I have never been there before and was a bit anxious about it. Â Obviously he has been very unwell but things were not quite as bad as we had possibly expected. Although still not good. He was dressed and up and in remarkably good spirits. He is hoping to be able to go home again soon so that’s good. I’m glad we went because we haven’t seen this friend in a long while and it was good to reconnect and hopefully let him know that we care.
I have to go back to the local hospital this coming week to see a consultant in the Maxillo Facial unit.  That’s where I had the biopsy taken and was given my diagnosis before being transferred to the Haematology Department.  The two consultants I saw in MaxFax were both very nice so I don’t have any concerns about going back to see them this week, I’m just not sure why they want to see me again but I’ll find out when I get there.  While I’m at the hospital I will also try and find out if there is any help with the cost of travelling over the mainland for 17 days for the radiotherapy treatment.
The page above is from my new small journal and this is what it looked like before the penwork:
And if you have 8 minutes to spare here is another video of an early journal:
I am sorry I’ve been missing for a while, but things got crazy and difficult here for a few days.
So who was it that had the brilliant idea of putting in a new kitchen!????
It’s supposed to be finished by now isn’t it, but it’s not!
Last weekend (Easter) we spent three whole days tiling, but were making very slow progress.  T was clearly struggling all weekend and by Sunday afternoon it was obvious he was becoming very unwell.  He has Bipolar disorder but it is controlled by medication and he has been well for several years now.  I think the stress of the never-ending work in the kitchen, and the mass of other jobs that are being left while we are doing the work, triggered an episode. Things got really difficult for a while.
On Monday I let him rest and carried on tiling on my own.  I would say that now two thirds of the tiling is complete and it looks great, but I’ve no idea when the last third will get done. The last cupboard has been built but still has to be hung on the wall.  So not a great deal of progress since the last time I wrote.  I am going to be busy with other stuff now right up until the end of May.  So perhaps it will get done in the Summer now, or perhaps we will just live with an unfinished kitchen?
By Monday afternoon it was obvious that T needed more than rest so I phoned for medical help and I was lucky that someone from the Mental Health team agreed to come and visit us at home and bring some medication. Â After that things began to calm down and T’s mood (which had been deep despair and agitation) began to lift.
So that’s why I’ve not been around and haven’t had any time for making art either!
The page above is a page I did at the Art Journaling workshop I taught on 29 March. Â It didn’t come out quite as I expected. Â I had spent most of the day trying to reassure the workshop participants that you can’t really do anything wrong in art journaling and if you make a mistake it can usually be fixed, Everyone was quietly working away happily.
My page originally had a black and white image of the face of a pretty girl cut from a magazine and for some reason I decided to colour it in with Copic Marker pen.  Big MISTAKE!  it looked truly horrible.  Oh No!  what to do now???  I’ve told everyone you can’t make mistakes and I’ve just made a massive one.  In the end I picked up a white Sharpie poster paint pen and completely blanked out the ruined face and restarted from there.  At the end of the workshop when we did our ‘show and tell session’ I had to explain what happened to my page.  I guess it was a good example though to show people that when things do go wrong the ‘golden rule’ is Don’t Panic just find a workaround.
So that’s how things are with me, I hope all is well with you and I’ll try and be more prompt with my blogging in future.
AJ's Art Journaling 