Tag Archives: mixed media

Focus on the Journey

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Focus on the JourneyCLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

Hello friends!

I hope you have had a great weekend, mine has been OKish.  I woke up with a horrible headache on Saturday morning and that kept me in bed all morning.  I finally managed to get rid of it and at lunch time I got up to make myself some toast.  The phone rang and my husband told me it was a friend wanting to speak to me.  I groaned as I really didn’t feel like talking to anyone but he had already told her he would get me so I answered the call.  Then I was hit by a bombshell, I was told that another friend had collapsed and died that morning.  It was completely unexpected, I had only seen her the previous Saturday when she came and volunteered in the cemetery with me, helping to record inscriptions from the memorials.  She has been helping me do this for several years.  In all that time I hadn’t really got to know her that well as she was a very private person, but gradually she began to open up and chat, especially when it was just the two of us working together.  She was a kind, caring, thoughtful soul who did much to help other people.  The last time I saw her she cheerily said “See you in a couple of weeks”.  As far as I know she had not been ill and her death was sudden and unexpected, she was only in her early 70s.

Rest in peace Rosemarie, dear kind soul, I will think of you and miss you every time I go into the cemetery to work.  The work you did will be appreciated by many people from all across the world who carry out research into their ancestors from our town.

She has been on my mind a lot ever since I heard, I had to phone several other people to impart the sad news and then I spent the rest of the time working on my art which has helped me to stay grounded.

The page above is from my A4 journal and was completed in August.  I used  pieces from an old cycling map as the background and then gave it a wash of watered down gesso and acrylic paint.  The bicycles in the bottom r/h corner were an image transfer.  The image and quote on the left hand page I found on the internet and it made me smile as I can imagine how precarious it was to ride a pennyfarthing bike.  The photograph of the girl is me aged about 18 on a bike ride in Nepal.  I stamped on the page with a Tim Holtz reflections text stamp and a number stamp.  I think I probably used Portfolio water soluable oil pastels to edge the page.  The quote sums up what I feel about art journaling – the process is more important than the end result – It’s All Good even if it’s not always good art 🙂

Have a good week my friends and I will see you soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Do What Matters Most

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Do What Matters Most

 

 

Hello friends!

Apologies I am out of sych again with my blog posting because I have been super busy again.

This journal page was made back in August, I used a lot of ephemera for the background including a leaflet a got from the doctors about a (rather unpleasant) medical procedure I had to go through, and a leaflet my husband had about access to work.  The colour scheme is a bit odd, I don’t think that acid green and purple really go together that well but it’s just what happened when I made the page.  The words were originally done in a different way and I hated how they looked and re-did them.  To be honest I’m not really that pleased with this page, but I love the sentiment.

At the moment what seems to matter most to me is creating art.  I have just finished my first Teesha inspired journal and I love it.  Creating it has definitely been feeding my soul and given me some ideas which I shall be pursuing in the next few months.

On Friday I gave my presentation to the group in Ventnor and it went really well, I enjoyed it and, judging by all the smiling faces and the comments I received afterwards the audience did too.  I have one more presentation to do tomorrow evening and then I can relax a bit and try and get my life back on track and hopefully regular posting to my blog.

This weekend we successfully constructed the window blind for the dining room (it took several attempts to get it right), so I will soon have to start looking at how to improve the kitchen (and you know how I feel about that)!

Have a good week and I’ll see you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Courage

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Be Inspired

Hello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy.

Our big exhibition is over and all packed up and stored away.  It was a great success and we all had a great time.  I am so proud of, and grateful for having, such a great team of people.  We all put a lot of hard work in to it and are now all very tired but contented.

Today I heard what my new job will be (for the next three months at least) I was a bit disappointed as I was hoping to be offered something completely different and challenging. It sounds like this is just a desk job inputting data, but I will find out more about it next week and hopefully it will better than it sounded today and something I can take ownership of and have some pride in.  At least I am still located locally and only a 20 minute drive from home, so that’s good.  If all else fails, I can carry on getting all my job satisfaction from my local history group and all my creativity from my art journal.

This spread was done back in June, it has lots of book papers, stamping, stenciling, some image transfers, acrylic paint, the flowers are painted with fluorescent paint and I finished the pages with Portfolio water soluable oil pastels.

Enjoy the rest of you week everyone.

Big love

AJ 🙂

The Soul should always stand ajar…

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Ready to welcome the ecstatic experience

 

Hello friends

Here is another quick post of a spread I did in my A4 journal back in June.

Today is the last day of the 4 day exhibition about the history of Ryde at St Thomas Heritage Centre.  The weather has been fantastic and we have had lots of visitors and lots on lovely comments in our guestbook.  Today we have ‘Meet the Residents’ at 12:30 (a dramatic portrayal of some of the people from Ryde’s past by members of the group) and I am giving a presentation about Union Street at 2pm.  This will be followed by the draw of our fund raising raffle.  Then at 4pm we start to pack it all up and transport all the material back to various locations.  We are all going to be exhausted after this!  We have had a fantastic time and all the effort has been worthwhile.  If you are interested you can find out more about it here.

I will be happy to have some time to do some art next week!

See you all soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

Create Everyday

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Create Everyday

Hello friends

I just have time to quickly post this spread from my A4 journal which I did back in June.  The Create Everyday page is on the back of a page where I used Fimo Light to create texture and as a result is very warped and distorted, but I don’t mind that 🙂

In a few hours time my local history group opens the doors on a 4 day exhibition at St Thomas Heritage Centre for Heritage Open Days.  On Saturday we walked into an  almost empty building and since then we have cleaned it, transported a whole exhibition, set it up and decorated the building.  It looks great and now we can relax and have four days of fun!

I hope you all have a great weekend and I’ll see you when Heritage Open Days is over.

Big love

AJ 🙂

You are Here

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You are Here

Hello friends!

This is probably the most summery weekend we have had all year and I’ve been stuck inside working away on my computer preparing stuff for the history exhibition in September.  Never mind, at least I didn’t get sunburnt and at least it is nice to look out the window and see bright light.

The image above is just a single page from my A4 journal.  I used quite a lot of ripped up map for the background so I thought You Are Here was an appropriate quote.  The criss-cross lines I made by inking up a wheel from toy car and running it across the page.

On Tuesday I have to go for an interview at work so that, in 30 minutes, my competencies can be assessed and then I think I will just be slotted into a job where they (senior managers and HR) think I will fit best.  It’s all a bit strange really especially as I have already applied for a post that was advertised internally but that’s not what they are interviewing me for.  Anyway I have decided that I just need to do some preparation, go along, do the best I can, not get too anxious about it and try to enjoy the experience.  I’ll let you know how I got on next time I post.  I think it must be quite a tough interview because the 5 managers I work with have already been through the process and 3 of them have not been reappointed to their roles.  I already know I am not going to be reappointed to my role as it is disappearing into vapour in the restructure, but I will definitely still have a job.  So there is definitely something new for me just around the corner.  Exciting or what!

OK I am going to drag myself away from the computer now and the many things that I am supposed to be doing and I’ll go and see if Mum and Dad want to come out for a drive and an icecream.

See you later

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

The Power of One

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The Power of One

Hello friends

I can’t believe how fast this weekend has gone and that tomorrow I will be back at work again!

Yesterday I did some transcribing in the cemetery then I went into town (just down the road) and did some shopping.   After that I spent the rest of the day producing information sheets about the ten year history of Ryde Social Heritage Group.

Today I did housework and washing, checked and printed out the information sheets, went to see Mum and Dad, and just about managed to squeeze in a short time for some art.  And now the weekend is over!

There is still a lot of uncertainty at work but I am staying optimistic, it just feels like a change could be good.

The textured canvas above is something I did on 21 Secrets.  The ‘canvas’ was made from a workshop by Alma Stoller and the texture effect from a workshop by Christy Tomlinson.  When I did my presentation on Employee Engagement recently I was told that I needed to take a prop with me.  I had no idea what to take and I ended up making this piece of art and I was very pleased with it.  As it turned out though the prop was not required and no-one saw it.  Now the ‘canvas’ is sitting on my window shelf at work.

Have a great week everyone, I’m just going to help round up and feed a couple of naughty cats before it gets dark.

Big love

AJ 🙂

Ha, ha, ha!

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Disorderly

Hello friends

It’s Wednesday and it’s still sunny, so I think we are now enjoying summer, I hope it lasts a few weeks at least.  It is so lovely, warm and bright.

You are probably wondering why I have posted my image upside down, but in fact it is the right way up, it’s just the quote that is the wrong way up.  I really liked this background.  It started off as a page in my journal where I cleaned off rubber stamps and stencils so it had lots of random words, letters and shapes on it.  I collaged some vintage foreign ripped book pages, scraps of paper and some papers I had used to protect my work surface when spraying onto another spread.  I added some colour with Inktense blocks on it  and edged the pages with black watersoluable oil pastels.  I really liked seeing all the layers so I thought I would just add a quote.  I found this great quote attributed to A A Milne and I liked it because I am a very disorderly person.  My OCD husband simply does not understand how I can work in my room surrounded by so much clutter and mess 😉  I used a new set of alphabet stamps I purchased and happily started stamping out the quote, I was pleased when I finished the first page, but I had just started the second page when I noticed the stitch I used to hold the feathers in place on my Follow Your Dreams page, then I realised that all the words were upside down!  Well it was too late to do anything about it so I carried on.  So should anyone look through my journal they will come to a page that looks like this.  I guess that’s a happy accident.

At work we are undergoing yet another restructure in the function I work for so lots of things will change soon.  I don’t know what’s going to happen with my job, but I have seen the new structure and my team does not appear on it.  I do know that at the end of it I will still have a job but at the moment I just don’t know what it will be.  The last time they did this to me I nearly cracked up, they put me in a role that I was totally unsuited for and still expected me to do all the duties in my old role, even though they said that role didn’t exist any more!  Tomorrow I have to go to a meeting where I may find out a bit more.  I am a bit more chilled out these days so I will just wait and see what they say.  Lots of people throughout the whole company are worried for their jobs and I don’t think this is going to much for staff morale, we’ll see.

Anyway I hope you like my ‘upside down’ spread.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Follow Your Dreams

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Follow Your Dreams

Hello friends

We are back from our holiday in Yorkshire.  We had a great time, even though it rained a lot.  We rented a small cottage next to a farm out in the country and spent most of the time with T’s friends and family.  We ate out every evening and had some great meals.  The best place we ate was called Aagrah on the canal at Skipton – the best Indian meal I’ve eaten outside of India – truly fantastic.  There was an Asian supermarket in the town where T’s sister lives so we stocked up on spices, pulses and goodies before we came home.  (The second best Indian meal I’ve eaten outside of India has been cooked by my husband, who is an excellent amateur chef and a master curry maker) 🙂

I am feeling quite tired today, probably owing to the fact that I drove for 8 hours yesterday with just two short comfort breaks.  Despite having a lovely holiday it was good to be home.

The boys were fine while we were away, they ignored us for a while after we got home but when T opened his suitcase to unpack Jack jumped in and refused to move;  Billy sat on my lap for about an hour in the evening demanding to have his tummy tickled and then when I went to bed he came too and snugggled up close to me all night.

This spread is about exploring texture – scrumpled up tissue paper, a couple of swabs my dentist gave me after she extracted a tooth (but i didn’t need to use them), a piece of film, metal leaf and some feathers.  Also used acrylic paint, Adirondak Colorwash spray, acrylic ink and correction fluid.  If you watch Donna Downey’s videos you will probably see that I have been inspired by her in making this spread (circles and drippage) :-).

Back to work tomorrow and I have lot of catching up to do.  The week before I went away I had a great week and was hardly in the office at all.  I had to give some presentations with our HR Director on Employee Engagement.  I did it three times – the first time was in front of the people I work with locally there were about 40 of them, the second time the audience was probably about 250 and the third time about 150.  Normally when I speak in front of people I use notes, so I don’t forget anything important, but this time I did it without notes.  The director asked me three questions which I had to answer – Who are you? What have you been doing in your area to improve things for your colleagues? and Why did you become an employee engagement champion.  Everytime I said something different, but I did get lots of compliments from the directors and audience afterwards so I went on holiday with a great feeling.  Tomorrow I will have to figure out how I am going to catch up with 2 weeks of outstanding emails and actions, however I will not get stressed about it because I have realised finally that just doesn’t help.

I’ll be back soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

The Destination

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Destination

Hello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy.

This is my last post before we go off on holiday so I will be having a bit of a blog break for about a week and a half.  It’s going to be strange and quite refreshing to have no internet access for a while, but I am taking a few art supplies and a new journal I have made especially for the trip.

It is T’s 60th birthday and we are going to Keighley in Yorkshire where he was born and spent the first 16 years of his life.  We haven’t been there for about 40 years.  I hope it’s a good trip because he doesn’t have much of a memory of growing up, I think his childhood was quite traumatic, his parents split up when he was about 11 years old.   He wants to go back to his roots, but I hope it doesn’t bring back too many unhappy memories for him.

We will be seeing his best friend from school, his sister and an aunt so we are looking forward to that.

It’s hard to believe that the boy I fell in love with all those years ago will be 60 in a few days time (even harder to think I am just a few years behind him)!  Our relationship is as solid now as it’s ever been.  Love is a wonderful thing and I am lucky I found my soul mate when I was just 15 years old.

We are both going to be quite traumatised at leaving ‘the boys’, our two cats behind, but we have a friend coming to stay in the house and look after them while we are gone.  Hopefully everything will be OK.  We have never had children so these two beautiful cats mean the world to us both and we have never left them before.

For this spread I used gesso, acrylic paint, some bits of old maps, a dots rubber stamp and some tape I made.  I used microporous surgical tape and stuck it down on a sheet of acetate then printed text and old maps onto the sheet.  It wasn’t hugely successful, as the printing is not as ‘fast’ as it would have been if I’d stamped with Stazon ink, but not a bad effect.  The face is an image I cut from a National Geographic magazine.  The edges are inked with distress ink.

Right, I’ve got to go and pack, hope you all have fun while I’m away.

Big love

AJ 🙂Bengal Boys

The Bengal Boys  (they are not pure bred Bengal, but they have the leopard spots and many Bengal traits).  They look really sweet in this photograph but generally they don’t like being too close to each other any more!  Boys!