Tag Archives: mixed media

Have Beautiful Dreams

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Have Beautiful DreamsHello friends!

Warning: the last two sentences of the third paragraph are a bit rude, so please don’t read that paragraph if you are easily offended.

I hope you are having a good weekend, I am and I am also managing to get a few things done so that’s good, it eases the pressure a little.

The spread above is from my A4 journal.  I painted the pages with some really old pink and orange fluorescent paint I found in my art box (it must be at least 20 years old).  Then I stamped the pages with a Tim Holtz reflections script stamp and a Tim Holtz heart.  I added some gold leaf to one of the pages.  Then I collaged with scraps of paper of all sorts, some images of vintage ladies, some die cut dots, and various other pieces I found in my stash.  The lovely quote is, I believe, by Eleanor Roosevelt and it is to remind me that if I follow my dreams all will be good. 🙂

On Friday all the big bosses came for their meeting, it was strange, for most of the day they were crammed into the meeting room (which was really too small to accommodate the numbers that turned up) and it must have been very uncomfortable for them.  At lunch time they came out and ‘talked to the troops’.  A buffet lunch was provided which I had been tasked with providing.  I am not sure why I was asked to sort it out as catering is really not my speciality.  Anyone who knows me would tell you that.  I suspect it was more to do with the fact that I don’t have a pair of testicles and all my colleagues do.  I’m thinking of asking my mum to knit me a pair 😉

The lunch time chat was really more of a case of ‘the troops’ complaining about how things are run and some of them were quite aggressive.  All the managers acted very professionally, were very reasonable and promised to look into every complaint.  It remains to be seen whether or not they actually do.  After a couple of hours they said they had to go back into their meeting and asked if anyone had anything else to say.  No-one said anything and I thought ‘someone needs to say thanks to them for coming here today’, so I forced myself to say something.

As soon as I started speaking a felt a rush of blood from my feet to my head, I was hot, felt like my face must be the colour of a beetroot and my voice was really shakey, to the point where I almost couldn’t get my words out.  I did my best and I hope it was good enough.  I think it’s important when people make an effort that they are acknowledged and thanked.  It’s one of the complaints we make about our bosses – they never say thank you to us.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I’ll be back soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

The Power Within

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Hello Friends!

I am really enjoying the weekend and hope you are too.

We had a fantastic meeting of the local history group yesterday and afterwards I went to a felt making workshop to help make squares for a ‘Friendship Quilt’ that will be displayed in Ryde Library for Ryde Arts Festival at the end of June beginning of July.  I made two squares that were only ‘squarish’ ha, ha, ha.  Lovely group of people and we all had fun.

The spread above was made late last year for 21 Secrets 2011 in Tamara Laporte‘s workshop called Collage Paint Soul.  Do you know about Tamara?  She is lovely, check out her blog.

My journal page already had Adirondak Colorwash spray on it from where I had put a wet stencil between the pages and I collaged scraps of paper with inked edges on top, and two images cut from a magazine to make up a girl.  Then I painted over the top with acrylic paints and stamped with various stamps including a Tim Holtz number stamp and I also used some glitter glue.  The thing I loved about Tamara’s workshop was learning that you can take a face from a magazine and paint over it.   I am hopeless at drawing people and faces, and clearly I need more practice, but this is a good way to learn.

I know the head is far too big for the body, believe it or not that was intentional.  Years ago I did an photo/art project called ‘The Big Head Project’ it involved taking photos of people’s faces, printing them out super large on my printer, cutting the face out and sticking it on cardboard to make a mask and then taking another photo of the person with the Big Head.

Here is an example, the colours look odd because the film was cross-processed.

I added the quote from Lord Buckley to finish off the spread.  Here is what it looked like before I started painting:

That’s all for now, I’ve got to get on – places to go, people to see, things to get done.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

Spring Sunshine

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Spring sunshineHello Friends!

I hope everyone is good and fine today.

It’s a bit ironic that I am posting this spread tonight because it is pouring with rain outside!  We did have about two weeks of glorious almost summer weather, and even today between the showers the sunshine was bright.  I do love the lighter days and the sunshine.  The light does bring joy to my heart 🙂

On this spread, in my 6 x 6 journal, I gesso’d the pages, then painted with acrylic paint.  I collaged a ripped up Daffodil bag I picked up at the local garden centre.  You were supposed to fill the bag with bulbs and buy them but I only wanted the brown paper bag.  There is also a little bit of artist tape I made following my friend Carolyn’s instructions.  Pop over to Carolyn’s blog A Colorful Journey to find out more about making your own tape – be warned though it’s addictive 🙂  The flowers are die cut baby wipes I had used to wipe back paint on other pages.  The font for the text is called “Jellyka Delicious Cake” it’s a free font I found on the internet.  I’ve been practicing my writing skills but I’m still never really happy with my own handwriting.  I think the black shading is a from a set of cheap oil pastels I bought.  They are not good so this week I ordered some Portfolio Oil Pastels and I am hoping I will have more success with those.

My life is hectic again at the moment.  I have a meeting this Saturday I need to prepare for  – including writing a report and transferring a load of photographs into a presentation for our guest speaker, but this evening my computer decided to go sloooooooowwww and it took several hours to sort out.  Mind you while it was running System Mechanic and fixing the problems I was able to do some art so I shouldn’t complain should I?

I am loving the workshops over at 21 Secrets and just wish I had more hours in the day to play.  Some of my friends tell me that if they didn’t have a job they would be bored, I can’t believe it, I would never be bored at home would you? However I would be broke if I didn’t work, so needs must 😐

That’s all for now  “It’s time for Bed”, said Zebedee

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Curiouser and curiouser!

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Curiouser and curiouser!

Hello friends!  I hope everyone is having a good weekend.

I am enjoying the long weekend and getting a few things done, not as many as I really should do as I keep getting distracted by ‘art projects’ but my massive ‘to do’ list is a little shorter than it was at the beginning of the weekend.

The page above is from my A4 journal.  I have always loved everything to do with the Alice books, I just like the weird, other wordlyness of the stories.  I really love the background colour on this page.  The chequer board is from a stencil I cut myself from a sheet of acetate (I didn’t get it quite right as is shown on this image, but since then I have added some tape to make the perspective look better.)  I tried to do an image transfer of Alice, but it didn’t work, you can just see her in the background.  When that didn’t work I painted over the image and surrounding area with yellowish glitter paint.  Then I printed a new image of Alice, cut her out, coloured her in and stuck her on.  The cards are from a sheet of Graphic 45 Halloween in Wonderland paper.  I can’t remember where the little chipboard hearts came from or why I stuck them on.  The quote about not knowing where you are going is from the Cheshire Cat and “Curiouser and curiouser”  is what Alice said just after she had eaten the cake:

“’Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). ’Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!’ (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off).”

I am about half way through checking out all the workshops on 21 Secrets and I have made a start on 2 of them already – Connie Hozvecka’s “Flow” and Dale Anne Potter’s “Personal Acts of Kindness”.  There is such a lot of good stuff to try and excellent teachers I know I am going to have 9 months of fun!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Big love

AJ 🙂

This is April!

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AJ's AprilHello friends!

I hope all is good with you.

What a busy day I’ve had since I posted That Was March this morning, I’ve been scanning negatives and uploading photos to my lomohome.

I stopped taking photos with my Lomo LCA camera a while ago because I couldn’t find anywhere to get my film processed.  Yes, I still use my analogue camera and film for my own personal photos (although I use a digi camera for photos for the history group).  Anyway there still are some places that will develop film, but I love to use slide film and get it processed as a normal negative.  Most photo developers look at you like you are completely nuts if you ask them to do that, or worse still like you are some sort of criminal and on the whole they refuse to do it.

Developing film in this way is called cross-processing and it has an ‘interesting’ effect on the end results.  Different films get different results.  My favourite film to use is/was Agfa Precisa CT 100 iso, but the production of it stopped years ago (in 2009 I think), I bought up a load of it at that time and it takes up a fair bit of space in the fridge (much to my husband’s annoyance).  However what I could buy then was already passed it’s ‘use by date’ so now in 2012 we are waaaaaaaaaay past that date and I thought the film might be not worth using, especially if I couldn’t get it developed.  Then a couple of weeks ago I found a place willing to cross process for me, I gave them 6 rolls film.  Two needed to be cross-processed and the other 4 (ordinary negative film) I had no idea what, if anything they had on them, so I told the developer “Just develop them and roll the film, no prints, no CDs”  Still cost me nearly £50!!!!

So today I have been scanning the first roll on my negative scanner, it takes ages as I have to use the highest resolution possible and then do some cleaning of any specks of dust that got on the film between me taking it out of the packet and putting it in the scanner, then resizing the photos and uploading them to the website.

I don’t think anyone else will be that impressed with the shots, but I am so pleased

a) that there was actually something on the film

b) that the Agfa Precisa, even though it is years out of date, still delivers the colours I want and

c) I can load up my camera again and get back into my other arty love – lomography 🙂

So today is April 1 and the start of 21 Secrets I am so looking forward to learning for all those great teachers, I think it is really good value for money considering the quality of the teachers and the number of workshops you can participate in once you sign up.  Maybe I’ll see you over there?

Sorry, I’m rambling on a bit aren’t I?  Above is my journal entry for April for the 366 Calender Challenge over at The Kathryn Wheel. Hopefully I got all the numbers in the right place and sequence this month!

I’m off to play, see you soon

Big love

AJ

That was March!

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That was March!Hello friends

What an interesting month that’s been – I gave some presenations at work (something I couldn’t have imagined myself doing a few years ago), we’ve had some sickness, some worries at work, glorious summerlike weather, met Royalty and a fantastic Party on the Pier yesterday.

Above is my completed journal entry for March and below is how it looked at the beginning of the month.  I didn’t notice until I got to 12 March but I’d completely messed up with the numbering!  No wonder I got myself into such a pickle at work adding things up – sometimes I think I have number blindness, or maybe I’m just plain stupid?!  Oh well it all came good in the end.

I hope you had as interesting a month as I did.

March

Big love

AJ

Life is Good

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Hello Friends!

We changed the clocks this weekend so tonight it was lighter for an hour longer, the weather has been glorious and everywhere there are signs of spring.  I took my parents out for a drive this afternoon and the magnolia trees have just come into bloom, they look beautiful.

The page above is from my A4 journal, it looks a little ‘muddy’ as there are loads and loads of layers of gesso, acrylic paint, scrapbook paper, some Tim Holtz stamps and then more of the same.  It took a lot or work to arrive at something I was happy with – sometimes that’s how it goes.   The words sum up how I am feeling at the moment.

At the beginning of the month I said that I knew of 2 exciting things happening in March and the first happened last Friday.  My local history group was invited to a Royal event, the unveiling of a plaque commemorating the 200th anniversary of the passing of the Ryde Pier Act.  I think that my American friends will be much more impressed by this than any of my English friends.  I don’t know many English people who are ardent Royalists, but it was great for my hard working team to get some recognition for all the unpaid work they do researching and documenting the history of our town.  Prince Edward (the Queen’s youngest son) was very pleasant and easy to talk to and we had a fantastic day.  If you are intersted you can read about it here.

The second exciting thing is going to be the Party on the Pier next Saturday, we did it last year and our historical display attracted many people.  We are looking forward to having another wonderful day.

I hope life is good for all of you.

Big love

AJ

Out of the blue, I found you

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Out of the Blue...Hello friends, happy Wednesday 🙂

I created this bluish spread with gesso, Derwents Inktense blocks, a Tim Holtz reflection script stamp, some scraps of scrap book paper and edged the pages and the papers with irredescent purple ink.  The phrase ‘Out of the blue, I found you”, kept coming into my mind so I stamped it with some tiny alphabet stamps I got from Hobbycraft.

I was thinking how lucky I was to meet my soul mate when I was still at school and how over time (over 40 ears) the relationship has changed in nature but is still constant and true.  Then I found this amazing quote by Sir Hugh Walpole.  You probably can’t read it from the image but it says:

“The most wonderful of things in life is the discovery of another human being with whom one’s relationship has a growing depth, beauty and joy as the years increase.  This progressiveness of love between two humans is a marvellous thing; it cannot be found by looking or by passionately wishing for it.  Its a sort of divine accident”

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Let your heart lead the way…

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Let your heart lead the wayHello friends

It has been a glorious weekend in my part of the world, warm and sunny and, for me, extremely busy.  I hope you have had a good weekend too.

On Saturday morning I did some shopping then spent the afternoon working with my local history group in the Heritage & Learning Centre.  When I got home I decided to clear out  the space underneath our decking.   My house is really old, it was built in about 1860, and underneath the house is a huge space like a cellar but with an earth floor.  Underneath the decking area is what was originally a small yard with two cubicles – one I think was where the outside toilet was and the other I suspect was where there were originally steps going down from the kitchen to the yard.

We have lived in the house for almost 16 years now and the yard and both cubicles had gradually filled up with bits of wood because they ‘might come in useful one day’.  Recently I began to realise that even if the wood could be reused, it was going to be impossible to get to any of it except those bits balanced precariously on the top of the stack.  So yesterday I decided to clear it all out.  I swept the area clean and then put back the very few bits that actually will be useful.

Today I got up early and, after typing up an article for the Local History group and before T was awake, I loaded up the car and took most of the wood to the local tip.  When I got home T was up and I got washed and changed into clean clothes and we went to pick up his friend N.  N has severe learning difficulties and is somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but he is lovely and T usually spends time with him one day during the week.  Last week was N’s birthday so for a special treat today we took him out for a walk and then for lunch.  We all had a great time.  By late afternoon we were back home  and I went to visit my parents who are both doing well.

I managed to work a little on a couple of art projects during the day too, so that was a bonus 🙂

This spread above, which I make a while ago, is in my 6″x6″ journal.  I’m not sure if you can read it, but on one page it says “Let your heart lead the way” and on the other it says “Your heart will find treasures your eyes can’t see“.   There are lots of layers of gesso, acrylic paint, scrapbook paper and Adirondak colorwash spray.  I wish I could remember where the scrapbook paper with the butterflies on came from, because it’s lovely.  It could be from the stash I bought when I was in LA last year, unfortunately I can’t remember for sure.  Anyway I was pleased with how this spread turned out.

That’s all for now, see you soon

Big love

AJ

Queen of HeARTs

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Hello friends!

I hope everyone is well.

It’s been a week since I last posted, couldn’t post at the weekend due to various other tasks that had to be done.  I am getting behind with things at home and at work.  I spent the first part of the week at work preparing for two presentations I had to give today.  I’m glad I spent the time on them because I think they went well.  My presentations were on Employee Engagement and I was trying to be motivational to a group of people who were not really that interested, but I did OK and I was pleased with how I handled it.   But tomorrow I will have to try and catch up with over a week’s backlog of emails and other stuff I should also have been doing.  Oh well that’s life I guess, and I am pleased to say that although I am not managing to keep on top of things I’m not getting freaked out by that fact either.  There was a time when I’d have been full of anxiety and stress at the thought of my workload, but now I’m just going to try and work my way through it and eventually it will get done.

This page is from my A4 art journal and there is a bit of a ‘royal’ theme to it.  The page was gesso’d, then there are layers of acrylic paint.  I used white acrylic paint to make the ‘drippage’ lines which I thought gave a sort of tartan effect. The blue paper with the crown is a scrap book paper by Teresa Collins (torn and edged with blue distress ink).  Then I stamped over the page with a cheap foam crown stamp in black and some small hearts in red.  I stamped Queen of HeARTs with black Stazon but it looked odd so I edged and dotted the letters with a white gel pen.

I’m not sure what the significance of this page is, except it was one of those experimental and learning processes.

Big love to you all

AJ