Tag Archives: mixed media

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

Bright Colours

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Bright Colours

Hello friends!

It’s been a bright and sunny day here today and I had intended to go for a long walk this afternoon, but T asked me to help him in the garden so I did that instead.   I didn’t get my walk but at least I got some exercise and was out in the sunshine all day.  I am tired now, but in a good way.

This spread is from my 6×6 journal.  It’s not my greatest achievement and in fact I messed it up so badly I had to gesso over about half of it to redo it.  The grey areas are actually very sparkly glitter paper.  I never can capture the sparkle with a camera or scanner so you’ll just have to take my word for it.  The symbol with the swirls is the symbol for an open mind (according to something I found on the internet).

One of my favourite quotes is from Sir Thomas Dewar (1864 – 1930) he was a Scottish whiskey distiller and salesman.

“Minds are like parachutes… they only function when they’re open.”

That’s all for now, I have to go and iron my work clothes ready for another week of work and I have a cat demanding some urgent tummy tickling too.

See you soon

Big love

AJ 🙂

Cut not the wings of your dreams…

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Cut not the wings of your dreams ....Hello friends

I hope everyone is well and happy.

This spread is from my 6″ x 6″ journal.  I covered the pages with printed tissue paper then coloured them with yellow and green sparkly paint, the same batch that had set to a thick jelly and I thought would be unuseable.  Then I added the borders with red acrylic paint.  I know, I know another strange colour (Eng. spelling :-)) combination from me, but I like it.  The background text is from a Tim Holtz reflections stamp. The two patches under the images are some translucent paper I coloured and edged with  distress inks.  The image of the man’s head is from the Graphics Fairy‘s blog.  The girl with the wings may also be from the Graphic Fairy.

The wonderful quote is from Flavia.

That’s all for now.

Big love

AJ


Revo-lution 2012 – Gratitude

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GratitudeHello friends!

I hope everyone is feeling good.

I’m really pleased to say I am feeling much better this weekend and also that I’ve been given a new project at work which should be more interesting than the work I’ve been doing for the past year (although I will probably have to still do that as well).  I’m optimistic about it anyway, it seems like a good change for me.

Here is another spread from my Revo-lution 2012 board book.  Check out Gretchen Miller’s blog, Creativity in Motion, for more information about the thinking behind the Revolution book.

Sometimes things in my life are not exactly as I want them to be and if I allow myself I can get to feeling hard done by.  I’ve realised it does no good to just feel sorry for myself so my intention this year is to appreciate and feel gratitude for all the good things in my life.   When I think about it seriously it is obvious to me the good things far out-number the percieved bad, or problem, things in my life.

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments on my blog, I do try to answer everyone and visit your blogs too. Recently I’ve been having problems leaving comments on Blogger blogs.  I’m not sure if that’s a Blogger problem, a WordPress problem or (and this is much more likely) an AJ problem!  I’ll try and get it sorted.

My life can be a bit hectic –  I work full time and I am committed to the success of our local history group and need to keep the RSHG website up- to-date.  Now if I could just have … ooh I don’t know … maybe an extra 4 or 5 hours to each day … I might stand a chance of getting everything done.  I know I’m not alone and most creative people have the same dilemas juggling with the day to day stuff.  I am still managing to do some art every day, even if it’s only a teeny weeny bit, it’s good for my soul 🙂

Hope you are all being wondrously industrious with your creativity.

Big love

AJ

That was January and here comes February

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Hello Friends

I hope everyone is well, I’ve been sick again since Sunday and am having a few days off work to hopefully recuperate.  I saw the doctor today and he is arranging for me to have physiotherapy on my neck.  The neck seems to be a problem area for me, causing severe headaches and nausea.  The doctor also gave me some medicine to take to stop the sickness so that I should at least be able to take and, more importantly, keep down pain-killers when necessary.

Anyway I still managed to get my January calander completed and the new page for February is ready for tomorrow.  I will try and use more images for February.  January seems to have zipped by in a flash!

T and I are making plans for a short holiday in July to celebrate his 60th birthday we are going up north to Yorkshire, where he was born, for a week.  At first he was very reluctant to go away because since our last holiday together we have adopted two beautiful cats.  T didn’t like the idea of putting them into a cattery for the week, so he is paying someone to come and house/cat sit for us.  I’m sure ‘the boys’ will still be freaked out at having a stranger in the house, but it should be OK as soon as they realise he is going to pet and feed them and let them out every morning.   We live in a cemetery and the cats are allowed out in the morning and can play in the cemetery all day, but we like to have them inside at night.  There are foxes in the cemetery and although everyone says that in general cats and foxes tolerate eachother and in a fight the fox is likely to come off worse we don’t want to risk it.  As far as we can tell ‘the boys’ don’t venture outside of the cemetery, it covers 12 acres of land so they don’t really need to go out on the roads.  But then who really knows what they get up to when they are out of sight?

That’s all for now, I hope to get back to normal soon.

Big love

AJ 🙂

 

 

 

 

Doodles Unleashed – Playful Printmaking

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Hello friends!

Strathmore has some fantastic free online workshops at the moment and I decided to sign up for the wonderful Traci Bautista‘s Doodles Unleashed.

If I was a more disciplined person I wouldn’t have done this because there are other things I really should be doing right now, however, I am a hopeless addict to creativity and I couldn’t resist!  I watched both video turorials for week 1 Playful Printmaking and then created the above image.  It is in a big (12 x 16 inch) Daler Rowney 300 g/m water colour pad.

I was a bit out of my comfort zone creating this page, but I am happy with the way it turned out.  I had to laugh because my husband came into the room while I was working on it, he rarely comments on my art, but he looked at this page and said “Hmmm, that’s very psychedelic”!!  He didn’t say whether he liked it or now though?

Right, let’s see if I can get this report written before I’m tempted to start the second workshop Spontaneous Water Colour Backgrounds, it’s going to be tough so wish me luck 😉

Big love

AJ

Why do birds sing?

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Hello friends!

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and spent time with the people and doing the things they love the best.

We spent Christmas day with my parents and yesterday we had a friend over for lunch and went for a long walk along a beach.

My parents gave me a Love Links bracelet and two sets of beads for Christmas, it’s really lovely and something I will treasure always.  It was to replace the ring they gave me a couple of years ago.  I had that ring on my hand for a couple of months and then one day when I was working on the outside of the house it disappeared.  I was heartbroken about losing it and searched high and low but couldn’t find it.  Mum wanted to buy me a replacement ring but I thought the bracelet would be safer.

My husband gave me a Sizzix Big Shot (although he didn’t know that until I unwrapped it on Christmas morning, he just knew he had paid for a large box) and I’ve been busy embossing papers and cutting shapes when ever I’ve had a few spare minutes.

The spread above about the birds is not one of my most inspired but it happens to be the next page in the journal.  I’ve decided to share good and bad as it’s all part of the process.  This spread actually looks grubby to me and I have no idea where that dirty colour came from…

I am back to work tomorrow so I have to use today to catch up with a few outstanding projects.

You can see the gifts I made for my friends for Christmas on the Little Boxes and Things page.

See you all soon

Big love

AJ

Wake Up

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Hello Friends!

Today’s spread is my homage to coffee – I drink a lot of coffee (probably too much if the truth be told), I like it.  The background is fairly simple, just textured gesso ground, acrylic paint and a Tim Holtz reflections (numbers) stamp, some paper scraps and more gesso.  The small coffee related images are from a card kit I bought in a £1 shop, but as I don’t make cards I decided to use them in my journal, and the words are hand written.

Yesterday I went over to the mainland to meet up with the rest of my team for the first time and to have a Christmas lunch with them.  They are a good bunch of people and it was nice at last to be able to put faces to names after almost a year of being the isolated member of the team.  The lunch was good and we had fun getting to know each other.  AND I had time to pop into Hobbycraft on the way home (always a bonus).

Just two more days of work and then it’s Christmas, which means a four day break for me 🙂

I hope you are all doing well.

Big love

AJ