Yay!!!!!! I've got my life back!!!!!

Hello poor neglected blog, sorry for going AWOL on you.....

I've got a good excuse though.  Work has been INSANE for the last fortnight, I've basically worked every waking hour (and many hours when I shouldn't have even BEEN awake) for the past two weeks, and all creative endeavours had to come to a complete stop.

There goes Art Journal Every Day :(  and my stencil tute (coming soon), my quilt square for skull-a-day (ditto), all CJs, all ATCs, all everything.

I have missed getting painty SO MUCH.  But then when I sat down at my messy table tonight, I just couldn't get going.  It seems that two weeks off = death of mojo :(

So what you have here is an ugly old page.  But I think it needed to get itself out of my system, like an exorcism.  I needed to get all of my frustration about work OUT onto paper.  And I do now feel much, much better.

So it might not be the prettiest page you've ever seen, but as cheap therapy, it did its job just fine :)

As for the flowers mentioned - here they are:

Bought for me by the big boss man to acknowledge that I've been having to put in hours waaaaay above and beyond the call of duty recently.

They are lovely, and I definitely do appreciate them, but I really hope that everyone knows that that level of stress and tiredness wouldn't be sustainable going forward, for all the flowers in the world!

So let's hope that things at work calm down significantly over the next few weeks, because I'm just frazzled.


AJED : 65 / 365

a stencil tute?

I've had a couple of people ask me now, both here and on Facebook, if I'd blog a step-by-step on how to cut a portrait stencil, like the self portrait one I used in my journal t'other day.

I'm no Banksy, but I'd be happy to oblige - I need a subject though......

So please feel free to use the comments section on here to suggest who I should cut a stencil of for the tutorial....

Suggest your favourite celebrity, and I'll choose the one I like best and see what I can do!

Too nice to succeed? Probably, but that's fine by me.

Another not desperately exciting or artistic page, in fact this probably wouldn't have made it to my blog under normal circumstances, but I want to be sure that this Art Journal Every Day journey is fully documented, just to prove that I actually stuck to it.

I must admit that some days finding that ten minutes feels a lot like a chore, especially if I am really tired.  But other days it's great to have an excuse or encouragement to start playing.

Anyway, this little rant page was three days in the making, believe it or not! 

• One day to stamp the background with smiley faces and the repeated phrase "it's NICE to be IMPORTANT, but it's more IMPORTANT to be NICE" - very much my life philosophy. 
• One day to gesso and colour the background with various paints and sprays, and stick it into my journal
• One day to add the journalling, stencilled image, photo and stamped dotty border

The words are about my realisation that I just don't have what it takes to achieve lofty heights in my career, as I don't have the velociraptor instincts needed.  But I'd genuinely rather be a nice, kind poor person, than rich but a nasty piece of work.  So more power to me :)

My favourite part of the page is where the uninked dots on the border stamp have lifted the stencilled image, which I hadn't realised wasn't quite dry.  Neat, if unintended, effect.  I must try that again deliberately one day :)


AJED : 64 / 365

4 goals down, 97 to go!

 

Just a quickie page to celebrate the completion of another one of our Project Zero goals - to take the kids (and us big kids!) to a Disney theme park.

In real life it's more terracotta/orange, and less pooey brown :)

AJED : 61 / 365

I am contradictory, apparently

So here's that stencil in action again, properly this time, and with considerably less bling! :)

I cut it in the first place following a prompt from the excellent "A Year In The Life Of An Art Journal" challenge blog, as they suggested the use of a self portrait. 

I love cutting stencils, and I think this one has turned out pretty well, all three of my kids reckon it's instantly recognisable as me, anyway.

Then, just after I had finished stencilling, and I was sitting there wondering what to do next, another blog - Journal Fodder Junkies this time - popped up with their own weekly prompt - which was "I am".

That seemed a pretty good fit, so I simply rattled out some bullet point journalling about who/what I am....

...and in doing so discovered that some of my bullet points were a little contradictory...I'm "happy in my skin", but I also felt the need to put down that I'm "overweight"....I'm "good at my job", but "frustratingly unambitious" and "terrible with money"....I'm "a good mum" but a total "soft touch", two things that don't always sit well together.

But, well, contradictory or no, I'm me, and I'm also "happy" and "contented" and "in love".  And that's a pretty good place to be :)

AJED : 59 / 365

What a productive day!

I have to say, I wish that Connor's school would have teacher training days more often :)

I've had a lovely day off work, chilling with Connor and making tons of stuff.

Including 

• the CJ entry I blogged earlier
• three ATCs (pic of one above, they're all the same) for a swap on UKStampers (theme "In The Woods")
• A "wish you weren't leaving but good luck anyway" card for my boss (forgot to take a pic of that)
• A background page in my art journal: 

And I'm still at it, I'm partway through cutting a stencil which will be used at some point over that background.

I do love being productive!  The only problem is that once I'm on a "making stuff" roll, I find it hard to stop.  I have to get up for work in the morning, mind, so I need to make sure I drag myself away from the art supplies and up to bed by midnight....

If anyone spots me still up at 12:01, tell me off!

---

**edited to add - ok, so now it's just after half past midnight....slapped wrists.....but I promise I'm off to bed now....I just had to share my accidental "self portrait in glitter":

Bling bling!!!! :D

No idea what I'm going to do with it, it's just on a scrap piece of paper....but you see I finished cutting the stencil, and then sprayed it on the back with repo adhesive, so it will be dry tomorrow when I want to use it in my journal...

But of course the glue went through the holes in the stencil and left a gluey version of me on the scrap paper.

Well, I couldn't waste it, could I, so I dumped a pot of glitter over it lol

I like it! I'm all sparkly! :)

I really am off to bed now, or I'll never get up for work in the morning - night night.

Another CJ entry, this one crept up on me a bit....

I realised last night that I had overlooked a CJ which was due for posting today.  Oops.  I should have been working on this one ahead of the Orpheus and Eurydice one which isn't due for another week, but I got them round the wrong way.

But never mind, thankfully today was a Teacher Development day, so I'm home from work, and Connor has been happily amusing himself with an inflatable tyre all day (don't ask!).  And due to this little stroke of luck, I was able to get the CJ done and in the post just in time :)

This book is in the "colours" circle, with a manila theme.  And the format that the book owner has asked us to follow is to complete our entry on the right hand side of a double page spread, and then use the left hand page to sign in, with a photo of ourselves and some facts.

So here's my take on the manila colourway.  The background was inspired by a recent article in Craft Stamper magazine, a technique they called "paper blending".  I've used this kind of torn and gesso'd background in the past, to be fair, it's been around a while, but the article did remind me of it.

The main image (isn't she great? she's a stamp by Invoke Arts) and the title words were stamped onto paper from a lovely pin striped manila envelope that I brought home from Paris the other week.  And a little bow finished it off.

On the left side I used the same background, a sepia toned and scuffed-up photo of yours truly, some metal letters that I have had sat in the cupboard for YEARS to spell out my nickname, Flo, and some more of that pinstriped envelope to write my little autobiography on.

This was a fun entry to pull together.  And it was lovely to be able to photograph it outside in the daylight, I love days off :)

I think I get red next, which I'm really looking forward to, as it's one of my favourite colours.

Don't do it, Orpheus!

Not an art journal page today - a CJ page instead.

This is my entry in the latest Take Ten CJ to reach me - the theme for this one is "couples in literature".

As I'm 8th of ten to tackle this book, most of the classic couples - including Heathcliffe and Cathy, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth, Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella from Twilight - had already gone.

But luckily for me, one of my favourite (if rather tragic) couples was still available - Orpheus and Eurydice.

I remember going to see the opera of this with my dad when I was a kiddie.  And the story is a cracker.  As is the moral (I'm a BIG believer in looking forward not back).  So I had fun bringing it to life on paper.

Unfortunately the end result is pretty tricky to photograph because it's a bit shiny in the light, but hopefully you get the general idea.

I enjoyed making the papers for this one, the "flamey" background was made by dragging various colours of translucent fluid acrylic paints across some yellow pearlescent card with an old credit card.

And the rocky walls were made with various paints and Liquitex glass bead medium on dark red textured card.

The devil is a photo of a toy I found on t'interweb.  I drew Orpheus and Eurydice myself, she has ended up with a rather big head and a jutty out chin, but I'm sure Orphy still thought she was beautiful :)

I think I have "Guns n Roses songs" coming next in this circle - I'm REALLY looking forward to that one (although 8 out of the 10 available song titles will have already gone, so I wonder what will be left for me!)

I really don't mind what you call it....

The other day, on an internet forum, someone took it upon themselves to tell me that what I do isn't "REAL art journalling", as I often use my own photos and the journalling on the page is usually just documenting the photo - hence I am "just a scrapbooker".

I think I was supposed to be upset by that, but to be perfectly honest, I'm not in the slightest bit fussed what you want to call it, I'm just having fun doing what I do :)   I certainly don't have any personal need to call what I make "art".  I've always considered myself more of a crafter than an artist anyway, although I often use artists' materials in my craft.

But anyway, here's another page in my journal / little scrapbook / book of fun :)

This page commemorates the ticking off of another one of our Project Zero goals - to have a smooch on or in front of the Eiffel Tower.

We're not the world's most romantic couple, but who could resist the opportunity for a little 'moment' in the cité d'amour? :)

Lots of sparkle on this one from copious applications of glimmer mist.  Shimmer shimmer.

And it's VERY purple.  It wasn't supposed to be, but it just turned out that way :)

My little Moleskine is getting really colourful and pretty at the edges now - and it's seriously fattening up  - it will be HUGE by the time it's all full!

AJED : 55 / 365

Stop! this is the Empire of Death!

Another quick page tonight, just to showcase one of the many photos I took last week in the Paris catacombs.

It was quite the experience, walking miles through tunnels deep beneath the city, lined with the remains of over 7 million.

It was a sharp reminder that our time on Earth is short.

More photos of the Catacombs, and the rest of our Parisian adventure, are on Facebook here.

AJED : 53 / 365

I was supposed to be having an early night tonight....

....but I thought, in the spirit of ten minutes art journalling every day, before heading up the stairs, I'd just spend a little time adding some more paint to the background I started in my book yesterday....

...and of course I got carried away and ended up finishing the whole page.  Ooops.

Never mind, it's still only 11pm, that's still an early-ISH night.

This is a fairly simple page just to celebrate the completion of one of our Project Zero goals - we finally got a First To Find!!!  (in Geocaching, if someone hides a brand new geocache, and you get to it first and are the first to sign the log book, you get FTF honours).

It has taken us three years to get our first FTF as it's a highly competitive side of the game - as soon as a new cache is published, the race is on, with local cachers legging it to the location.  And we have never been fast enough before.

(We were very nearly not fast enough this time either, with another team literally breathing down our necks racing across the field - it was fun!)

I like how the background turned out on this page, you can't really see on the photo but the dry-brushed paints over the washi tape stripes are semi metallic, and they catch the light really nicely as you tilt the book.

The compass was made with a Tim Holtz mask with the N, S, E, W letters drawn on with paint pens.

There will be another Project Zero page in the journal soon as we cracked another goal while we were in France...

AJED : 52/365

Didn't we have a lovely time, the week we went to Paris...

So - we're home - achey and exhausted, but we had a great time.

And I NEARLY kept up my art journalling every day - but I must admit that on the very last day, after a very tiring 5 hour trip home with lots of train changes, I was in no fit state :(  So the best I can hope to end the year with is 364/365.  I can live with that, though - I kept up this new years resolution well into February which is a lot better than most! :)

 

I think you'll need to click on these trip journal pages to see them larger if you want to be in with a fighting chance of actually reading any of the writing, but even just at a glimpse they give you a fairly good idea of how much we managed to cram into 3 and a half days (and why we are now so tired! :) )

We spent 2 and a half days in the Disneyland Paris parks going on tons of rides, and meeting the characters.

And we had an action packed day trip into the city of Paris itself, where we visited all the sights, the highlights being Sainte-Chappelle, the Catacombs and travelling right to the very top of the Eiffel Tower at night (blimey, it's a LONG way up!!)

I hope to use this particular journal (a 5"x8" landscape watercolour Moleskine) to record all our trips and holidays this year, it will make a nice memento I think.

These three pages are also my contribution to the current Green Pepper Press crusade - "been there done that" - where the challenge was to document evidence of a trip or an event in your journal.  Thanks to Michelle Ward as ever for the inspiration.

AJED : 49/365

The devil is in (stressing about) the details

On the day before a holiday, I always end up in full on "what might go wrong?" stresshead mode.

I am a bit of an obsessive researcher/planner when it comes to trips away, and even with all that work done upfront, I still worry about the details and all the little things that might still go wrong despite all my best efforts to plan for all eventualities.

I don't know why I do worry so much, as when things DO go tits up - like when we went to Florida and my handbag was stolen, containing all our park tickets, lots of our spending money and our passports - we cope perfectly well and still manage to have a great time :)  I just like to think through all the possible disasters so that I can come up with contingency plans, I think.

So, anyway, that's where this art journal page came from....

The background is fluid acrylics in various red and purple tones, with some glimmer mist thrown in for good measure, with various of the detailed worries that are currently spinning round my head scribbled down with a white pen (the idea was to get them out of my head and onto paper so I can chill, and it has worked fairly well :) )

The devil heads at the bottom of the page are pigment ink through a mask, outlined with a black pen, sitting on little vellum podiums.  Cute aren't they :)

And the title was stamped, but it didn't really show up all that well so I went back over it with yellow and black paint pens.

That's it from me now for a week or so as we won't have internet access while we're away.

But I'll still be Art Journalling Every Day :)

AJED : 45 / 365

You might need sunglasses on for this one!

All my pages over the past few days seem to have been blue-based, so I pulled out the yellows and oranges for a change... then I used a "tie dye" stencil (that I first saw used here on Paula's fab blog) over the top. 

I only really had one way to go from there, and as I'd been humming songs from Hair all week for various reasons, I got to thinking that maybe the hippies from back in the day would be a bit disappointed with how the much lauded Age of Aquarius is panning out.....harmony and understanding? sympathy and trust abounding?  nah, not so much.  Just lots of fake wars, recessions, and lying politicians. 

Ah well, maybe the Aquarian Age just hasn't kicked in properly yet, it's 2,150 years long after all, maybe it just needs to ramp itself up to full strength - we can live in hope, eh? :)

AJED : 44/365

Happy Birthday TROWFTD!

A quick page tonight to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the release of To Record Only Water For Ten Days by John Frusciante, one of the best albums ever made, in my humble opinion.

The photo was printed on my brand new toy - the Polaroid Pogo portable sticker printer thingy - and then soaked in water and pulled apart so that just the blue layer and bits of the magenta layer are left.  I haven't tried this before, I like the effect.

AJED : 42/365

Having one of those days....

Very therapeutic, this art journalling lark.

(and I knew that photo from the hall of silly mirrors at Wookey Hole would come in useful one day!)


AJED : 41/365

Counting down to La France!

I had grand intentions of doing step by step photos as this journal page came together, but I ended up enjoying the making of it so much that I forgot to slow down and take photos, doh!

So all I have is this first one, just after I glued down a load of little squares and rectangles cut from watercolour paper, and stamped a few black squares on top.

 

 It changed a bit by the time it was done :)

There are lots of layers of paint on the finished article - bronze, copper, a couple of shades of turquoise and a lovely lime green - and some more stamping in between the layers.

You can see the shine of the metallic paints better in this closeup:

Purty!

The spread - which of course is about how darned excited I am that we're off to Paris in just one week - was finished off with an Eiffel Tower image from a napkin (thanks Tesco!), my Paris themed masking tape, and some writing (dip pen and India Ink).

Oh - and in homage to Portlandia - of course I had to put a bird on it!

In fact I stencilled LOADS of birds on it :)

AJED : 39 / 365

So here I am watching Fergie murder Sweet Child of Mine....

...during the Superbowl half time break (Slash, how could you???), and I kind of pulled this journal page together super quickly....I hope it doesn't show that it took me all of 20 minutes!

I did already have the background done, so all I really had to do was Dymo up some words, and stencil that kinda-clockface and stick the spinner on.

This page is inspired by the latest three-part prompt over at the 'A Year In The Life Of An Art Journal' blog:
 
THE PROMPT: Time
THE SONG: Butterflies & Hurricanes by Muse
PRODUCT/TECHNIQUE: Numbers

The line in the song "the time is now" really resonated with me after the last journal page that I did (where I was thinking aloud that you shouldn't wait for a disaster in your life to make big changes for the better, you should start making those positive changes right now!)

So that's what I ran with.

This art journalling lark is really helping me get my head straight....

PS Go Steelers!


AJED: 37/365

You're going to reap just what you sow

I don't know about you, but for me it's impossible to hear that line sung, without thinking of Heather Small :)  Boy, that little woman had a BIG voice.

I'm now back to working in my regular journal after my few days prepping pages in my travel book.  It's nice to be back, I've missed working in my baby Moleskine.

This page is about my bessie Alison, and how brave and brilliant she is.  Despite much more bad luck and disadvantaged-ness (is that a word?) than most people, by far, she still posted a Facebook status message the other day to say how happy she is with her current situation and what a great day she had had.  That certainly puts some other peoples' doom and gloom status updates into perspective!

I have journalled about her situation and how unfair it is that to get the perfect, creative life she always craved, she has had to lose so much.  And how that's a lesson to all of us not to wait until bad things happen before we make the effort to transform our life into the perfect life it has the potential to be.

All way too deep for a Saturday night.

Look - pretty background before I finished it off (still wrinkly because it was still wet):

You can just see the pattern from the new fancy shaped stencil waste I got from ebay last week, it's very cool.

And here's a close up of the writing within writing on this page - done with the finest nibbed gel pen I've ever seen:

And no, they're not lollipops :)  They are the gorgeous lampwork glass beads that my talented best friend now has the time and kit to make. These were from her 2nd or 3rd try.  So clever!

AJED : 36 / 365

Quickie blog post - Paris pages all prepped and UKStampers Random Swap

This really is going to be a quickie as I'm dead on my feet after a long and stressy day, but I've had a productive evening and have some bits to share

First of all, I've still been journalling every day, and I have now finished all three of my background pages in the trip journal I'll be taking to Paris in the couple of weeks.

Here they all are together (the middle page has photographed badly but I'm too tired to go take the picture again!)

You've already seen the Eiffel Tower one:

 Next the Arc de Triomphe in blues and greens:

And last but certainly not least, the Disneyland Paris page in pinks and purples (what, you thought we were only going for the culture?? lol no way! we want to see Mickey!)

Close up of the castle because I'm actually silly proud that I drew it all by myself:

So -  the plan is to take this book with me to Paris with a fairly minimal kit (a couple of nice journalling pens, a glue stick, a stapler, some wicked cool Japanese masking tape --------> , a charcoal pencil, a date stamp and small ink pad, a small pair of scissors, and that's about it)

I intend to write briefly about the sights we see, glue staple or tape in efemera from our trip (entrance tickets etc, imagery from postcards or leaflets), maybe attempt a few little sketches or doodles of things we come across while we are there.

(and *STOP PRESS* I’ve just ordered a Polaroid Pogo instant sticker printer from ebay – fingers crossed it arrives on time to take along with us – if it does I’ll be able to include photos in the journal too, fab!)

Can't wait!

And the other thing I wanted to blog is the UKStampers "random swap", as I finished my piece for this this evening also.

The premise of the swap is that you are sent 5 random items by your swapee, and have to make something using all 5 items and not too much else.

Efemera was my swap partner, and she sent me this little lot:

• a cardboard circle (like what is left in the middle of a roll of sellotape when all the tape is used up)
• some twill ribbon
• a plastic flower
• a copper something-or-other
• and a cool button

And this is what I made!

Well, the button looked too much like an alien for me not to run with that, the cardboard thing made a brilliant frame, the flower was cut up and coloured with a copper Krylon pen then used to decorate the frame, the copper sheet was cut into stars and the twill tape runs round the outside of the frame with the message "The Truth Is Out There" on it.

This swap was mucho mucho fun, Hopefully they will do another one day.

Until then, time for me to hit the hay.  Night night!

AJED : 34/365