Pathways in Robyn's Garden by Lee

It was necessary to include a small pic of yourself in the spread.

 My i-phone won't upload so I had to make do with the PC cam, not a great shot but you get the idea.

Tidal Cafe

This is a beautiful journal owned by Joan Mannix.  As always I was very nervous approaching it.  This was a different idea to what I am used to and I was not sure of the materials and the correct product to stick the pages in with.  Hope it's OK Joan.

The idea came to me easily, but the execution was more difficult.  Quite a few years ago I, my daughter and her children had a holiday at Iluka NSW.  We went to the co-op and then wandered along the shoreline.  There imprinted in the sand were the marks from little stingrays, where they had been feeding on sand worms along the water line.  So that was my theme.

As a city girl I had never seen anything like this.  No wonder it stuck in my memory.

I called the piece Tidal Cafe.

 Close up of title.

The marks from the feeding stingrays.

There is always a Mama standing guard. 

Gail's work in Enchanted

Hi Lisa i just loved doing this page,

hope you like it,

Again i didn't know when to stop,

 I hope it is not too much.

Deb's work in EMOTIONS

This piece for me was very personal. It developed as a result of finding out my nephew (who is four and a half) got diagnosed with Leukemia, and other members of my family falling seriously ill with cancer as well. I just seemed to worry and the downward spiral continued. I wanted to show that although we all go through bad times, the real courage and strength comes through when we decide we've had enough and need to look for positives. This is HARD process that needs to be reinforced and controlled with a will like iron which I why I have ended the spiral with positive words that I am going to focus on.
Anyway.. I messed about with the background for a month. I hated it all, I lacked inspiration and energy, so I just kept slapping on paints and stencils, then gesso and starting again. I used Greek texts to collage with as sometimes that is what I thought the Doctors were speaking. Worry (the portrait) literally emerged this morning as well as the journaling..it took me 3 hours..and my heart feels lighter for it. This is a mixture or acrylic paints, Gelatos, Big Brush pens, Posca paint pens, impasto medium, stencils and sprays. I'm afraid I haven't described the artistic process very well, but I'll try for the next one. Until then, I wish you Love.

Lee works in "Monochromatic"

inspired by artists I admire

I love the use of see thru plastic and stitching with barely visible words and wanted to try it for myself and love the loneliness of a single person with a long shadow it says so much with such a simple image.

Wendy working in Robyn's Journal

I decided to do a journal page based on a country I have always wanted to visit, that being Egypt, in Robyn's Travel the World Journal. I have called my layout "Sightseeing In Egypt". I printed an Egyptian dollar note  and a map off the internet, drew a gold statue of one of their Gods, drew a pyramid and added texture with modelling paste. I also drew a couple of banners with hieroglyphics on them and as I didn't own any Egyptian cotton...lol...I used some cotton thread for a border. Hoping this is acceptable for you Robyn. Thank you.

My Garden for Robyn

Moving house took a "bit" longer than expected... its not that I've never moved before (I've moved heaps of times), but having stayed put for just over 5 years, I didn't realise just how much stuff I'd collected over the years! Thankfully, I found time to create the page in Robyn's journal before I packed and even remembered (nearly) to take photos each step of the way :)

So here I am, in Little Ol' Adelaide - we're actually in a small coastal suburb just under the dot marked for the city. I was going to say "a millimetre south of the city" but if you're on the phone looking at the pic, it would seem I was on Kangaroo Island! lol :) KI would be a marvellous place to be but here on the mainland is nice too!

I started my page with watercolours on the background, trying to be patient as I waited for it to dry between layers. I cut out the wombats, birds, dragonflies and frog pic from scrapbook papers I've had forever. The dragonflies are acrylic paper (like textured mixed media paper) and cut with my Cuttlebug die-cutter. I added a bit of glitter to the fairy wings and gave the frog a little sparkly crown... as all Frog Princes do :)

We do have frogs visit from time to time (some think their croaking is from crickets but I know better! lol). And everyone has fairies in the garden! Just because we don't see them very often doesn't mean they're not there.

The wombats were printed as one piece but I didn't like how they sat (stood!) on the page. I'd love to say we have wombats in our garden but it wouldn't be true. These gorgeous animals need room to move and our garden is a bit too small... would be so cool though :) They give the best hugs! lol :)

I do have lots of gorgeous flowers in our garden... some are weeds (dandilions, thistles and soursobs) but we also have friendly plants like trees, daisies, marigolds, golden wattle and others. Now we're with Mum and Dad, all our plants have a much better chance of living a long, fruitful life! I just don't have green thumbs like my Dad does :)

Now and then dragonflies will fly about, chasing each other in the warm sunshine. We're so lucky to see them, they are such incredible creatures!

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos fly by now and then. I've yet to inspire one or two to visit for longer than a minute, but one day it might happen. We have galahs visit and play in the birdbaths (and spoggies, blackbirds, starlings, magpies and Aussie doves) and beautiful pelicans glide about the sky, spiralling around in the thermals as they fly past.

So that's my garden :) We're very lucky and grateful to have so much beauty in and around our home. I hope Robyn, you like the page! It does have a photo of me as well but I forgot to take a final photo of the page before the book was sent on its way.

Thanks for reading my post! Hope it made you smile :) Have a happy creative day! xx Jenny

There's Dragons in my Garden

Some days I can work out the subject but just don't know what else to put on the page. In this case, I had Robyn Osborns's garden journal and I wanted to use the little dragon lizard that lives in my front garden. So I thought, what the heck, I'm just going to start and see what happens. 

So I gessoed the page cause that's how I start everything, got out my grey inktense pencil and just started to draw. I love my lizard.  He appears occasionally when I garden. I know he likes my garden cause it is fairly wild and natural. So I try not to disturb him too often. He's a great cooperator. He even waits for me to run inside,find my phone and come back for photos. Gotta love that. 

Then I wanted to put in my location so I thought about the compass I used in the shipwrecked DAJ that we did as an art swap not long ago. I image transferred it in place. Then I got the exact coordinates of my studio from the compass app on my phone and hey presto, the page was nearly done. 

I also added some journaling and a tag with some details about me to make the page more meaningful for Robyn. I was very tempt d to go all nerdy and write about the biology of the lizard but I decided to keep on theme. 

It's strange how close we are all becoming even though most of us have never met. 

I hope Robyn likes my page. It's very different to everything else in the book. 

cheers

Sharon Williams