AAJS 4 'Jan's Favourites Journal' Wrap Up

This lovely journal wended its way home in December 2017. Everything went so smoothly and I can't thank all who worked in my journal enough. You all did a superb job and I will treasure this journal.
Here is the cover. It is a small journal made out of an old envelope for the cover and A4 pages of card stock folded in half.

I did a couple of pages to get things started.

And then posted it off to Pam and she did a wonderfully colourful page -'100 weeds-100 wishes'

Then it went to Colleen who did her quirky birds- how cheerful are they! And another lovely butterfly page.

Next I am assuming was Joanna's page as it isn't signed but is next. A beautiful delicate page of fairies - I know this is a favourite of hers.

Joan did a lovely Winnie the Poo page that is pretty and whimsical.

Than Lisa worked her magic with a U2 song and page and also did another really colourful page with a riot of flowers.

Last but not least was Lesley's really beaut page of characters and flowers. Love the colour!

Thank you all to the wonderful artists who worked in my journal.

Joan works in Empowerment

Joans page in Lesley's "Empowerment Journal"

Lesley Journal is A4 and made up of lovely thick paper. The existing pages from other participants are all wonderful and so much better to see them in real life. 

This month I picked a quote I wanted to use first and then made the page to complement it.  I originally envisaged a spread with lots of white space, but it did not turn out that way.  As usual my mind had one thing in mind and my art muse had another.

I started by using a 12x12 stencil which has lots of small shapes randomly placed and translucent texture paste from Tim Holtz,  I used it all over the left page and on top and left side of the right page   I then used some Lindys magicals which are water colours to colour the left page.  As I said before at this point I was thinking lots of white area left uncoloured..I used greens, yellows, blues and pinks from different sets of magicals.  I really just wanted some drips but as usual I was heavy handed with the powers and ended up with lots more colour than I intended. The translucent textured paste took on the colours of the magicals beautifully.

On the right page I imagined a young women with lots of coloured hair making a statement of empowerment. As I can't draw I thought at first that I would cut one out from a magazine and collage on, but then I realised two things, A: as the journal is A4,  finding a face that I did not have to scan and enlarge  and still be able to print out in required size after cutting out was going to be a task in itself.  B: as the page was all about empowerment, should'nt I take the bull by the horn and try to draw my own face and have enough courage to use it. And so it came to pass that I drew freehandly a face on the right side and painted her up with some other watercolors I had.  Apart from vampire like teeth and a long crooked skinny nose, it was passable.  I could live with it mostly but not that nose, so I covered it up and tried again.   The journal then sat on my table for a few days, whilst I decided if I was going to let her live or was going to gesso her out completely.  By the time I had fiddled with her nose and eyes each day she waited, she kinda grew on me and I decided she could stay. I later on  added some feathers and bling to her hair and dress.

After adding some background stamping to both pages, I decided it still needed something. I then added some more magicals, this time some orange and pinks. I also dragged out some gold leaf sheets I bought about 9 months ago but had not yet used.  The foils were a beautiful copper base with green and blue type effects so fitted in with the colours already on the page. The pictures do not do justice to the fantastic sheen and colour of these.  I rubbed on first one colour where I had placed the size and later on when I accepted that I was not going to have much white space and that I should embrace the page that was emerging, I add a heap more in a slightly different colour pattern. I put it on the left page and only on the right page where the textured paste pattern was. I also added a small amount to her hair.

I then stuck on some borders I had in compatible colours to left and right pages.  The left got a multicolour one and the right a metallic pink one. Just as I had decided that it was probably done, and I should print out my quote and put it on, I found a packet of bright gold leaves on a banner. Probably a purchase from an op shop at some time, and I thought I had to add some of these to the page.  As they were gold rather than bronze I painted them with a bronze inka gold paste. I added one to the girl's hair and two to ground my quote.  The quote is from Coco Chanel.

I then sprayed the whole page with a matt protective spray. It is very different from what I imagined when I started out, but I started this year saying that I was going to let the art have control rather than my right brain, so hopefully this is proof that I am succeeding somewhat.  I hope you like it Lesley. 

Inital face

After I change the nose 

Joans page in Jan's Journal "Favourites"

Jan's journal with the theme of " Favourite" is another lovely small journal.  It already has some gorgeous layouts created in it.  I was going away for a three day crafting weekend and this was one of the things I took with me to do.   I had planned to do heaps of things but actually did not finish one thing.

I started off thinking that I would fulfill the theme  by using my favourite inks and other media and would find a phrase to suit.  However my crafting muse was no where to be found that weekend and after gessoing over the background twice, because I did not like what I had done.  I finally settled on a pale pink background created using distress oxides.  I did no more to it that weekend.

Picking it up some time later in week at home, I was still not sure where I was going with it, so I added to background with some stencils and background stamps.   I then stenciled, drew and painted some flowers and grass along the bottom.  I then decided that some of the flowers needed to be raised so I used clear texture paste to paint on top of some of the flowers.  I still had no idea where I was going, so I thought I would approach it from another direction and find a quote that had something to do with favourites.  I started flipping through some books that were on my table, one of which was an older copy of Winnie the Pooh, which I have used in collage etc, so not much of it left and about two pages in I came across the phrase on the left page,  and a few pages down, the quote on the right page.

Now most of you know that I cannot draw to save myself, but the drawings in this little book were so simple, I thought that I could perhaps copy them.  Now to find a place for Pooh to sit amongst the grass.  I squeezed him in somewhat on top of a couple of flowers and drew Piglet further up the page.
Although no masterpieces, I was pleased with the drawings for me.  I then wrote the quotes by hand in pencil and went over them in gel pen.

After all that it was a very simple page in the end.  I hope Jan will see past the bad drawing and will know that I tried my best.

October = House.

This month it was my pleasure to receive the beautifully made art journal belonging to Joan Mannix.  Joan's theme was House.  She included some notes for guidance and it was time to put my thinking cap on.

I discovered a quote I liked and set about working out how I could illustrate it and this is what I did.

I began with a background process I discovered on You Tube and liked. Included scraping paint and using stencils.

 Added some stamping.

My focal point is my cat, cut from a gelli print I had made at some time and some interesting handmade paper for a welcome mat.

Then came my quote....Home is where the cat is.  Mind snap!!  Home not House.  Sorry Joan.

Close up of my cat guarding the front door.

My quote.  

I do hope you like it Joan.

Joan's page in Pam's "Teesha Moore style" journal

Pam's journal is a lovely almost square journal made from good quality watercolour paper.  It already has some great pages done by Pam and the other artists participating in Round 3 of the circle/travelling journal event.

Pam has chosen the theme of "Teesha Moore Inspired".  When I first got it last month and I was talking to Lisa Jones, I flippantly said to her, that it was my worse nightmare to have to do a layout in this style.  Don't get me wrong, I like Teesha's art journal pages, and have since she first started using Zettiology in her art. It is just that it is not my "goto at anytime" style.   I read the information that Pam included on Zettiology and oohed and aahed over the layouts already in the journal, but I was still not feeling it.  Now I know I could have gone to Pinterest or the web and downloaded some digital sheets to do the layouts but in my mind that is cheating and taking the easy way out and besides I did not want to be unduly influenced by the the examples.

I started by going through magazines and pulling out pages with colourful backgrounds to be cut into strips to make the borders around the two and half pages. Pam's journal has flaps on every other page and the next blank page had the flap. I cut up about five different pages with some repeating colours.
Then I flipped through the magazines to find some interesting faces, legs, arms,and clothes that could be used for putting together some weird creatures. I also remembered I had some great wrapping paper that I have shared with a few of you in the group early in the year that had lots of doodling and colour and some animals, so I got the sheet and cut out some bits and pieces from there.

I still had no idea of what I was going to do, but I put some gesso, followed by dylusions paints in  various colours down on the page.  It was a mistake putting different colours, I should have used only one colour on each page, but I did not realise this till after I had started to collage and by then it was too late to change it. I then stenciled using stencils from Mike Deakin and Tim Hotze and white and gold paint. Anyway now as forecasted the nightmare began.  I must have had about twenty bodies and heads and loose limbs on the table by now and (A) I still had no idea how to begin, and (B) I constantly kept losing the cutout I was looking for on my crowded untidy table and everytime I could not find a piece, I had to turn it upside down even further.  After two hours I had managed to stick a border using the pieces around two sides of all the pages.  Did I like it, was I happy with it?
No, but it was a start.  Five days and nights later, after changing my mind a few times, I actually ended up with most of the pages done.  Now came the second part of the nightmare, I hate my writing and I had to actually write on the pages.  For this I apologise to Pam in advance.  I should have just left the pages with no phrases it would have been better. Unfortunately once I wrote with a black posca pen, it was too late to change it.  I tried going over it a few times with alternating between white and black paint, but I just made it considerable worse, so again I am sorry for the terrible job Pam.  You can always paint over the top when you get it home.  Anyway I managed to invoke my inner Teesha Moore, but maybe it would have been better if she stayed hidden. LOL.
 

Joan Mannix's page in Colleen Mulholland's Journal

Colleen's journal theme is "Things with wings".  It is a lovely little journal made from 2 signatures with only two pages or 4 spreads in each signature.  I thought that others would  probably use birds, fairies, dragonflies or angels in their layout so I wanted to find something else.   When the kids were young they used to love flying their kites and I vaguely remembered that the actual kite bit  is referred to as the wing, so I went with that for my theme. 

I used distress oxide ink pads for my background.  I used about 8 colours all up. The great thing about oxide ink, is that provided you dry it in between layers, you can combine warm and cool colors
without ending up with mud.   I then stamped randomly with a stamp, using back and front which gave me two slightly different patterns.  I  used stazon ink to stamp them.  Using gesso I stamped some circles and using my glue gun I put some circles in the middle of the stamp circles.  This gave it a bit more texture.  I had some clear round stickers in colours similar to what I had used on the background, so I stuck them on randomly. 

I printed a girl  I had in my digital stash for ages and cut and pasted her.  Then I paper pieced 4 kites and stuck some string and the kites on the page.  I also use some scraps to stick embellishments on the strings of the kites.  I doodled etc on the girl to give her a bit of lift.  Whilst I was doing this the words from "Lets go fly a kite" from Mary Poppins kept going through my head, so I wrote sentences from the lyrics around the stickers and the stamped circles.  I finished the page off with  faux stitching around the edge and Distress oxide Vintage Photo ink all around the edges.  Colleen had included tags in her journal for each of us and asked that we make one in return.  I made mine to match my page.  I have made a quick video which wont upload here but I will include a link in the comments on the AASG page, when I post notice of this blog.  Hope it is ok for you Colleen.

Joan's Fairy Tale

Joan's page in Joanna's Journal.

Joanna's journal is "Fairy Tales", anything from Disney to Grimm is how Joanna describes the content she is inviting participants to create a page on.  She also said that her favourite fairy tale was Snow White and how she favoured Maleficent the wicked stepmother.  In every version of Snow White that there is, the Queen has a different name, ranging from the original Grimm story where she was called Queen Grimhilde to the later versions from Disneyland where she was called Maleficent, so I will just refer to her as the Wicked Queen.  As I too have a soft spot for the Wicked Queen after playing her in a local production as a child which ran for about three weekends, so  I decided to do my page featuring the Wicked Queen.

I painted the background in blues and mauves and a bit of green at the bottom.  Using a stencil I painted some stars in the background at the top of the page.  I also used a stencil with textured paste to do some feathers on the right of the page as a background for the queen and I used a wall stencil with graphic textured paste from Finabar to represent the castle wall on the left page.    I then used some peacock features on top of the stenciled feathers to further embellish the area behind where the Queen cutout was going.  I also used a stencil to create some trees and deer on the page to represent the forest surrounding the castle to which Snow White ran away and where the Queen tells the huntsman to find her and cut out her heart.   I used three different books about Snow White to cut out a couple of versions of the Queen, the mirror and Snow White .   I cut the center out of the mirror and stuck some silver paper in the frame to make the mirror more realistic.  I stuck a small version of Snow White on it.  I then lightly painted some Inka Gold in white over the top of some of the textured wall.  I stuck the large version of the Queen on top of the feathers and the smaller version and the mirror on the left page.

I painted the Queen's dress and Snow White's dress with glitter.  I used Glossy accents on the Queen's  crowns, her amulet and the box containing the heart to give them a 3D appearance.
I then stuck a cut out verse from one of the Snow White books at the top of the left page.





I will be sending onto Lisa Jones on the 1st August.

Working in Joan's Houses Journal - AAJS4 - Lisa

I finished my entry in Joan's lovely Houses journal... and then realised I'd forgotten to take progress pics.  Oh well!

Joan's brief was that the journal page had to feature a house somewhere, so that was pretty easy!  I've been playing with teabag art a lot, so decided I wanted to incorporate this into my spread.  My sky is watercoloured, but everything else is collaged teabags.

I have a few friends and family keeping their teabags for me, so have a mixture of black tea, raspberry tea and chamomile tea bags.  I had always thought that the raspberry teabags would look the best, as they're a beautiful pinky colour, but funnily enough they seem to go purpley-blue when you glue them down!  

Some of the teabags were watercoloured before I added them, and some left au naturale.  I actually think that the brown bags look really interesting; especially the ones that have little spots of mould on them (which is what can happen if you don't let them dry out properly...!)

So here are my houses, based very loosely on the Painted Ladies from San Francisco.  I drew the houses first with Micron pens so it would be easier to cut out the shapes.  I have to say I really didn't like some of the colours that came out, but they looked a lot better after going over them again when dry with a Micron.

For the left hand side of the page, I drew a valley, also tea-bagged, and looked for some inspirational words about houses, not homes - remembering there is a difference!

I couldn't really find a quote, lyric or poem that I liked, so decided I'd have to come up with something myself.  I'll call it a poem, and since my faux calligraphy is not great, here's what it says!

A house, solid, sturdy & strong

A haven, a sanctuary, a fort

A yearning when far away

A slow release of breath

A quiet satisfaction

When home is in sight

Love lives here.

And here's a pic of the whole spread.  I hope you like it Joan, I really enjoyed working in it!

Cheers, Lisa xx

Joan's House Journal

Beginning the new Round of Travelling or Circling Journals.

The new round of traveling journals begin in AASG on July 1st.  It was with both excited anticipation and anxious nervousness that most of us waited to pop our journal in the mail box on or close to the 1st.  As I had only a few days previously welcomed home my traveling journal from 2015 I felt a bit like I was just doing the next journal in the round.  My new theme was "House" not "Home" as I had done a journal called home some years ago in another group.  After deciding on the theme a month or so ago, I was still a bit uncertain what I was going to do in my journal myself. I am in round #4 group.

My journal is a handmade one  created especially for me by Julia Deane.  It is Stonehenge watercolour of 285gsm so should stand up to any  mixed media thrown at it.  It measures 9inch by 9inch and is about 10 double page layouts including the cover.

I painted the front and back cover in dylusions and other  acrylic paints.  The front was done in colour blocks and the back was just a "lets put paint on and see where it lands" situation. The colours I used were greens, yellows, orange and blue.  I then used various wall stencils to further enhance the back and front. 

I used house stencils from Mike Deakin Art on the back and a couple on the front of the cover.  The beach house stencil, was one I had in my stash for about 20 yrs and originally used on tiles in a kitchen I renovated in an previous house I lived in.  I stuck some chipboard stickers to spell house on one of the colour blocks and coated them in glossy accents.

The front cover has a wide flap on inside and I painted it orange and used another Mike Deakin Art stencil.  I then painted, stenciled and doodled on  the inside of the cover in turquoise and orange. I printed out my contract on one side and mailing order and backstory of my journal on the other side of a piece of paper and put it in a plastic bag which was then put in the pocket.  I left the inside back cover unpainted and stuck a recycle piece of packaging to the back page to form a pocked for tags for other artists to write their details on.

I printed out a digital postcard I created for a swap some 15 yrs ago . The verse was from a poem I wrote when I was about 12yrs old, so you can see I have been obsessed with the theme for a long time.  As I had very little ink left in my printer the card printed in very muted colours so I used paint colours to blend in with it. I covered my page in old dictionary pages.   I used impasto through 3 different stencils to create texture in the background, then painted over it leaving the word house from the dictionary page exposed. I used pink, pale blue, grey, and turquoise paint.  I then used a little bit of Inka Gold in silver and lilac to enhance it. I layed down a couple of small doilies and some paper embellishments behind the postcard and off centered it as the focus of the page.

My two page spread was a row of little paper pieced houses.  I used watercolour for the sky and acrylic paint for the grass.  I stenciled over the grass with two colours using a stencil from China.
I use Tim Holtz washi tape for a dividing border.   This page was inspired by a previous spread I had done in another of my journals which in turn had been inspired by a spread done by Lynne Gray at a crafting weekend we attended in March. I did not like how this one turned out as much as I liked my originally one but it was done.  I am looking forward to seeing what the other artists in this round create in my journal.

Lisa J's Summer Journal - Home!

I sent my Summer journal off on its journey some 13 months ago and it returned home a few days ago.  Some of the pages were a surprise as not everyone blogged about their entries.

So here it is in its entirety!   I made the journal after checking out a few videos online, and it hasn't fallen apart which is very pleasing!  Here's the cover:

On the first page I wrote some stuff about me, and my rules/requirements for this journal.  Basically, what does summer mean to you?  

I did the first page in watercolour, from a photo my husband Scott took at dusk, down at the beach we like to frequent when we can get away for a weekend.  Which is not often enough with work and kids' sports!

The next page is a collage done by Robyn.  So bright and colourful!

Gail's page is also a collage, and I think some may be napkins?  I really love the quote, it's so true!

Next is Pam's entry - a mix of painting and collage.  The sand has little tiny beads through it and the water has heaps of texture too.  Love the bathing boxes!

I hadn't seen Nat's entry, so it was a wonderful surprise!  A gorgeous painting of a girl up close with a soldier crab.  And the crab has great features that you probably can't see well enough in a photo.

Next up is Wendy's cool surfer dude!  This page is a mix of painting and collage and I love how it turned out.

Lee's page was another that I hadn't seen.  It's a digital piece that has been printed and it's so different and quirky!

Deb's spread is all about looking out the kitchen window to the view beyond.  Wouldn't it be nice to look out at the beach and see the sun setting down over the ocean!  I love all the elements in this page.

Rose's page is so simple but so effective!  She likes to watch the tennis in summer.

Joan's page is a wonderful mix of painting and collage.  All the elements flow so well in this piece and I really like the composition.  Great waves too!

This page didn't photograph very well.  Each January, the ABC play old Countdown episodes on Rage on Saturday nights!  Unfortunately they often start around midnight, but if you can keep your eyelids open for an hour or two, it's so great to watch!  I've always loved music, especially 80s stuff.  So this page is a homage to Countdown and Molly Meldrum, and some of my favourite songs of that era.

I found this cool saying in Pinterest so decided to use it in my journal.  Who doesn't like ice cream?!  When we go down to Ocean Grove, we'll often go to Queenscliff - to wander the town, and buy a double ice cream from the wonderful Nordic ice cream shop there!  

And lastly I put some blank tags in pockets in the back page so the artists that did a page in my journal could tell me a bit about themselves.  Thank you to those that filled one out!

I went a bit overboard with putting my journal together so I still have heaps of blank pages left.  I won't post it out again; at A4 size it's a bit heavy and pricey, but I'll fill it up eventually!  I've asked my daughter Mel to contribute a page when she doesn't have so much homework (year 11...)

Thanks again to everyone that contributed to my journal; it's a real treasure and something that I can keep and look back on forever!

I know we had heaps of problems with the last two swaps, but I can't wait to participate again!

Cheers, Lisa