Pass the Book

'Raw Art Journalling - Making Meaning' by Quinn Macdonald.

I keep toying with Art Journalling and I was keen to read this book, but I still don't feel very confident about it.

Quinn Macdonald writes well on getting rid of your Art Gremlins and Giving Yourself Permission.  I did try Doodling on my Month in Numbers for April and quite enjoyed the process, but wasn't in love with the result.

She gives some great ideas for playing with words, which I've saved for the summer when I have more time and I love the idea of using 'Imagery as a Background' but I have yet to spot a suitable photo-op.

 There are some good ideas for making your own journals as well.

Whilst I, personally,  was not super inspired by this book, I found the visual imagery very interesting and I think it would be fantastic if you were a bit further along the AJ journey that I am.

Leave me a comment if you would like the next turn with Raw Art Journalling and I'll draw a winner after the Bank Holiday on 8th May

March in numbers, and some Smash pages

Inspired by 'Raw Art Journalling', the Pass-the-Book book I received from Amy, I decided to journal and doodle my March in Numbers. I'm not in love with it, I found it very difficult, but I think my Smash book is a good place to try out these techniques.

My numerical March included:

My Grandmother's 90th birthday

The 100th anniversary of the school where P teaches

Our 13th wedding anniversary

4 meals out

2 shows of R's play, 'The Princess & The Pea'

9 1/2 hours of Speaking & listening exams

5 Mufti days

High temperatures of 21C

While we're at it ( and while I'm in a French bar with internet connection), I'll show you a couple of other Smash pages I've made recently.

2 Art Journal pages for October

2 pages I haven't shared here yet. This first is an experiment, which I quite like. I embossed a sheet of Core'dinations with stars and then went around some with a white gel pen. I added star gems to others. I then stamped a school raffle ticket and tore it into strips. The quotation from Jostein Gaarder is one I particularly like. The chances of us ever being born are tiny (if any of our ancestors had died before having children, we would not be us) but we only see the 'winning tickets', the living people. That makes me realise how lucky I am to be alive.

This page is a photograph of a suspension bridge in France. I mounted it onto a sheet of paper with a stripe at the 'horizon' and then simply extended all the straight lines with a white gel pen, once again.

What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday? 108 - Lots of new goodies

Oh I do enjoy this blogging thing. On my desk today are no fewer than 3 free pressies from friends in Blogland. The little blue mini book is a new product by Scrapbookery and I have the onerous (not) task of playing with it and then blogging my opinion. Watch this space next month for my review.
In my WOYWW easel are 2 handmade cards I recieved with gifts.
'Making Christmas Scrapbooks' and the bead board are both gifts from the lovely Mel. I do know it's the middle of summer, but don't for a moment think I'm going to wait until December to read my new book. I lurve Christmas at any time of year.

Mel also sent me this gorgeous little birdhouse which I had admired on her blog. It already has a place on my new bookcase. I'm so happy to get my books back on display, having waited for new bookcases since last October. The few empty shelves will be filled as soon as I get my last boxes of stored books from my Mum's, but in the meantime, it makes a fab lightbox for flash photography.

You can also see my AJ and a trial 'Kite' page, on which I am trying out an idea before I commit it to a full 12x12 page. I haven't quite got the hang of using AJing just for the process; at the moment it is my place to try out techniques and products. Here I inked the background with cotton wool and my first ever Distress Ink. (Hate to admit it, but it went on like a dream, I might yet find myself succumbing to Holtz-mania), then printed with bubble wrap, something I have seen done loads of times but never tried. I learned that promarkers show through to the other side of the page and my photo kites are not actually kite-shaped; they are diamonds. The pink facing page is a quote about tea using another technique I have admired but never used - journalling inside wavy lines. This was successful and I susequently used it on the 4th birthday LO which I posted last week.

If you want to see some other desks and work in progress, head over to Julia at the Stamping Ground.

In other news this week, my daughter, M, has just received a fantastic report at the end of her nursery year, and my son R performed in his class special assembly and joined in his School Sports Days (yes, plural) with gusto. I find parenting the hardest job ever, but moments like these make it worthwhile.

Color Combo Blog Hop

Welcome to the June Color Combo Blog Hop! (American spelling with deference to our hostess, Amy)
If you arrived from istampscrapcraft, you are in the right place! If you are here and didn’t come from the previous blog, I am listing the hop below my post so you can go start back at the beginning if you wish!

I liked this colour (sorry, can't help myself!) combination Amy chose for us, and I decided to share one of my very first art journal pages inspired by it. I painted a calendar page with sparkle paint stripes then stamped cupcakes over the top but I used much more pastel shades than the inspiration colours, as this was all about my daughter's 4th birthday. The labels are from presents she received and the candles are very important - they feature in every conversation M has about her birthday!

                                

http://alyssephotographs.blogspot.com/
http://helenascreativemaven.blogspot.com/
http://istampscrapcraft.blogspot.com/
http:/handmadebykirsty.blogspot.com
http://www.vsws.typepad.com/
http://adriennefalzon.blogspot.com/
http://www.scrapworthylives.com/http://spud-pickle.blogspot.com/
http://www.curlyscrapbooker.blogspot.com/
http://sugarandscrap.blogspot.com/
http://digipage-blog.everything-digital-scrapbooking.com/
http://1200somemiles.blogspot.com/
http://www.MichelleRoycroft.blogspot.com/
http://craftygoodies.blogspot.com/
http://scrapyourlife.net/
http://www.snapsandsnippets.blogspot.com/
http://scribblesstickingstitchingstroking.blogspot.com/

Now head on over to Valerie's blog to continue on this fabulous color combo hop!

Happy Hopping!!

My Freedom. Inspiration

family

blogs

word games

new novels

beautiful landscapes

craft magazines

France

colour

travel

(Note to self - no need to use quite so much PVA glue!)

My freedom. Time #2

I have now completed both sides of the Time journal page inspired by Shim's 'My Freedom'.

                         

As both P and I are teachers and we have 2 school age children, our family timetable changes radically in the holidays so I needed to record this. The Holiday Time journalling reads:

More time to:

read in bed in the morning
eat fresh croissants
take day trips
craft
watch DVDs

prepare elaborate dinners

go out for lunch

relax.

I stuck to the same colour scheme and used the same clock and numbers for the second page, although I didn't have enough scraps left of the original papers, but I and tore the papers into free strips, rather than the regimented patchwork, to represent a less rigid timetable.

Feast your eyes, too, on this delicious punnet of strawberries I've just picked in the garden. 500g of juicy fruitiness. I made 3 jars of jam last week, so this lot are just for eating. One of my favourite things about early summer is having fresh berries for breakfast.

My Freedom - Time

How things come together. Coincidence. God. Fate. Serendipity. Whichever you prefer (I've typed the word serendipity twice in the last 2 weeks - cool word), it seems to be working for me at the moment. 

As you know from my last few rambling posts, I have recently decided to try art journalling. This week Shimelle offered to donate the cost of one of her classes to The Girls’ Fund , so, in the name of a good cause, I picked one I haven't done before; 'My Freedom', which includes some examples of art journalling option as well as straight scrapbooking. I didn't even know Shimelle kept an art journal, but the pages I have looked at so far are very recognisably hers. That's encouraging for me - they are allowed to be 'scrapbooky'.

Again coincidentally, the first prompt is Time; 'Keep a schedule of your daily routine' - I did that only last week! So, I have decided to make this my new project. I am going to work through the archived class at my own pace to explore the new medium of art journalling.

For the first topic of Time, Shimelle set us an interesting list of questions about our concept of time . I can't share them all, as this is a paid class, but the one which spoke most to me, in the light of A Week in the Life of Me, was What three things seem to take most of your time?

Answer: Classroom teaching time + prep+marking and admin= 25 hrs per week.

                Blogging / emails / computer time=16hrs per week.

                Preparing children's meals, sitting and nagging them to eat, then clearing up afterwards = 11hrs per week. 

 

I continued the maths: 56hrs sleeping, 5 hours driving and 5 hours crafting in an average term-time week. (Out of an available 168 hours in a week)

I decided to go with this statistical  theme and created this page, which I am quite happy with.

I drew the clock first on grid paper with oil pastels and cut it out. I was feeling brave, so I took a deep breath and covered the page with black acrylic paint. I then obscured the paint with a patchwork of patterned paper, but hey! This is about the process, right? After writing the journalling, I realised I needed transparent clock hands so bent them from silver-plated wire with my jewellery pliers. I don't think you can see them very well. Sorry! The chipboard numbers were inked and embossed.

I have it in mind to create a facing page about our holiday timetable, which is always much more relaxed, with similar colours and a matching clock but more flowing lines.

 

A first attempt at Art Journalling, and a change of heart

9.30 am
Thanks for your comments and advice about art journalling, The thing that came over most strongly was. "It doesn't matter. There are no rules". Now, that is not the easiest thing for me to digest. I like rules and guidelines. I like to know I'm 'doing it right'. Still, on the last day of May, I grasped the bull by the horns and sat down with M to do some messy stuff.

I covered an unused calendar page with pearly paint and stamped all over with flowers.  I found some little chipboard embellishments I'd had for ages which matched perfectly so adhered those, together with some fabric letters. Finally, I added journalling around the edge and a doodle in the corner.  So far, so scrapbooky, and not too scary. In fact, it was fun. I think my problem is that, unlike with scrapbooking and cardmaking, the focus is on the process, not the result. I kept thinking "Where is this going? What am I going to use it for?" And, of course, the answer is "Nothing". If I do go for this and buy a journal, it will work as a first page, though it's a bit too 'pretty'' and colour co-ordinated; not as edgy as the fab journals I see on other blogs.

For the moment, It's pinned to my inspiration board above my desk. We all have to start somewhere, and it hasn't cost me anything (yet) and allowed me a lovely hour spent with my daughter. Maybe that's really what I should focus on. Thanks for your help. Any further comments will be very much appreciated.

10.30am
No sooner had I written this and saved it to post later, than I started catching up with blogs on my Dashboard and came across this. I had never heard of SMASHbooks, but someone on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge team must have been reading my mind.  I thought I wanted art journalling, but this is exactly what I was looking for. A way to jazz up my record keeping of my holiday, which can involve all the family (scrapbooking is mine alone) I can include some art journalling as well, but it doesn't need to take centre stage. I'm off to buy a cheap book to start things with and then I'll get counterfeiting (although I think I may place an order for a real SMASH pen - very cool)

Art journalling - any advice?

As you know, we are lucky enough to have a holiday house in France. I've scrapped our holidays there often in the last 3 years, and we tend to return to the same places every year, so my albums are strating to get a bit repetitive.

I'd like to ring the changes this summer and make an art journal. However, I've never done anything like this before so I want to get started now. I can't draw or paint at all so I think I'm more likely to focus on the collage / journalling aspect (ie: a bit like scrapbooking!) P enjoys oil painting while we are in France, and M loves stamping so I like the idea of creating a family journal, but I don't really have a clue how to set about it.

I'd be very grateful for any tips. What are the essentials I need to buy? What kind of book do I use? What glue? Do I need to paint every page first? What are the dos and don'ts? Any blogs I should follow?