The missing bits - part 1

Wow, I only did one other Journal 52 between August & November, but managed four Mission Inspirations and nine Colour Me Positives! That means that I'm going to split my catch-up posts in two - one for J52 & MI, the other for CMP.

How on earth am I going to keep up next year when I have additional (paid for) tutorials to watch and then make art for - I may have to drop something. Anyway, here goes.....

Journal 52 Week 44 - Heritage

So the challenges this week were for a spread inspired by Halloween, or one for Day of the Dead honouring your ancestry. I went down the ancestry path because we don't really celebrate Halloween in Australia. I made a background using stencils with fleur-de-lis and shamrocks to indicate my French and Irish lineage. I drew the girl with acrylic paints and used some black and white paint pens for detail. I wrote surnames of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents in the girls hair,and added a couple of arrows to indicate the convict in my family's background.

Mission Inspiration - June

The hardest part of this month's challenge was finding some food can labels. I didn't want to use anything in my pantry, but I didn't really have any that I could "rescue" from the recycling. Luckily I had a small can of soup for lunch one day and then used a tea bag wrapper.

I wanted to make a page about the Murray Goulburn crisis where MG had not only lowered their prices for milk but had back dated it and forced many dairy farmers into debt. It was essentially a heartless decision by heartless men for heartless investors with no thought for the dairy farmers who started the co-op in the first place.

As one farmer said - management and executives of MG were either complicit in putting this particular strategy in place or were ignorant of it. Neither made them look like competent business people!!

I don't often get political - but this made my blood boil, especially since the man in charge then left with millions in his pocket - definitely COMPLICIT.


Mission Inspiration - August

Obviously using map fragments pointed towards a travel page or quote of some sort. I ripped up a map of Victoria for the first layer and used a butterfly from a colouring book with thread trailing out behind it. I think I missed step 8 - but who can tell?

Mission Inspiration - September

I think I did all the steps for this one, but did everything in the wrong order and my paint layer was way too thin and my girl does not stand out as well as she could. I used watercolour pencils for her face, acrylics for the feather stencils and StazOn ink pads for the stamps. It's all a bit of a mess!!

Mission Inspiration - October / Colour Me Positive Week 43 - Dreams

This month I completely missed the bit about using a baby wipe for the black gesso - so mine is painted on thickly. This was one month where I found it hard to fit everything into the design, so it all looks a bit messy - again! But, big bonus, I was able to use this for week 43 of the Colour Me Positive challenge.

Well that wasn't too bad - just the rest of the colour Me Positive pages to do now. I hope you enjoyed this post.

Cheers, Jenny.

Lots to catch up on

Well, since my last post I've been in hospital for an operation, had six weeks off work, gone back to work for three days a week instead of four, had my garden tidied up and found a cleaning lady. I've also completed lots of my mixed media challenges and signed up to "Let's Face It 2017".

I attended another cousin's funeral in September - very sudden heart attack, but on a brighter note, a couple of weeks ago, my sister and I went to another cousin's 75th birthday celebration.

Fabulous day had by all. She is quite blind so another cousin organized a petting zoo where she could hold the baby animals, and a didgeridoo player who demonstrated various didjeridoos and explained about how they were made and how that made them sound. A very unusual birthday indeed!

So first of all, hospital - I had a cyst on one of my ovaries, or so they thought. Turns out it was attached to my uterus, so I ended up having a partial hysterectomy. That meant at least six weeks off work, particularly as my job involves some medium to heavy lifting. It also involves no heavy work around the house - no lifting, carrying or reaching up! As I live on my own that was hard because you can't do very much without lifting, carrying or reaching for things.

Luckily I have a very nice sister-in-law who took me grocery shopping each week and the hospital social worker organised a cleaner and bed-maker for me (mattresses are heavy). I got to sit or lie around for most of the day reading, watching telly or snoozing.

While I was off work, the other cataloguers split my work between them and E who I replaced, came back two days a week to do one library. This was good because it meant that I could ease my way back into work for three days a week, which I am still doing as I cannot decide if I want to go back to four days or stay on three (if I can manage money-wise).

The garden was done by one my co-worker's sons - he is a landscape gardener but makes "pocket money" doing weeding and trimming for family and friends. Luckily, I qualify as a friend and he put in a good days work clearing the weeds, the overgrown shrubbery and hauling away the mess. Next project, the little bit of garden next to my garage - body corporate property but I want a say in what gets planted!!

This last week, I have completed five pages for various challenges which I will post here. Anything else I will catch-up on in a separate post.

Colour Me Positive Week 44 - Laughter

I decided on a collage for this one because I have not done one since I finished the A-Z collages. I downloaded some images from the internet and found more in magazines. One page had some spray ink on the edge, so I decided to paint both of them first. That just meant I had to wait for the pages to dry!

Colour Me Positive Week 45 - Attitude

The base for this page is some leftover paint applied with a brayer. As one of the colours was Burnt Umber, it was a bit dark and too brown. I lightened it up with some stencils and then because it was still a bit brown, decided to use the technique where you paint over most of the page - a favourite of mine as it hides a multitude of sins.

I spent part of my recuperation re-reading J.D. Robb's "... in Death" series which I just love. I have them all and every few years, I start at number one and work my way through all the titles to date. The main character, Lt Eve Dallas has a favourite saying that I think expresses attitude with a capital A - Bite me!

Journal 52 Week 46 - Dear Leonard

The challenge posted this week was to honour Leonard Cohen who had passed away the previous week, but I am not such a huge fan. However, last week Leon Russell also passed way and being a big fan and a contrarian, I changed my challenge to Dear Leon. I listed to a CD in the car and chose the song "If It Wasn't For Bad", because I knew I had some really gothic images in a fashion magazine I purchased a couple of weeks ago.

Colour Collages - Green

Lastly, I finally completed the first of my colour collages which I first decided to do back in July when I researched names for various different colours. The palm leaf kicked off the green theme, then I just found images in my Royal Auto magazines - they just keep giving and giving.

It has been a very productive week - just as well, because I need to make up for the lack of productivity in the past couple of months.

Another post soon with the rest of the challenges done since my last blog posting.

Hope you are all happy and well - all the best for now.

A-Z Collages finished

Well it's taken me a while, but I've finally finished the A-Z collage challenge that I set myself. I was a bit worried about Z, as my favoured word "zany" was a bit too close to the Y words "young at heart".
Looking through my favourite blogs one day, I got a lightbulb moment and decided to use "zentangle". So here are my last two collages in this challenge...

Collages - Y & Z

My favourite image on this page is Dr. Karl being hugged by a tree!

Most of the zentangles are mine, with the exception of the round one in the centre, done by Dudz for one of the Diva's challenges, and the icosahedron in the bottom left corner. If you are interested in Zentangles I recommend Linda Farmer's site Tangle Patterns which has links to lots of patterns, strings and the founder's website. http://tanglepatterns.com/about

Colour Me Positive Week 29 - JOURNEY

I've been feeling a bit flat lately for various reasons - impending surgery, cold weather, death of a friend - so trying to come up with a travel page was a bit beyond me. Eventually, I did this page just to get the challenge over and done with.

Mission Inspiration - July again

I decided to have another go at the July Mission Inspiration challenge, but without song lyrics this time. I had cut this image out of a magazine and knew that I wanted to say "CLEAN UP YOUR ACT!" as a nudge to me to get my house cleaned and tidied. And I wanted to have another go at a Mission to see how I would go with planning it all out.

Judge for yourself - here is my page...

Mission Inspiration - April

I am slowly working my way backwards through some of the Mission Inspiration challenges, so here is my page for April's Mission together with the mission details. I found the old boarding pass while clearing up and already had the image of the Sydney skyline stamped on tracing paper - so that was my focal point.

Journal 52 Week 31 - Letting Go / Holding On

As you can see, I have nothing to offer for weeks 27 through to 30 for Journal 52, and even for week 31 I am recycling a page I did for Mission Inspiration's May challenge. Partly this is because I have not been feeling up to it and partly because the challenge prompts are not offering any inspiration at the moment.

As I've said previously, I may use the prompts later if anything comes to me, but for now, here is another upload of my "Letting Go" page.

Getting it all out

This page was done in response to feeling very frustrated with nearly everything in my life. You know - all the usual stuff - too fat, too lazy, too tired, house too messy, not eating right, scared about surgery, sudden death of a friend, etc, etc, etc.

I just wrote it all down as I thought of it - scribbled, moaned, whinged - and then I covered it up with the happy picture from a magazine. I highlighted some key words, then painted over the other words in bright colours in an attempt to lighten my mood.

It certainly helps to have something to keep my mind occupied and not dwelling on what is coming. 

There is way too much introspection in my life and as a result I have contacted an old friend via FB and hope to catch up with her soon. We have not seen one another for twenty years, but I see no reason why we shouldn't just resume where we left off!

This was prompted by the death of my other friend - one I had not seen in forty years - but who I was close to at one time and who I had been thinking of lately. I was going to try contacting her and see if she would come to the next class reunion lunch in October. Too late - she died suddenly in early July and I have missed my chance to re-connect.

I am going to make a concerted effort to get out and see people (relatives/friends/former work colleagues) because while FB gives the illusion of friendship, there is nothing like actually sitting down with people face to face.

Keep well and happy. Cheers!

Senior Moment

Was it a senior moment or was I just a bit of a dodo in the last post saying that the X-chromosome was linked to men when in fact it is linked to women? Maybe I'll do Y-chromosome for the next alphabet collage and then I CAN have pictures of men!

Since the last post, I have joined a monthly challenge called Mission Inspiration run by Mike Deakin in the UK (https://www.youtube.com/user/TheMikeDeakin/videos) and virtually stopped doing the Journal 52 challenges. I have been watching Mike on YouTube for a while and finally decided to bite the bullet and join in. Here is the challenge format:

As you can see, you get ten things to do on your page - sometimes there is a theme and sometimes not, so you can pick your own. I will say it looks much easier in the YouTube videos than it is in real life. The associated Facebook group is very supportive - I've never had so many nice comments or as many likes before.


Journal 52 Week 26 - Barefoot

I turned this prompt on its head because it is winter here and that week we had a very cold snap - so I photographed my bare feet all toasty in their slippers and then used a magazine page to make it look like I was relaxing by the fire. I filled in the gaps with paint and voila - a warm inviting lounge room.

Colour Me Positive Week 27 - Do It!

This week was about practising art no matter what and the quote came from Kurt Vonnegut: "To practise any art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow. So do it." Guest artist Carolyn Dube said an OOPS is just an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly, and we were encouraged to use a bright colour on our page - one we wouldn't normally use.

No bright colours, in fact it all looks a bit murky. I spread colour with an old card and then smooshed the pages together. I thought it looked a bit rockpool-y so did a blue wash over the top but that just made it muddy. It's hard to see in the photo, but I outlined lots of areas with gel pens and drew some sea urchins. The quote is written on tracing paper so that when glued down it is sort of transparent.

So not my best effort and certainly in the realms of art done badly.

Colour Me Positive Week 28 - Smile

"Never regret anything that made you smile" was this week's quote with a reminder that life is full of great  experiences of our own making.

I saw a book on portraiture that had something like this on the cover, so I went trawling through my magazines looking for suitable faces - they had to be about the same size and all facing the same way - and I HAD to use the Queen in there somewhere! The colour was already on the page (Distress Stains) so all I needed to do was glue in my collaged face. To add decorative detail, I masked one corner and stamped the doily shape. And, as usual, I didn't use their quote.

Mission Inspiration - May 2016

May was the first month that I chose to do for the Mission Inspiration challenge. I wanted to use this quote that I found somewhere in regard to grief: "You can't hurry the letting go", which I loved because we all grieve differently and sometimes you can't let go when others think you should. This applies to lots of things in life, not just grief, but and it's a big BUT, you should not hang on for too long. Work through things at your own pace but work towards finding your balance and your time to finally let go.

So I used pink and orange gelatos, a couple of Tim Holtz layering stencils, had great difficulty blowing paint through a straw (hence only one corner done) and used a couple of bird stickers from Daphne magazine. Like Mike I tinted my modelling paste, did some pen work around my words and then I drew in some branches for the birds. I used glitter glue to give a sparkle to the bird's eyes.

It was harder than I thought to include all ten prompts - you really have to think about these challenges.

Mission Inspiration - July 2016

So here is the mission, followed by my response.

I chose the song "Loverly" from My Fair Lady because I knew I would be able to find an image of a comfy chair. The hard part was doing the background - choosing napkins, colours, stencils and stamps that would go with the image. I find the background a bit busy but others in the group like it - so maybe it's a case of being my own worst critic!

Anyway that's me for now - I haven't done any more collages and none of the recent Journal 52 prompts have interested me - way too summery and a bit woo-woo. But I'm sure there will be weeks where something appeals. I must say that I am enjoying Effy Wild's videos on layering.

Thanks for stopping by, I hope you enjoyed my offerings. Keep warm if you're in the southern hemisphere and cool if your not.

A Productive Week

I've had a good week churning out quite a few challenge pages, so now I am right up to date with the Colour Me Positive challenges and only two weeks behind with Journal 52 (one of which I probably won't do). Very, very cold at the moment - we even had snow in the Dandenongs which are in outer Melbourne. BRRRRR!!

Colour Me Positive Week 25 - Enough

This week was to remind us that we are good enough, are loved and are awesome. The quote was "I am enough", or we could choose another positive to describe our self. I chose STRONG with (enough) in brackets to signify that I can get past negativity, ill-health, or anything else that plagues me. The background is stencilled in pastel colours, the image is from the State Library of Victoria, and I used a gold pen to highlight the strap across her body and the I in I am strong.

Colour Me Positive Week 26 - Celebrate

This week Lisa, who runs Lulu Art and the CMP challenge, celebrated her 50th birthday so the choice of word was pretty obvious. The quote is from Oprah : "The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate."

I had already done the page with black gesso wanting to do something that echoed the work of an Aboriginal artist. But instead I just dabbed bright paint all over the page - thinking confetti or party lights. Whatever, it is a "party on the page". I wrote the quote in a slightly meandering way between the spots of paint.

Journal 52 Week 23 - Sunshine / Rain

Because it is winter here in the southern hemisphere, I get a bit annoyed with all the summery and flowery challenges coming out of Journal 52, so this is not my best work. I could have gone for "Rain" but honestly with all the Prince tributes we've had, I am over rain as well!

I found a quote that I liked and used the page next to my CMP "Strong" page where I had cleaned off some of the stencils and used up some extra paint. Then to keep with the theme, I went to the journal where I usually use up extra paint and found the sun-ray image and the sponged red paper. Some glueing, a few marks with my Gelatos and I had a finished page.

Journal 52 Week 24 - Weeds / Blossom

As my garden is currently choking in weeds, it was fairly obvious what I should choose. I used Sarah's quote "Take the time to pull the weeds choking flowers in your life" by Jerry Cantrell (except that I put an extra "c" in choking).

The background is Distress Stain with a gel medium photo transfer in the middle of the page. this came out very faint, so I drew over it with my brushmarkers. I also drew over the stencils and added extra marks to make the foreground messier.

Collage - X

I had three choices for this one : X-chromosome (lots of pictures of men), xenophobia (pictures of obviously foreign people) or xerophyte (plants that like dry conditions). Guess which one I chose?

Men - no, plants. Lots of magazines with plant pictures and sure enough there were enough of the type I was looking for.

So not a bad week with five challenges completed. I hope you enjoyed your visit and please visit again. Cheers.

Shortest Day

Well here we are almost half way through the year. Today is traditionally classed as the shortest day/longest night and while one of my challenges is asking for pages celebrating Summer Solstice, I am actually experiencing Winter Solstice, with much colder weather expected this week and even snow on nearby mountains, which will give a good start to the short ski season here.

I haven't been particularly inspired by the Journal 52 challenges lately and will get to them eventually when something pops into my head, but I have caught up on a few collages. So - here goes.

Colour Me Positive Week 23 - Opportunity  & 
Journal 52 Week 22 - New Beginnings/Old Traditions

For this challenge I used that same technique I saw in one of Dina Wakley's books - about covering up a messy page. This time I drew something on the page and painted around that to leave a patterned image based on an indigenous painting I saw in a book. The quote for CMP was " Every day is opportunity to make a happy ending", but I changed the words so that I could also use the page in my Journal 52 challenge.

It's a fun technique to use because you can make as much mess on the page as you like and it can look really ugly - but then you draw something, paint around it and voila - there's an interesting page and a really lively image.

Colour Me Positive Week 24 - Courage

This week was about moving out of our comfort zone and taking risks, with a quote from Christopher Columbus: "You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore". The extra prompt was to put a boat on the page.

I did not move out of my comfort zone for this one, but once again used the messy page/painted out technique. This time the image that I drew was a boat - one that I have been looking at all my life as it is etched onto a mirror which used to hang over the mantel in my parent's home and which now lives in my home.

Collages - U, V, W

I got a bit behind with these, mainly because I was having trouble deciding what words to use. In the end I think I have three reasonable pages. The last three letters may also pose problems, but after them I am going to do some colours which will hopefully prove to be easier.

Work is still busy, although I seem to have gotten my day off back again - so nice to sleep in and not rush around in the morning. Anyway, day off or not, I still have housework to do.

Thanks for visiting.

Time flies

I've been busy at work - taken on a new library - so I'm working five days a week at the moment. No day off to play with art journals.

I work for a company that gets books/DVDs/CDs "shelf ready" for libraries who don't have the staff to label, cover and add to their database.  I do the data entry side of things and some cataloguing for four different libraries around metro Melbourne - it's interesting (mostly) and I get to see lots of new books and DVDs.

Colour Me Positive Week 22 - FORWARD

This week is all about not being afraid to make mistakes as we move forward. The quote was a great one from Neil Gaiman: "Go and make mistakes. Make glorious and fantastic mistakes. BREAK RULES. Leave the world more interesting for you being here. MAKE. GOOD. ART." And of course, we were encouraged to make mistakes on our page.

After I had added lots of tissue & paper for the background, I thought it looked a bit like the aftermath of a party, so I stencilled some drips and rings. Then I drew a tipped over glass with some dregs of red wine.

As you can see, It looks too busy and the relevant elements are lost. So I took a hint that I read in one of Dina Wakley's books to cover over what you don't want. It turned out a lot pinker than I thought, but after I added the photos of the cherry muffins, it was starting to look like a messy tabletop.

Journal 52 Week 21 - Unraveling

Originally, I was going with Effy's prompt of "Stitched" which is wholly appropriate for me what with the "hole in the heart" operation when I was young and the subsequent pacemakers as I age. But I wasn't sure of what sort of image to use. So - procrastinating!!!

Then, I found this lovely poem from Michael Leunig and this page popped into my head and I completed it in a couple of hours last night. I used my Distress stains to paint the background. I tried that long drawn-out writing - obviously, I need to practice. Then I drew little motifs - a winged heart, an open birdcage, a sock unraveling, a bird and a butterfly.

The poem is as follows:

Let it go,

Let it out,

Let it all unravel,

Let it free

And it will be

A path on which to travel.

Photo quality is not the best - the flash has washed out some of the writing - will have to wait for a sunny day to take another photo.

Collages - T

Lots of these photos are from an Instagram account about Parisian floors - though I had to get the pictures from Google as I don't have an Instagram account. I love mosaic and tiled floors, so "tessellations" was an obvious choice for this collage. 

See the Instagram images at https://www.instagram.com/parisianfloors/ they are lovely.

That's it from me - I've had trouble with my keyboard tonight (an A that needs more pressure than I usually exert) - so it has taken me longer than normal just to type this little bit.

Keep well and thanks for visiting.