Books and some journaling

In the past few months I have been collecting and reading art/creative books which I had bought throughout last year, but never got around to reading them until now. I have quickly read through them, because each and everyone of the books are wonderful eye candy, so many gorgeous pictures, colours and inspiration, how could one resist not looking through them. But yes I needed to read thoroughly through each book to truly understand what the artist was trying to convey in her book.
In the next post I will reveiew "Journal Spilling" by Diana Trout and show you some of the pages that I have attempted at doing. Lots of fun!!!
Then as I read through each book I would like to do a write up and a visual of my interpretation of the art/craft from the book.See how we go...;)






Above are some images of the Valentines' gifts I made for my family. Empty now but were filled with a little love note and chocolates ofcourse! I love how they turned out, I think these little gift bags could be made for any occassion. I found the tutorial in Shona's blog.Please go visit, this artist is truly gorgeous and generous with her art!
The last image is of a journal I made and re-made, still needs something but at the moment I will leave it,kinda stuck. Any ideas anyone?
So in the month of March, journaling is my focus, a page a day, and I am needing to catch up already! But will show and tell.
Does anyone else have a focus for the month?
Take care all you lovely creative people.....Angie ox

Owl Mania

The school holidays have started and the kids are home for the next 6 weeks. I have been looking forward to this for a while, no more school pick up or drop off. Phew!! But it will mean that I have to get 'crafty' (giggle) about managing my time to do some art. So far so good, have been squeezing in time to doodle and play around with drawing cartoon owls. I don't know why or what has possessed me to draw owls but I love them, they are wise and spiritual animals and they like to read! Some of the owl drawings I googled, some are from a cartoon my kids like to watch and others are from the imagination. Hope you like them.

This is a new journal entry (apologies for the fuzzyness of picture). Again very play related, do you remember making butterfly prints at school by sqeezing paint inthe middle of the page and then squishing it all up, to then open it and each time the butterfly would be different. After the paint dried I doodled around the butterfly.

Do you let yourself play some times? Give it a go, it's so much fun, maybe you can squish some paint and make butterflies!

The Joy Diet - Nothing

Wow second week of "The Joy Diet", I have felt kind of rushed this week, kids are on school holidays, and I suppose this is the purpose of the book to allow myself to see that I need time to let myself be, to reconnect with my authentic self.
The goal for this week was to take 15 mins everyday of stillness, let the body relax and the mind find quiet from the chatter.
Before I began this challenge i had already been doing some meditation taught to me by my father, I was , and that is the operative word WAS, meditating for a while maybe 2-3 times a week, then as usual old habits creap in and one "forgets" to do it.
So I thought that to start again would be easy enough. But to be honest it took me much longer than 15mins, more like 30mins and I could only do this at night after the kiddies were asleep, to get to that place of quietness.
Once I got to that quiet place daily I felt better each day, calmer, fresher. Yet to get to the chair where I sit at night still feels like a struggle, I resist, and I ask myself why?
Has anyone else felt their body resisting?
I would rather be doing something else.....like my art!
That is my 'Amanpuri' my place of solitude, doing my art work in my artroom. When I am home alone and noone interupts me I feel so at peace and my mind is filled with silence.....But to get to this place has taken me a long time, to understand how important art is to me, even on those days when i don't feel like it, or don't feel good enough.
So I sit there and try to remember that feeling of creating, that familiar place, feels like coming home.

I did this journal page thinking about the book and what it meant to be doing "Nothing". It is like a sacred time, space, retreat from the rest of the world to reconnect with my soul. It was a fun page to put together, a first for me in collaging, will be doing more for sure.

Happy reading for next week and all the best in finding your one moment of truth! Angie oxox

It isn't too late to join this great group, link in the photo above to join in the fun!

Journal Pages

I am happy to say that this week I feel I have accomplished something positive!
I have finally started my journal pages. I am now no longer afraid of the blank page starring at me, I feel that now I can allow myself to let go of my fears and just paint, draw, and sketch, or what ever takes my fancy.
I must explain why this feels like such a big deal to me. For a while now I have felt paralised by the white canvas or page not knowing where or how to begin, but really being afraid of the whole outcome.
Being able to shed this skin has given me so much freedom and calm, I truly feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. The best thing about it is I don't care about he outcome of the work in my journals because the process itself has felt so liberating, a real letting go (which is one of the words I wrote in one of the journal pages). It was so satisfying to let the paint dribble or flick in what ever direction it went without having the self critic come out and create that negative feeling of never being good enough, or not creating enough, or painting like this or that artist.
"What ever!" I say. Let that creative muse out she will show you the way.....;)

Wanted to show you one of my his first pastel drawing in a long time, it was done last year, and it is of my first baby, he is our gorgeous chocolate labrodor who always takes care of us and if we are in any way upset he can tell and he will come and sit by you and lay his head on your lap as if to say, "It's O.K. ".

This is the first of hopefully many journal pages to come, the lay out was an inspiration from Ruby Claire from http://ruby-rox.blogspot.com, a young artist who lives in Sydney, found her on You Tube showing her great skills in Art journalling and Scrapbooking, go see her blog it is full of colour and brightness.
The pages are written in very small print, but they say:

"I sometime find it hard to TRUST in the process.Creating helps me. Making these journal pages allowed me to LET GO I could flick the paint and let it spill without knowing where it was going. But for some reason I knew and BELIEVED it would all workout. I felt a RELEASE from worries. I EMBRACED this great feeling and allowed myself to just BREATHE and enjoy the process."

Click to enlarge pictures and have a closer look. (loved working with gold paint)

This is my second journal page and it is a piece for the Creative Every Day art prompt, this months theme is MOVEMENT .

The bird is sitting on the tree as its feathers are being blown in the wind, but still the bird sits firm on his perch, knowing where he belongs and looking out into the future soon he will make his plunge into the sky.

Have a great weekend and hopefully creating away without abandon, Angie ox.

Art Journalling

Finished one of the True North journal challenges, my first journal page.

Very exciting to have it done!

I must admit I found it difficult at first, didn't have all the materials so I improvised with what I had, and I got stuck with what images to add to the compass. Eventually I did start to relax and found the flow in the creating process.

The image is of a home made compass, where you put water in a bowl and with a metal object you allow the magnetising to turn the needle to north. The blue represents water, words floating around it are the answers to the questions asked by Katheryn. The images around, I used 'inchies', are of 1inch squares painted in acrylics and decorated simply using what ever I had on hand. Some are drawn with black ink, others I used pastel pencils, glued on numbers found in news papers and stickers.
Most of the images are of things which has special meaning to me like -

• the female form represents creativity, female energies, the muse....
• the all seeing eye is soul/spirit....
• swirling shapes of water/nature
• images of nature, birds, flowers....
• the letter T for teaching, words of expression and meaning....
• things I like to do in my own art doodling, painting....
• my lucky number 5!

Hope you like the first journal, it is one of many more to come. I am wanting to loosen up and experiment some more with colour and form.

Have a great week, Angie ox.