Jens Arty Life

I had a very uncomfortable dream last night. I was supposed to be doing playground duty, but I wasn't sure which area to go to. Everywhere I went, someone was already there and telling me I was wrong. I feel quite confident that this is a reflection on my feeling towards art journalling. Everywhere I look on the internet someone is doing it better than me and I just want to find my own place. So in reaction to that dream I created this page. I also noticed I use a lot of pinks and blues. That's partly because those are the colour inks I have, and partly because they are my favourite colours. I will make an effort to branch out and try other combinations of colours. Thanks for reading Jennidee

I hated this page yesterday, that's why I wrote 'an art journal is experimenting and playing' at the bottom of the page. Then I looked at it again this afternoon and saw some possibilities. I added the dark brown flower stencil and I felt it brought the page together. Now I'm very happy with it. We are certainly our own worst critics a lot of the time. Yesterday my daughter was drawing and she had done a brilliant job of copying a character she loves. But she threw her hands up in disgust and marched out of the room because the face wasn't right. I let her go. Then half an hour later I brought the drawing to her WITHOUT the image she had been copying from and told her to look at it again. She smiled and said that actually it wasn't that bad a drawing. I pointed out the amazing tiny hands she had drawn and she smiled even wider. So i guess the lesson is to sometimes walk away from things and look again with fresh eyes later. things don't always turn...

Today's page is A4 size. I used watercolours for the background, a paper lace doiley as a stencil, an embossing pen and embossing powder to make the flowers (apart from one which commercially made) and more experimenting with ink, this time as a splash/ spray. The quote I found on pinterest and I have no idea who said it, but it just rings so true. I really like the colours on this page. They are bright, but still quite girly. I hope you have enjoyed a peek. Jennidee

Last night I had a go at using ink and a brayer (ink roller) straight on to a page. I remember doing this back in the days I was stamping, but I used glossy paper for effects. I added a tree stencil done in white ink, silver pen for the lettering and some stick on embellishments. I'm fairly happy with the way it turned out, though I need to watch the bleed through stencils when using ink straight from the bottle as I did here. I also added two more pages to my ETSY shop for sale. (Click on the christmas tree above to go there). It's not even new year and I've done 3 pages in my new A5 journal ... but I'm considering doing an A4 journal as well, for bigger pages. Does anyone else have several journal's going at once? Leave me a comment, I'd love to hear from you. Jennidee

I have listed 5 pages on ETSY for sale at $3.50 each.  This is item number 1 ... The 5 pages I put up are all A5 size. My shop is here. https://www.etsy.com/shop/TapestryMoon And you can do something like this ... This is the first page of next year's journal. Today I visited the art shop and bought more stencils and some other supplies. I am quickly becoming addicted to this art form. I hope to put up more pages for sale on ETSY tomorrow. Jennidee

Today's offering is another watercolour background, but this time I have done no other embellishment of the background and added only my drawings with black markers. The actual motifs are my adaptations of Turkish designs. I used a stencil for the lettering. My daughter Anna told me of another version of this little quote 'Happiness is not a destination, it is a way of life' and I like that quote better, but I'd already finished the page ... dammit. Have you ever had that happen? This page is A4 again and I will most likely expand it on white card when I stick it in my 12 by 12 scrapbook. I already have a stencil in mind, that I saw in the art shop the other day (the shop was closed yesterday, or I would have run out and bought it). Thanks for reading. Jennidee

I've been experimenting with watercolour backgrounds. This morning I got up after doing a background last night so it could dry and finished off my Christmas tree page. What do you think? My husband also showed me what I was doing wrong with my photos. It wasn't the photo itself ... it was how I was saving and uploading it. So i will go back and fix that first one. This page is A4 in landscape (a normal printing page size for those who don't use those terms). It's a bit too small for my 12 x 12 scrapbook, but I have some photos of this years tree and trees in years past to put in a row along the top to fill the scrapbook page. I used watercolour p[antis, watercolour paper, ink, a home made foam block to print, stencils, inks, bubble wrap and gold paint in the background. Once it was dry I journalled in black. I will be creating some backgrounds for sale if anyone is interested (A5 at about $3.50 a page, same quality as this one) Thanks for taking a look...

Hello there dear blog reader. My name is Jennidee Mills and I am obsessively creative. I quilt and design quilting patterns for my income, but I have so many other creative pursuits that it's hard to keep track of them all. I've been drawing since I could hold a pencil and my mother called me the paper monster because the paper in our house disappeared so fast she was sure I was eating it. Fast forward to today. Textiles and paper compete for my favourite medium to work with. This blog will be about paper. I have a blog about my textiles here, if you wish to have a peek at that part of my life. I have been journalling since I was 11. I started out diary writing, added scrapbooking when I was 15 and have recently discovered art journalling. My diaries and scrapbooks are full of my sketches anyway, so they could be considered art journals too. But this blog will be about the purest form of art journalling. This is probably my first art journal page. I cr...