Jens Arty Life

To my dear followers. I'm so excited you have chosen to follow my journey. Thank you very much for your views and especially the comments which are always appreciated. But even when I didn't have any followers I enjoyed art journalling. And this page is to celebrate that; I changed the quote slightly. I said 'I want to MAKE beautiful things, even if no-one cares.' When I saw the quote on Pinterest it felt so true I knew I had to add it to my art journal. It's just pencils and a black felt tip pen. I didn't feel much like getting the paints out because 1. I'm working on a quilt for Sydney Quilt show and the deadline for entries is coming up, and 2. we have a new addition to out family. Her name is Olivia Jigger (a Jigger Rabbit is a slang way of saying cat in Liverpool). We call her OJ or Ollie for short. Olivia came to us from the RSPCA in Katoomba. My husband and my daughter drove up to get her on Saturday and she is quite the gorgeous di...

Could there be anything I want to do more than use pink??? So this page is for the Think Pink challenge this month at Mixed Media , and I'm also submitting it to Brenda's Blog Party at Bumblebees and Butterflies. I went for a cartoony style for my fairy to match the cutesy ness of the rest of the page. Once again I got so involved in the process i forgot to take photos of stages ... sorry. I used paint, journalling pens (including a really cool white paint pen which I will be using heaps I think), pencils and stencils. I was inspired by Krishna's keepsakes page to do some tangle dangles. I hope you enjoy! Jennidee

Almost as soon as I had finished my last page with the face of a girl, I wanted to do another one. But I wanted a smaller face and some body. This is what happened. I feel like I really need to work on my eyes and noses ... but I guess it will come. She kind of surprised me how she kept developing. I used a base of acrylic paint and then added watercolour pencil, some of which I diluted and some was left. Once the basics of the angel were done I used Gesso on both pages and started layering. I wanted a fairly soft, uncomplicated  look to the page, so I didn't over do the layers. The letters of ANGEL were stamped in black ink. It's not that obvious in this photo, but I added some little sparkle embellishments, gold and red stars and a diamonte on the heart. She is helping me hold my heart because sometimes it gets heavy. Thanks again so much to Brenda and her blog party. I hope you have enjoyed seeing my page. Jennidee

Two posts in one day! I wanted to follow the free tutorial on healing through art at Tamara's site http://willowing.ning.com/ And even though I feel AWFUL. With this stupid cold, by following her instructions I created something I'm pretty proud of Not only do i really like the double page and my faces continue to improve ... it was really healing. So thank you Tamara. And maybe you have found your way here through Brenda's Blog party so thank you again Brenda.

I have a summer cold which is making me feel awful. So I didn't feel like getting out any paint. Pencils and pen were a great way for me to do something creative without thinking too much. I have three gorgeous sets of 72 pencils that i have invested in over the years. This pages was made using the watercolour pencils but without brushing on water. The page needs to be sealed carefully afterwards to avoid any running. But I just love the softness of their colours. This page just begged to be created after watching the Socceroos win the Asia cup. Just looking at it I realise I failed to mention anywhere what the match was :) I'll have to go back and fix that. I used 4 colours (two greens and two yellows) in the swirls, a blue and red for the "Australia's" and a black pen. All the players names are written in the swirls. Pages like this are important to me. I dont' just journal because I love to create art (though I do love it). I want to really docum...

I wanted to do a page about rain. I had an idea ... I searched for a good image to draw. And it was looking really good. And then I ruined it. I decided the backgound wasn't 'drippy' enough and sprayed some more watered paint onto the page ... which then ran down through my black lettering in a pen that is water based. SIGH. I dried it and went over the letters again, but it isn't as good as it was. The page behind it was also totally ruined. Thankfully I hadn't worked on it much. But it did have some feathers I'd collected from budgies we were baby sitting, including a quite rare spotted feather. I had taped them to the page ready to draw the birds around it. I've tried to pull the tape off and the feathers came off intact, but the tape is all papery and the feathers aren't as visible as they were. I will have to see if I can affix them to something so they can be saved. So the lesson learned? DON'T OVER SPRAY THE PAGES OF THIS JOURNA...

My one word for this year is 'Allow'. I have spent a lot of my life anxious and worried because I am so afraid of bad outcomes. Now I am going to allow them to happen (because they happen sometimes whether I worry about them or not, and sometimes they don't happen). I spend a lot of time worrying if my work is good enough to be seen ... good enough to catch people's attention, good enough to sell. That will no longer be my focus. Allowing for myself to be imperfect or fail does not mean that I stop trying. It means that I try for different reasons. I try because I enjoy the process, I enjoy developing skills and getting better, I enjoy seeing improvement and when there is no improvement I just enjoy moving paint and colour around. So I created this page; It's the fifth page in my journal. I had already created the background and I just wrote over it this morning. I'd been keeping the page for something meaningful about starting the year. Thank ...

My daughter asked me to watch the movie 'Lucy' with her the other night. I'm really glad I did because I really enjoyed it. Not only was it entertaining, but it was thought provoking too. It inspired this page; The face is much more realistic than my previous attempt. I have been watching painting videos to improve. I am really happy with this, though I know the girl doesn't bare much resemblance to Scarlet Johansen. The pages are curly so much I had to put a paper weight on the edge to take the photo :) Jennidee

The Royksopp and Robyn song "monument" inspired this page. I really enjoy creating an art journal ... I do it mostly because it's fun, but I do also hope it will survive me and perhaps tell others what I was like when I'm no longer here. I like the grungy look of this page even though it happened by accident. I was trying out a technique I'd seen on you tube where you put a stencil down on a painted page, spray it with water and then wipe off where the water has soaked through the stencil. But I couldn't get it to work and I tried to rub back all the black paint. When I got to this point, no more paint would come off and I decide I liked it anyway. I managed to get the effect I wanted by using an embossing powder over a painted surface, then painting black over the hard embossed areas. Then you wipe back the black paint from the embossed areas. In my version the embossing powder was an extra thick one and it bubbled strangely, causing the pits. so when I wi...

I found the project life (journalling) blog and loved the idea, so i went ahead and completed a page using the prompts ... book text and Goal Keeper. I've always wanted to try text under a face and this was the perfect opportunity to give it a go. The artists associated with the blog produced their own pages and I watched their video tutorials and looked at their photo tutorials before starting the page. Here is the result; I am really happy with the outcome. Materials used; old books for papers with text, acrylic paints, PVA glue, medium black marker, watercolour pencils, gold paint, lettering book used to reference the lettering. This required lots of layering and it took a long time, but the effect it wonderful. I've already layered the opposite page with text and paint ready to write my long term goals on (I'd already done a 2015 goal page (see below). Thanks for looking Jennidee

I was very inspired by a pin on Pinterest, http://www.pinterest.com/pin/497647827549771247/  and created this in response. On the stars I have listed the achievements in 2014 that I am most proud of. Materials; ink as sprays, acrylic paint, white journal pen, black journal pen, star stencil.

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

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...