Sunday 15 May 2011

Keswick

Just come back from a week in Keswick, Cumbria. My new journal is a rather sweet, handbag sized Moleskine. It meant that wherever I went I always had it with me. This one is a bit like my old fashioned diary which I used to keep when away on holiday - but with a twist. I tried to make it more pictoral, rather than wordy. There is still a lot of work to do on it and I didn't do Friday, the day we came home.
Here is a flavour. I'm sorry the pencil on some of the pictures aren't very clear.




I just had to write a short poem when visiting the stone circles at Castlerigg. It was a very inspirational place.
The last night and day was also an inspiration as it was the start of the Keswick Jazz Festival. We met some amazingly talented people.










Tuesday 3 May 2011

Memories and Zentangles

Two journal pages to show you today.
The first is a continuation from my memories page that I showed you yesterday. It isn't quite finished and I will probably add more to it at a later date. My aim was to write on the image lots of good thoughts. The photo doesn't really do it justice.

 The second is a Zentangle that I am going to manipulate using Photoshop. This is a photo editing programme that I haven't played with before so it is a steep learning curve trying to get it to do what I want.
Zentangles are a great way of freeing the mind and just switching off for a while. I started this one sitting outside in the sun yesterday afternoon. It probably took me about an hour to complete altogether. There are lots of good zentangle tutorials on the web. Just Google zentangle and have a look. I am going to use this image in a piece of work that I am planning. More about that later on my other blog.

Sunday 1 May 2011

Memories page

Thanks to Nuvofelt for her tutorial. All week I have been collecting memories of this special week. Not only a bank holiday but an extra holiday for the Royal Wedding. Today I dug out my favourite picture, Mum, Gran and Great Gran. I manipulated it using Photoshop Elements which I am only just starting to get to grips with (laughing because I had to get DH to help) here is the photo and the manipulations. First I picked up all the lines which gives a very sketchy type picture. Nuvofelt gives a much better tutorial than I can for creating these images so follow her blog and get lots of tips for your journal.






Then I took part of the picture by tearing round the heads - I have to admit that I did this quite a while ago and have used it in memory work before. 




So I did the same procedure on Photoshop and got this image
Finally I put my images on a previously created page which was salt diffused, integrating the whole thing with my favourite oil pastels and doing a bit of a touch up with my write-4-all marker pen.
Here is the final page. I just have to date and sign it.