Two art journal pages

These are two pages from my art journal. I've been trying to do something in my journal every day, I've managed it most days, which is nice. The lyrics page is a song by Ryan Adams, and the other one has some of the brand new washi tape that my mum bought me on it. I love it :)

Sorry for the somewhat blurry pictures, they were just taken on my BlackBerry.

Today's outgoing mail

Happy New Year! I resolve to blog more this year.

Today's outgoing mail is the above, a letter to the singer Lily Allen. I've never written to a celebrity before, but I wanted to write to tell her how sorry I was that she lost her baby. I don't know if it'll make its way to her, but I hope it will!

Fill in the blank Friday October style!

1. True happiness is being true to your own self, however that may be.

2. The most surreal moment of my life was when the police informed us of my dad's death - not a happy memory and one that catches in my throat.

3. My favorite texture is paint on paper.

4. My signature color is I'm not sure. I wear grey, white and black to work, so probably that. I like my monochromatic wardrobe for work. Otherwise, I'm easy.

5. My signature style is I have no clue. It depends. I'm smart for work, sloppy for round the house, cute t-shirts for other times.

6. If I could choose one store to spend my life savings at, it would be a jewellery shop, probably. I would buy fancy fuck off jewels :D

7. My best thing about autumn is the rain. I love the rain.

21 Secrets

I have seen this ALL over the art journal blogosphere this week as some of my favourite artists are teaching! I wish I could afford it but I don't have the money spare, so I'm entering the giveaway instead.

21 Secrets is "An Art Journal Playground" featuring instructional videos, pdfs and even mp3s from a range of amazing artists. It sounds like SO much fun! The artists I would LOVE to learn from are: Connie herself, the lovely and whimsical iHanna, and Spooky, whose class on using old texts sounds really fun :)

If you enter too, good luck, and if you can afford the class, maybe I'll see you there!

Fill in the Blank Friday

1. When I get a day to myself I like to catch up on computer reading, make art, write letters, cook for Himself and I

2. High school was.... A long time ago, and honestly not that bad. I think I've come to the conclusion that a LOT of people had a shit time at school.

3. A little dream I have is to pass this year of my course with an A again

4. A big dream I have is to get published one day

5. If I could drive any car my pick would be a crappy old banger of a 2CV, maybe like this.

6. A time that I felt really and truly beautiful was after I had my hair cut short last March. It was a literal and metaphorical weight off me.

7. Tomorrow I will.... go to my mother's and be fed a delicious roast lunch followed by apple crumble!

An art journal as a present

So like twenty hundred other people, I made a journal for my Significant Other. It was our anniversary on Saturday - we've been married for five years now (holy shit) and been together for ten years. An entire decade. We've been together for about two-fifths of my life. Wow. Anyway. I made a journal for him. It is a bunch of reasons why I love him in it...



This is what I started off with. It was a style supplement that fell out of a magazine. Lovely sturdy outside pages. I sanded and gessoed them. I forgot to take photos of the outside once I'd done them, but on the cover I put a picture of us.



First pages. I've covered up his name. Vintage map used on the right.



The Red Dwarf picture is from last year's calendar and the picture on the right is from one of his computing magazines that I did have permission to cut up, lol.



The glitter writing was SO hard to do and even now I think it looks awful. The page on the right says "I love you because you call me stupid names" and I wrote some of the stupid names down, but I've covered them up because they are a bit vomit-inducing.



The left hand page was definitely trial and error. It says "I love you because you let me get a cat even though you don't like cats... and because you are a good cat daddy!"



More computing magazine images on the left. Pictures I had saved on the right. Which he is lucky to receive.



The right hand page says "I love you because you love me and all that I am. I share myself with you... thank you". The word circled is 'them'.



The left hand page says "I love you because you married me!" and the right hand page has another photo of us on it. I added a sticker to this that says "Here's to the next decade!"



This is how I wrapped it. I wrote his name on one of the heart post-its and stuck it on with stickers.

He was a little overcome when I gave it to him, I think. I'm not really sure he knew what to say, but he liked it!

Happy anniversary to us!

This time five years ago I was at my parents' house with one of my bridesmaids, really ridiculously nervous about my wedding the next day. This time ten years ago I was probably talking to Himself online, trying to work up the courage to ask him out. I did. We got married five years to the day after we started going out and now, ten years later, we have been together for what feels like forever.

Happy anniversary sweetie; I love you so much; I do not know my life without you.

We're going back to the hotel we got married in to spend the night, and we're going out for curry. Sounds idyllic :)

Two wedding photos, clearly. And one of us taken in February 2009, we both look amazing here! Ha ha.