Australian Art Journal Swap- the next round-

What a fabulous journey we have shared as our art journals made their way around our big and beautiful Australia, whilst our journals have been collecting beautiful artworks for us to treasure, we have made some lovely new friends and learnt so much along the way.

As this round is drawing to a close keep an eye on the blog as their owners share their experience and their newly returned journals and we will get to peek into them.I can't wait to see my journal again, filled with it's beautiful works. 

I am also looking for new members to join the next round of the The Australian Art Journal Swap and would love to hear from you if you would like to join us. All participants need to reside in Australia and be committed to following through with the entire swap, You will need to collect and look after the visiting journals, add you work on the theme of the journal and send it on to the next person in the chain. Postage is between $7 - $16 and you send out every month or so. We need you to be good at communicating and keeping in touch - You will need a facebook page and be willing to blog your work and I am happy to help you get started with all the computer aspects if they are new to you.

Please come and join our Australian Art Swap Group on facebook
not only is is a great place to connect for this swap
but we are always doing other art swaps and challenges as well.
We are always looking for new artists to join in.

Journal 52- Conversation Starter

A few weeks ago the prompt at Journal 52 was conversation starters and I knew right away I wanted to do a piece about children in detention. It is a challenging and confronting subject but it is a conversation we should all be having.

I dont know the answers,

 I am an empath and I feel the pain these kids must feel, 

I sense the hopeless desperation 

that years behind bars as an innocent child must feel like

and I despair.

There is so much going on in the world that brings sadness to me and I am a grown woman, living a free life and raising my children the way I want to raise them. I live a very blessed life compared to so many 

and yet

I feel so overwhelmed , so often by the wrong I see, by the pain and the neglect and the criminal and the unjust and the greed and misuse of power. 

and I feel it. 

I dont have a message to heal the situation,
I dont really know how it must be for these kids.

But I do know growing up locked up will not allow them to be the very best, healthiest, happiest people they can be and it will not help them become a part of society and live and contribute and possibly do great things.

I dont know the answers but maybe the role of the artist is to be the conversation starter and to let those more rational and clearer thinking seek the answers, 

the artist can express the feelings.

DLP Jan - Feb 2015

I have been hearing about DLP for so long it seems from so many friends and family so I decided to join in  and have really enjoyed the challenges and the format with so many different styles and ideas, it is great.

The prompts are very open

 like use book pages in my girls hair

or gesso- in my green page

 and often have a quote to also inspire.

I was inspired by the lovely Jeanette House  

to use a handmade journal

 and I am working with loose leaf pages 

and will bind them when I have a stack .

Some of the pages I don't like so much

 but I do appreciate the challenge

 and the motivation to break out the art supplies and play.

There is always an opportunity to download 

your cares and worries onto the page 

in art journalling, 

something that brings me back to my journal again and again. 

This page combined a DLP prompt of using your underpaper, 

what you use to protect your table when arting

 and a prompt of using using wings 

from the Australian Art Swap Group.

The lovely Pam Parker  has started posting challenges

 for us over there to inspire even more creativity and community.

One last DLP page to share - layers, don't stop till you get enough.'
I had a mad burst and did all of these pages

 in a short period of time and will have to do it again soon to catch up again.

Bookmark Swap

We are having a bookmark swap
 over at the Australian Art Swap Group on Facebook at the moment
and I have been meaning to post a video for years
 on you tube
 so I finally took that step today.

I started up a new River Girl Art You Tube  channel
and posted my very first video.

It is really just a test process to figure out how to make, edit. upload and share a video, but I would also welcome any more Australion folk who would like to swap a few bookmarks.

 I also acquired a Google+ page in the process-
So if you are at all inclined come and say hello over there.

There are so very many ways we can connect!

Australian Art Swaps

Who loves getting Happy Mail?
It sure beats bills-
Who is missings Milliande's  wonderful Art Community for Women?
I know I am and my friends and family have been missing the art swapping as well.

I have been thinking about hosting some swaps again for ages, 

I started up an art journal swap to kick of in January 2014 and to save on postage costs and hopefully cut down on lost journals and missing people I decided to keep in in Australia only. This swap has been fantastic with a really great group of women and we all keep in pretty good contact on a private facebook group and share our work on our blog.

I was still hearing the need for art swaps-

From my fellow artists and from the homeschool community who wanted to make and swap ATCs and postcards and other little works so I started up another facebook group this one is The Australian Art Swap Group  I am really liking it just being for Australians as postage time is much shorter and costs much lower.

So far we have done a few ATC swaps,

 some for the junior artists- fun in the sun and animals

and a few for the grown up artists as well,
the little cutie at the top of the post came from Wendy and

 these are the three I made for the summer days swap.

We also share ideas and interesting things and are developing a nice little supportive community. One of our members posted about cheap erasers available in the back to school sales so we have been talking about carving our own stamps and I took a photo to share, of some of my well used ones.  

We welcome all levels of art and are open to all sorts of swaps.

So please come and ask to join The Australian Art Swap Group  on facebook.

As an added bonus you can use the gorgeous envelopes as pockets in your art jourals.

Reveal your True Self- Wendy's travelling art journal

I have spoken before about how I love to be in a journal swap,

 I love having the journals travelling around between us all, and I love having them arrive to be mine for a short while. It is like having an intimate gallery arrive right into your home, that you can visit over and over while it is here, and can share with your friends and visitors. 

And then it is gone- 

you have done your piece and added your energy and sent it on its way and then you are eagerly awaiting the next one and contemplating the theme.

This journal belongs to Wendy Pepyart 

who is a very talented and creative member of this round of 

The Australian Art Journal Swap

Wendy's gorgeous art journal is a repurposed childrens story book and her title is 'Reveal Your True Self'

Well, asking me, Who my true self is?, 

just about turned me inside out, lol- I do love how these journals challenge us and as Wendy is a very intuitive artist I just got out some supplies and started to play and let my own intuition guide me.

I pulled out some colours that were calling to me on the day and arranged them into a rainbow and then I started to get some ideas.

My thinking went along the lines rainbow, 

colours, 

colour groups,

 different aspects of me are all my true self

- paper dolls!

 I chose six colour themes and six aspects of me,
I pulled out the gelli plate, a brayer, some stencils and some watercolour paper and just played.

Once I had created my 6 dolls, I then played with stamps building up their mixed media texture and finally I journaled on them about who this aspect of me really is.  

January Journalling

 The start of a new year and time off from regular life usually finds me madly art journalling, processing what has been and contemplating what is to come, lucky for me my feathered friends were on hand to 'help'.

This year started off with lots happening here. I have been going through some pretty major personal challenges and a dear friend Kat Lakie put my name up for some lovely supportive art mail, and the very nurturing  and talented Beth Pastore send me an envelope full of love so I used them in my journal.

I also had loads going on in January as I was taking my kids on a road trip and to a folk festival so I did a whole heap of backgrounds and collages into my new journal then I could just take it and a box of basic supplies and play while we ere away.

You might see something you have sent me over the years here as I did a big tidy up of my art space looking for all sorts of things I could add as pockets of things to fold out and open

Beth had sent me some great words she had cut from magazines and as I was decluttering and recycling magazines I did a quick flick through and grabbed any words of images that called to me.

I had so much fun building this journal.

Using up all sorts of saved snippets.

There is also plenty of heart felt journalling 

 This page I love the colours but it was a bit private hence the blur.

I love playing with colour and scraps and have actually gone on and done a much darker version dealing with deeper issues using just black and white and grey and a bit of brown.