Busy, busy day. I just managed to squeak in a page using the birds I had already dragged out. Thanks to Helen (H) for the stamping session at that long ago crop! I do love the funky birds. I made them by stamping on various plain and patterned paper then paper piecing the birds from cut elements.

I got my little pot of printed words and short phrases (rather than my pot of long phrases and quotes this time) and pulled three. Sometimes the pulls don’t in any way match my challenge goal and I feel like I would struggle to use the words.

I mean maybe Hidden, maybe Madness, but I had an idea for the phrase. I had stumbled across a scribble of paint I made AGES ago. I blogged (in 2013!) about using the white version of this, from a Jane Davies tutorial (yep, still a good link) and when I found it during my grand tidy I felt I could use it somehow. and today was the day!

Sticking it to the page was a bit tricky – I feel like I would maybe do my rolling-matte-medium on the gel plate trick next time. But yeah, it stuck fine in the end with just a dot at each intersection and at the free-floating tips of the scribbles. In the end it got to this:
The left image is the page with the journal flat the right is it standing up. Hard to see but the page sort of floats over the tabletop, as it is shorted than the ones that surround it. I do love this journal.


I also spent some time musing about AJ pages. I have come to the conclusion they don’t always have to be this crazy work of art, with a million techniques and supplies. Sometimes it is just the making of the page, doing something, ANYTHING, that is the thing that makes it a “great” page. Overcoming the chaos of life to carve out a tiny sliver of time to get your art on is what lifts the art to a higher place. Or at least it is for me. I would rather make a page, any page, than not do a page at all because I let my desire to create a “masterpiece” when I know I can’t find more than a few minutes to work on it stop me from my desk.
So another for the AJJ challenge and a more legit bird this time. Now I might wait for the June one. Super busy day today and I need to find time to prep for WOYWW. Will I manage it? I hope so.