art journaling – RA Girl

This is just a random post, no book review tonight, to tired to think to much tonight but not quite ready to go to bed.

I have been doing a lot of art journaling lately, pretty much its a daily thing and has become a bit of an obsession. There is a lot of mix media art involved and when it comes to mixed media nothing is safe from becoming part of my projects, well at least that what I thought until earlier this week. I decided I need some old book pages on a page I was working on and since I have a book case (and several boxes) of old books that get neglected since I use a kindle now so I pulled out on that is pretty tatty, well loved I call it and I flicked through and thought I could use a few of the lose pages but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t pull apart the book.

It suddenly dawned on me that I loved that book and if I pulled it apart it would be like ripping up an old friend. The book was written by the late great David Eddings, Book 5 of the Belgariad series which was one of my very favorite series for a long long time. To me there are three great fantasy writers

you may argue with that and that’s fine, share your favorites with me, theses three have been in my list of favorite authors of all time forever and some of the few writers who I have read everything they have written and loved it all. I still have so many of their books that I can’t bear to part with, though I did hand on my love of books to my middle child and he did steal a few of Feist’s Magician series when he went away to university, the wee thief lol. Actually I didn’t mind at all, its so good to see the next generation develop a love for reading, so few of them have that passion and they don’t know what they are missing. btw my son is 25 and I know some of my followers are in the age group and I say to you…share your love of books, encourage your friends to read, let them escape into the worlds you love.

And now I am burbling so it must be time for bed, but first I need to get the paint off my fingers and put this book back where it belongs, even if I never read it again, its not going anywhere.

Have a fab weekend everyone. Happy reading.

I know, I have been MIA for a while now and I am sorry for that. Seems Rheumatoid Arthritis and Fibromyalgia wanted to kick me around a bit, well a lot actually, just days after I was thinking how well the new meds my fav doc gave me, were working I got a major flare. I have been doing so well, more energy and better movement than I have had in almost 11 years, I should never have got comfortable with that feeling because as soon as I relaxed into it, my old nemeses RA and FM decided to rear their ugly heads fully force, laying me low for the last month or more. That will teach me won’t it? Just when I think its safe to start living again.

Winter is starting to lose its grip here and I love that cos as you can imagine, winter and joint pain are not the best of friends, and as the slowly warming weather sets in I start to think I will feel better but nope, not gonna happen. And with the pain comes the depression and with that comes the shutting down and avoiding the world. And to add to that depression comes the anniversary of my beloveds death, which still has a terrible effect on my mental health even now, 13 years later. Every year at this time I get throwing back into that awful night when my world fell apart so dramatically. Seems like pretty much everything bad in my life has stemmed from that night and I wonder if I will ever come back from it completely. I still have so much heartbreak and anger left over from that time.

Anyway to battle these feelings I have been losing myself in an art journal course, which is actually really helping me get some of those mixed up feelings out onto paper with paint and ink and lots of mess. I have touched on art journaling once before but not to the extent that I am at the moment. My desk is a permant mess of ink stains and bits of paper and its lots of fun just to go nuts and enjoy the process. Here is some of the pages I have done

The thing I find is when I have a new hobby I throw myself completely into it and everything else gets put into the background, even the housework at times lol. I have also been doing a refresher course in computing. Its been a long long time since I sat the Microsoft certificates and things have changed a lot since then so I decided it was time to get myself back up to speed. its been 13 years since I worked in the industry and I still want to go back to teaching one day, if my health ever lets me, which lately I am thinking it won’t. If nothing else I would like to be able to do private tutoring which is something I can fit around my stupid health. I am finding it a lot easier than I expected, I am working on Excel at the moment which I never used to like but I am actually getting into this time around, even the formulas are coming back to me easily.

Well folks time to drag this weary ol bod of mine off to my bed, after a lovely big dose of pain killers to dull the aches. Its raining today and its playing havoc with those old joints of mine. I joke with my Mum that my body is older than hers. She has the body of a typical 70+ woman, I have the body of a 90 year old drug addict lol. If you can’t laugh about it than what’s the point of being alive.

I will be back, hopefully tomorrow, with a new book review for you. I have read some awesome books lately that I want to share with you, so watch out for that. Hope you didn’t mind me moaning at you tonight, its just been such a long journey these last few weeks and sometimes I just need to get it all of my chest so I can move on.

Good night one and all, I will be back.