Visual journal & spring has sprung

My Wind in the Willows altered book visual journal (what a mouthful) has finally come to an end, and I'm not sorry. Although I enjoyed it, it was also quite restricting. Whatever I did, because of the style of the book and the old quality of the pages, all my entries had a kind of vintage, dated feel. Towards the end, I stopped writing in it, and mainly did collage with words and sentences. It was all about experimenting with diferent art techniques, collage, paint, fabric and lots of layers. Good-bye, WitW AB vj, it was fun while it lasted, now it's time to move on.

This is my new visual journal. Spiral bound, new fresh blank white pages - heaven. I am completely inspired by the wonderful Patty of River Bend Ranch, who's daily journal pages I have been loving to bits. It's just as well, because the pages in this book are quite thin and won't take liquid and layers of paint. So I'm going to be sticking in pictures, and using mainly chalk pastels, crayons and coloured pencils. It's going to be simpler, and more of a record of my daily thoughts and doings.

At the moment I am totally inspired by the coming of spring and my favourite spring poem:

in just-

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman

whistles far and wee

and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring

when the world is puddle-wonderful

the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope

and
it's
spring
and
the

goat-footed

balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

e.e. cummings