Category Archives: My Brilliant career journal

A journal I am creating about my teaching career.

Altered board book

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I’ve finished my journal about my teaching career! I made it from a children’s board book which opens out concertina wise, and I posted about the first half of it here. One side is all in tones of muted reddy brown and cream, and the other side in blues and purples.

Here is the whole blue side:

I did not have very many photos that I had taken at school, considering the large number of concerts and plays I had produced over the years.

I love the blues and purples in the background on this side….I did quite a lot of bubble wrap printing also. I embellished it with some more illustrations from “Where the Wild things are”, and with a few borders cut from some scrapbook papers.

I painted over all the photos with a very transparent wash of a bluey purple colour to tie them into the background more, and I liked the effect.

 

I don’t miss my teaching career hardly at all really. Sometimes I remember some sweet moments,some creative things I did, or some proud moments, when my concerts really came together and the children loved performing. I also remember a lot of stressful moments!

I taught many adorable children over the years, and occasionally I will run into some, now grown up, and its usually wonderful to see them. I know many children I taught went on to study music or drama and some have told me that I had inspired them to make these choices, so that feels good!

 

This is how the journal looks folded out from the other side (which is about my earlier teaching years and also my university days.)

 

 

 

My Brilliant Career

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I bought a children’s board book a while ago with the intention of altering it and turning it into a journal. It opens out like a concertina. I gessoed both sides of it, mostly covering over the  pictures and text underneath. I decided to make it into a kind of retrospective of my (school) teaching career, as I stopped teaching in school a year ago now, so it seemed a good time to think back over those years.

so far I’ve completed one side of the book in which I’ve written some memories of my university days and of my first few years of teaching in Sydney. I used old photographs and some pictures from “Where the wild things are” (a popular children’s book at the time) and some decorations from a set of scrapbook papers called “school days”.

This was a very therapeutic process for me, to relive old memories both good and bad, and to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses as a teacher!

It was great to look through old photos also, although a bit disappointing to find I didn’t really have many photos of myself at work.

I used some chipboard letters to make the title of the book, the first time I have ever used them and I really like the effect. I tend not to use anything vaguely 3 dimensional inside my journal because I imagine it won’t close properly. But the cover is a different matter!

I have painted some backgrounds on the other side of this journal ready for some photos and writing about the later years of my career up here on the North coast as a music and drama specialist teacher and will get around to finishing it sometime this year! Right now I’m all caught up with the 21 secrets online art journaling course!