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!