Finally! my last entry in the Tattoo CJ

Well, this was a day I never thought would come - the day I finally get to update the Tattoo CJ in my works in progress list to 100% - yay!

This CJ round was one of those where everything that could go wrong went wrong - a few members had to drop out due to major life crises, and then a couple of other participants went AWOL for long periods of time, sitting on multiple journals for many months that I, as host, had to somehow retrieve.

This, Ally's CJ, was one of the ones that had disappeared into a black hole. I last heard from the lady who had this CJ plus my own book back in March 2009, saying she was just about to post them on. This never happened, and after that she ignored all my attempts to contact her, by text, email, facebook (she defriended me sharpish when I sent a message!), and registered letter.

I had totally given up on ever seeing them again, and then a couple of months ago - woohoo! a parcel arrived totally out of the blue with both missing books in.

I never did find out what the problem had been for so long - the lady had completed her own entries in both books back in December 2008 - so what was stopping her getting to the post office, I have no idea.

But no hard feelings - there's bound to be an explanation - I'm just glad they finally came back.

The timing, unfortunately, wasn't great for me, as I had just started two other CJ groups (the Take One Stamp one and the Disney one), and these were taking up all my making-stuff time....so I wasn't able to find the opportunity to do my entry in Ally's book until the Christmas break from work....but she assured me that she could wait another month or two :)

But her wait is now over...and I *think* this is the last book to go home in this ill fated circle, so I can now draw a line under this one.....thank god :D

Anyway - enough of the preamble - the theme for Ally's journal was "reactions to your tattoos, good or bad"....a great theme, but I was struggling to think of something I could do differently to the girls who had gone ahead of me.

The truth is, none of my tattoos are visible in day-to-day clothing, and so most people don't even know they are there, hence I don't get much in the way of comments or reactions, I've never had a bad one that I can remember (well, other than from my mum :))....and that seemed to be similar to a few of the other participants, who had already done layouts along the lines of "I don't get any bad reactions because nobody can see them"...

But then my clever lateral thinking boyfriend pointed out that there is more than one kind of 'reaction' - and so I decided to do my page on the nasty allergic reaction that I had to the red ink in my latest tattoo:

(that pic was taken before the inflammation kicked in - I don't have a photo of that, but trust me it was manky, all swollen and purple and itchy as HELL)

Apparently, red is the only colour of ink they can't make entirely hypoallergenic. Trust me to be allergic to it, I have always been allergic to lots of stuff. This one I wasn't expecting though, after all, I have a ton of red ink in my backpiece, and that didn't react at all....must be a different brand or something.

But anyway - back to the page - here's how it all came together:

• the pages are made from "Black Magic" coredinations cardstock, which is black on the outside but has a coloured core, red in this case, so you can sand it back to reveal the colour. It's cool stuff, I haven't used it before but certainly will again.
  
• the "DANGER" tape was simply set up in a word processor, printed onto yellow cardstock, cut into strips, and inked a little to distress
  
• the large skull and crossbones is Tim Holtz grungeboard, he's been painted with Ranger crackle paints, scuffed up a little with inks, and has had his eyes filled in with glossy accents, black microbeads and black glitter:
  (he is stuck onto the page with foam squares so he is popping out of the page)
  
• the stencil letters spelling RED were cut on the Cricut three times each from white card, stuck together to make something closer to chipboard in depth, and then triple embossed using red embossing powder...they came out a bit darker than expected, and didn't really show up too well on the black background, so I backed them with the same yellow card I used to make the DANGER tape:
  
  
• the rest of the title is lemon yellow rub-ons that I found at the back of my rub on drawer and have no recollection of actually buying
  
• the fab little stickers are from Paperchase - love them!
  They are metallic and kind of puffy, and you get tons of them on a sheet for a quid
  
• and those pewter stars are brads....I think that's everything....
  

So that's another CJ over....I really need to get around to blogging everyone else's entries in my own book....and the completed fabric CJ I got back a few months ago....so much to do....so little time!