I'm going postal....

.... in CJ form

I've been working on this CJ every night for a week and a half, desperately trying to get it finished by tonight, so that I can hand deliver it to its first recipient tomorrow on my way to Wales....and it's finally all done! yay!

This is my book for a new circle called Take Ten, over on UKScrappers.

The theme of the CJ is prompts and inspirations.  Each participant has chosen a type of inspirational material, and has provided ten examples of such for the other circle members to select in turn, and use their choice to inspire their their artwork.

Clear as mud? :)

Well, the inspirations I've chosen are postage stamps - each person will choose one of the stamps I have provided from the lil' pocket at the back of the book, and use this as a prompt to make their entry - they might use the same colour scheme as the stamp, the composition, the subject matter, something inspired by the stamp's country of origin, etc etc.  

Hopefully I'm starting to make some sense now.

The book's a fairly basic affair, and everso dinky, just over 4" square.

I made it on the Bind It All with wage envelopes for "pages", and plain chipboard covers covered one by one with real postage stamps and 7 Gypsies postmark and cancellation rubons.  This cute little envelope charm was the perfect finishing touch.

Inside, the instructions for the other participants are on various differently sized tags:

What I'm asking each person to do, is put their actual entry inside one of the wage envelopes, and use the outside as a kind of sign in tag.

On the front, I've asked them to stick the stamp they have chosen, and address the envelope to themselves, but not at their real address, instead they can write where they *wish* they lived :)  Here's mine :)

And on the back, I'd really like to see a photo of each of my fellow circle journallers, in the postage stamp frame that I've provided (courtesy of the Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot).  But I understand that not everyone "does" photos of themselves, and so I don't mind at all if they put a photo of something else in there.

For mine I used a photo taken at Michelle's birthday beach party earlier this year, hopefully she'll recognise it when this CJ reaches her in about 9 months time :)

I chose the "icon" stamp you can see on my envelope above, to use as my inspiration, partly because I LOVED the colours, the deep blue shows up the rich yellows and oranges so well.  And partly because, despite not being in the slightest bit god fearing, I really love religious imagery (see an upcoming blog post on graveyard angels for a case in point)

I've taken a fairly literal interpretation of my stamp, but I'm happy for the future participants to be a little more obscure with theirs if they wish.

Here's the contents of my envelope folded up:

(the gold writing says "illuminate!", as a nod to the wonderful Acey Deucy rubber stamp used inside, called 'Illuminati', and also becuase of the illuminated writing at his feet)

And here is what it unfolds to:

'Illuminati' was stamped on white glossy card, and coloured with yellow, orange and red Distress Inks and then cut out.  The background is blue card sprayed with midnight blue Glimmer Mists.  The writing at the bottom is stamped and gold embossed, the halo is gold leaf, the rays were drawn in by hand with a gold gel pen, and the border is copper tape from a stained glass supplier, marked with the edge of my scissors.

I think that's everything, I hope the other ladies have as much fun re-interpreting their own choice of postage stamps as I did mine.

I look forward to getting this book back in June 2011 :)