Make It Work! .... the birth of a new Circle Journal

 

 Anyone who knows me well, knows that I don't watch a ton of TV, but there are a select few programmes that I am nothing short of fanatical about:

• Fringe
• The IT Crowd
• Doctor Who
• Father Ted
• Glee (for my sins)
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• and PROJECT RUNWAY!!

Yes, I know it's an odd show for me to get hooked on, I'm not desperately interested in the world of high fashion.  But I DO love to see the way the contestants respond to all the fantastic challenges they get set - like "make a dress out of chocolate wrappers", "take a hideous old bridesmaid dress apart and make something modern and fabulous from it", "make a three piece outfit inspired by a billboard ad", etc etc etc.  I just enjoy watching creative people being forced to think outside the box, and seeing what clever things they come up with.

And I got to thinking, in that respect the Project Runway challenges are very similar to the Take Ten CJ I just finished working on - where we had prompts like "make a page inspired by a postage stamp", "....by a Guns n Roses song", "....by a layout sketch", ".....in shades of one colour only"....

So the idea started brewing in my head....what about a Project Runway themed circle where everyone picks one of the actual Project Runway challenges from a past episode of the show - and instead of applying the prompts to designing clothing, we can apply them to producing pages for each others journals!

I suggested the potential theme over at UKScrappers, and in no time at all I had 9 other sign-ups - enough for a 10-person circle, and we were on our way!

The challenge I chose was from Season 8, Episode 5 - where the contestants had to choose one "concept" and one "material" from two lists provided, and somehow combine them into a garment.

I've used the same lists that the PR designers had to choose from:

My fellow circle-journallers will need to choose one item from each box, and then construct a 2-page spread in my book, on any subject (it doesn't have to be anything to do with fashion or clothing....), featuring their chosen concept and material prominently.

I decided to call my journal Mix and Match - which takes me back to my cover....did you wonder why there was that second helping of coil binding on the front of the book?

So my model could mix and match her outfits, of course!

I made nine separate flaps and dressed her head and shoulders, torso, and legs in a number of outfits based on some of the options in my "Concepts" and "Materials" lists.

For example, above you see Menswear For Women on the top, Tartan in the middle and Minimalist on the legs.

The initial shot of the book, at the top of this post, shows Military with Futuristic and Gothic

And here's Menswear For Women again with Animal Prints and Gold.

Each look is labelled on the back.

I had a lot of fun making this book (out of old Easter Egg boxes covered with painted and stencilled watercolour paper) - and hopefully my fellow CJ participants will have fun playing with it also.

The other main parts of the book, are my sign in pages:

I liked the idea of using little free hanging tags, like clothing tags, in keeping with the overall fashion theme.  And "auf wiedersehen", German for goodbye, is of course the catchphrase of show host Heidi Klum, so it seemed appropriate to put it at the back of the book :)

And also, for completeness, here is the back cover, where you can get a clearer view of the painted and stencilled papers I made and used throughout the book's construction:

Sorry, this is turning into a super long blog post, almost as bad as one of my geocaching write-ups!  (the current one of which I am currently in the process of writing, and it is already up to 5,600 words!  that's longer than the essays we had to write at school, ridiculous)

Just one more thing to show you, and that's my own layout in the Mix and Match journal.

I chose Tartan from the materials list, and Futuristic from the concepts.  And this is where I ended up (please excuse poor photo, this page is super shiny and reflective):

I had stupid amounts of fun making this - who could resist a couple of super cute tartan robots?

The background was spraypainted in silver onto black glossy card, using a very cool stencil of a circuit board that I got from ebay recently

And the bots were cut out freehand from tartan print and gold card, and jazzed up with the addition of a few eyelets.

I was going to add some terribly witty writing to the page, but I couldn't think of anything terribly witty.  So I'm going to leave the robots to talk for themselves (which could be a bit of a challenge for the one without a mouth!)

So that's my journal all finished and ready to go.  First posting date is June 6th.  I'm looking forward to getting the circle moving and getting my creative teeth stuck in to some of those other challenges!