Hooray, it's HOME!....UK Stampers CJ

Actually it's been home for a couple of weeks, but it has taken me a while to get it fixed up, rebound and photographed. 

But all that aside, here it is - the CJ that I sent out on its little journey way back in November 2009 - it hit a few delays along the way but it finally came back to me last month. 

I'm really chuffed that the covers have survived 12 postings so well - I was a bit worried all that crackle paste might flake off - but it's still solid as a rock (and all the little pebbles held on too, god bless gorilla glue!)

 

Looks great inside, huh?

You can see my own page on the original post (linked up there as 'November 2009') - and here are the rest (sorry about my painty old table in the background):

"Shrink Me" by Tasha (Chicken Licken)

"the gate to another dimension" by Sid (Harpie)

"when one door closes" by Linda E

"Dante's Inferno" by Claireabelle

"Look Inside" by 3D Jean

"Boo!" by Efemera

My bestest pal Alison G spoilt me with a double set of gorgeous hand-watercoloured pages

"Alice's Garden" by Moira (Happy Daze)

Another take on "one door opens..." - there was no sign in tag for this one, but by a process of elimination, it must be by T Ann

"Keys" by Fiona (Magickdiva)

 and last but CERTAINLY not least, a masking masterpiece!

"hell of a good universe next door" by Diane (Morti)

Thanks so much to everyone who worked in the journal - I'm glad you all had fun with the door stamps.

It now has pride of place on my CJ bookshelf :) 

It's been a long time coming.....

...but my bessie mate, Alison G, is finally hoooooooome!!!!!

It’s been almost 3 years since she last spent the night in her own bed in her own house, having been very very poorly, can you imagine being away from home for so long??? No, neither can I. I’m just so glad she is finally back under her own roof as of last Tuesday.

Which, completely un-coincidentally, is the day I did this CJ entry for her.

How completely and utterly apt that Alison’s CJ – themed “Home” – should be due to come back to her just as she arrived back exactly there.

It wasn’t planned that way – when the CJ was first sent out, her estimated home date was Spring 2010, but red tape delay after red tape delay pushed that back to December. But she has finally made it, and we’re all SO happy for her!

So here’s my CJ entry….my last in this UKStampers circle, just waiting for my own to come home now....it's a welcome home party featuring all her favourite people (and her lovely doggy, Molly) :)

I do apologise for the spider and web – I’m quite sure Alison’s hubby made sure the house was thoroughly spick and span for her grand arrival – but the CJ was one of those ones where you have to use a stamp provided by the host – and the stamp was the cobweb. And I guess at least it does give a figurative nod to the fact she hasn’t been home in a while….

The guests at her welcome home party range from her own hubby and Molly, myself and my family, through a couple of NHL hockey players, and the chap who plumbed in her new bathroom, to Stephen Fry and that vampire dude from True Blood. Sounds like a fun party to me! :)

It’s just a pity we couldn’t have all been there in person to greet her as she came through the front door.

Welcome home bessie!!!

Love is like a butterfly....

I've been scarily productive recently - here's yet another CJ entry.

The lyrics I've used on this one are from the theme tune of a TV programme I used to like when I was a kiddie - it was called Butterflies.  It was last broadcast almost 30 years ago, so I'm definitely showing my age with this one!

This is for the Take One Stamp circle, and here's the stamp I had to use:

I like the swirly heart, but wasn't sure what to do with the arrow.

But then I started thinking of "lovey dovey" type sayings and songs, as befits a heart stamp, and that song from "Butterflies" just popped into my head and refused to leave.  So a butterfly it was to be.....

Before I got to the main event, though, this is an envelope book, so there was an envelope to decorate:

Inside the envelope is this:














Which opens out to this:

Using the heart stamp for the butterfly wings posed a little bit of a problem.  The heart, with the arrow chopped off, isn't entirely symmetrical.  So 4 identical stamped images pointing in the same direction didn't look right for wings.

I solved this problem by stamping first onto a flat rubber block, and then using that block to stamp onto the card, thus creating a mirror image of the original stamp design.  I used this method for 2 of the 4 wings so that they looked right on either side of the butterfly's body.

His body is made from beads strung onto wire, which was sewn onto the canvas background.

This one's for Tasha, I hope that she likes it

Next month will bring my last entry in this circle, it's been a lot of fun...

Some disappointingly non scary clowns....

Due to two circle journals ending over the next couple of months with one needing two layouts completed instead of the usual one, and two more new circles starting this month, I've managed to get myself horridly over committed in August - with 5 CJ layouts needing doing before the end of August.

Jack Skellington was the first, and this is the second.  Wish me luck with #s 3 to 5 :)

I've been doing CJs for around six years now, but this one was unique, in as much as the background of the pages was already prepared (the red and yellow harlequin design), which pretty much defines the colour scheme you'll need to work in, and also puts some limitations on how you work (no brads right through the page etc, which you could do in a normal CJ as you wouldn't be working straight onto the book pages).

This might have made it a bit more of a challenge, BUT I think it's a brilliant idea, because the resulting book with all its pages from different stampers flows together so well, with its consistent background and colours.  And of course everyone has used the same clown stamp, as this is one of those "take one stamp" CJs.

It really does make for a perfectly unified end result, and it's an idea I might well steal for a future journal.

When I first received this journal in the post, my immediate thought was to go all out horror movie in my entry, as surprisingly, nobody else who has yet worked in it has gone with the evil, scary clown angle.  And you know me well enough by now to know that I like the darker side of things.

Trouble is, I just couldn't get this idea to work with the stamp provided.  And so in the end I went with a pun on the phrase "just clowning around".

I stamped 9 images of the clown onto yellow card, one whole one, one just his ruff to decoupage over the main clown, and the remaining 7 I cut down to their midriff and layered onto a circle of glossy red card (after watercolouring them in muted colours to go with the vintage circus style of the book).

I set an eyelet in the middle of the circle, and then attached it with a large brad to a "cog" of orange card (a circle cut out with stamp-edge decorative scissors)

This cog was stuck onto the background, and the clowns were free to "clown aROUND" - ie spin:

wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

This entry was huge fun to make, and even more fun to play with :)

Next up.....the theme is "pink"..... not very "me" :)  But I have a germ of an idea.....

None of us can escape the Danse Macabre

I've been a bit slack on the blogging front recently, I've got the letters L and M to write up, plus loads more geocaching adventures, and a fantastic trip to Ireland to see Pearl Jam to tell you about.  But all that is going to wait until I have some time, which seems in short supply right now!

But one thing I have, finally, found the time to do is a stampers' CJ entry, almost 3 weeks overdue, eek!!!

The stamp this month was this cute little dancing skeleton.

I tried to think of something witty to do with him, like many of the other girls have, but most of the good puns had already been taken, and so instead I channelled my inner goth and based my spread on the Lübeck Dance of Death.

Luckily I have a few dancing skellie stamps of my own (that inner goth isn't very well buried, to be honest), and so I was able to make up a decent crowd scene with the aid of some post it notes, an embossing pen, and Black Soot distress ink....

The background is interference paints in red, purple and blue on black cardstock, oversprayed with glimmer mists.  The big tree is stamped and then painted over, as were the bats, the rest is painted freehand. 

The scroll features part of the Lübeck poem, the jist of which is that no matter how powerful you may be in life, rich or poor, young or old, good or bad, you can't escape the dance of death.....cheery, huh? :D

So now we know whodunnit.....

I have another UKstampers CJ entry to blog...and I think this is my favourite stamp so far :)

This is the beautifully named "nun with a big gun" stamp from VivaLasVegastamps, isn't she great?

As usual, I brainstormed ideas for this one with my boyfriend Jay - my creative director :)  He came up with the great line

not a conventional hitman

(convent, geddit?)

and I just had to use it....

This is what I came up with:

So that finally solves the mystery of who was behind the grassy knoll.....

(PS - on a side note - I've just realised that I can now geo-tag my blog posts - how cool :) )

Little birdie #2 of 2

aka, "more custard, Vicar?"

As promised, here is the second CJ in a row in which I've been given a bird stamp to use. It's a good job we still had some spare ideas left over from the first one.

This idea was Jay's - "Bird's Custard" - genius :)

It was difficult for me to do, as it involved drawing, and I can't draw!

But I got there in the end...

Here's my page - complete with a multitude of shrink plastic custard birdies:


It's supposed to be a kind of aerial view of the jug pouring custard onto a slice of cherry pie on a blue and white plate on a red checked tablecloth....I'm not sure how clear that actually is....

The title was written with an embossing pen and embossed with some lovely creamy yellow embossing powder that I just KNEW I'd find a use for one day - perfect custard colour :)

And here's the sign in bit at the back:



This one went in the post today, and I have already received the next CJ in the chain - this next one has a FAB stamp, can't wait to work with it! Just you wait and see :)

Little birdie #1 of 2

It's UKStampers CJ time again, and it's the turn of Moria's book which came with this sweet bird stamp.

When this book turned up in the post a couple of weeks ago, Creative Director Jay and I brainstormed through all the bird ideas.... a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush....a little bird told me....free as a bird....feather your nest....birds of a feather flock together....the early bird catches the worm....kill two birds with one stone....etc etc.

I finally settled on Bird's Eye View, and got to work making my little collaged cityscapes.


A couple of days later, the next book in this circle turned up - and it was another bird stamp! And someone had already done Bird's Eye View in the second book, mutter mutter.

I considered scrapping my half finished entry in Birdie CJ #1, but decided to go ahead with it in the end as my execution of the phrase was sufficiently different fom the one in the other book, that hopefully it won't look like either of us copied the other.

And our big brainstorm won't go to waste, as I now have tons of bird-related ideas for the next CJ.

Anyway - here's my entry. I hope the bird doesn't mind me chopping off his legs, at least I gave him an extra wing :)

This hasn't photographed particularly well, especially the bird (he's more glossy and less blocky/stripy in real life, and altogether nicer than he looks in that pic). But never mind, you get the jist.

Here's the sign in bit at the back:


A quick supplies list:

The cityscape is a Riff Raff Designs chipboard thingummy, which I covered with various collage papers

The background is pearlescent acrylic paint (blue mixed with pearl) on watercolour paper

The clouds were handcut from some sparkly paper I got in the Range yonks ago

The cute little puffy stickers of cars and planes and helicopters were from Paperchase

The bird is stamped with a Kaleidacolor rainbow inkpad on glossy paper, and his body is raised up on foam tape ahead of his back wing

And the title on the manilla shipping tag is made with K&Co "Letters to Go" over a stamped distress ink background

I think that's everything....

bring on the next lil' feathered fella (it's still F fortnight :))

Stampers CJ - #4 - "gates"....

I'm actually a bit early with this one as I'm hoping to hand deliver it to me bessie Alison next weekend, but for my purposes it's Stampers CJ time again ..... and this book belongs to T-Ann, whose stamp was this pair of ornate gates:

The brief for this book was not only to make something purty with the supplied stamp, but also on the facing page to explain exactly how the purty thing got made, as T-Ann is a beginner stamper and is hoping to learn lots of new techniques from this book when it lands back home.

I've gone with stamping into melted embossing powder as my "technique", probably teaching granny to suck eggs, as I don't think she is that much of a beginner, but I couldn't think what else to do that would work with the angel wings I've had sitting in a drawer for goodness knows how long, and which I really wanted to use on this page.

So here's my entry:



I won't bore you with how everything was done, for once, as if you're really interested you can read about it on the piccie :) (you might need to click on it to see it bigger first)

Sorry about the glare, I didn't even use a flash, that was just from my light - but this entry is very shiny-sparkly :)



PS yes, I know we've skipped straight from #2 to #4 - I forgot to take a piccie of #3 soz...

Stampers CJ - #2 - "the key"....

... where #1 was my own book, and the stamp was "the door"

This is my entry in Di's book for the UKstampers latest "take one stamp" style Circle Journal.

I've done a few of these before so you might be familiar with the format by now - it's one of those collaborations where a stamp is provided, and each participant designs a page using that stamp in any way they wish.

Di's stamp is this ornate key:

I was a tad stuck with this one to start with, as it calls out for a "vintagey" type treatment, and I don't really do vintage.

Jay thought it looked a little like an elephant's head, so I tried for a while to do something with that, with an elephant's head peeking out through the jungle leaves, kind of thing, but I couldn't get it to work.

Then I thought maybe I could use the little man in the middle of the stamp and use him repeatedly to make a crowd scene, looking up at the giant key. Not sure where I was going with that exactly :) And it would have been a nightmare of selective inking and masking to get it to work.

But anyway, I continued along that train of thought, and ended up here:



The backstory is on the back of the page here:



Not sure how well you can see in the pic, but they key statue has been stamped onto metal and embossed from the back to make it 3D. I filled the back in with glue lines so hopefully it will stay puffy.

Other stamps used are a pedestal from, I think, The Stamping Ground, the crowd scene from Viva Las Vegas, the Venice skyline from Green Pepper Press, and a moon, and silhouette of pine trees, unknown.

This CJ goes to my pal Alison next, I wonder what she will do with the key?

it's Jackanory time

I'm not going to do my usual apology for not having blogged in an age, cos, well, I haven't made anything TO blog....

But in the last month I've made two whole things! whoot! A card and a book for a circle journal. In fact I made 3, as I made another card also, but forgot to take a piccie of it.

And I have another book to make over the next couple of weeks too so hopefully I'll be blogging again very soon.

I REALLY hope that this means a return to me regularly creating 'stuff', partly because I love it and I've sorely missed it, but also because I feel really bad that there are things I am waaaay overdue to make for people that I just haven't been able to get around to yet. I promise, if I owe you something, you WILL get it eventually, and if I had forced myself to make it when my mojo was dead, it wouldn't have been any good anyway, better to wait until the creative juices are flowing. Don't you think? Doesn't stop me feeling really guilty though.

But anyway, before I beat myself up too much, here's the card, for my good buddy Tracy for her 21st-again birthday last week:

She called it "special", I'm not sure if that was a compliment :) But I liked it, and surely that's all that matters lol

The background of the card was alcohol inked (2 shades of Tria purple along with Ranger's denim, black soot and silver mixative) - the railings at the bottom were stamped and black embossed and then highlighted with a silver pen - and the moon lady was stamped with Versafine then mounted on a circle of chipboard, edged with silver paint and covered with a few layers of clear UTEE. The purple stars are Papermania gems.

As for my circle journal book (front cover up top there ^), this is another one of those stamping CJs I love to do, and I signed up for this one on a bit of a whim and a hope that it might nudge me back into making things. I've enjoyed putting the book together so much, that maybe the plan might just work.

The way that these journals work is that you choose a stamp, and send the book with the stamp around a group of fellow participants (11 of us in this case, all from the UKStampers forum), and each person uses the stamp provided in their own style to make a page for your book.

The challenge with these is to choose a stamp that is fairly versatile so that all the ways to use it don't get used up by person 4, leaving the rest of the group scratching their heads.

So the stamp I've chosen is an open door....so it's almost Jackanory, it's just it's an arched door not an arched window....and I've asked each person taking part to show me what they think is behind the door. It could be anything, anyone or anywhere, so hopefully I've left no excuse for people to say they can't think of an idea :)

The stamp is actually part of a set, with the door closed and open, so I've used the closed version on the book cover, and also supplied both stamps with the journal so the others can also use the closed version in their design if they like.

To make the background for the cover....

which you can see clearer in this piccie of the back of the book, especially if you click on it to see it up close:

....I used Golden crackle paste, which is kind of like polyfilla, nice and thick textured, but it cracks as it dries to give a lovely worn building look.

It was painted with 2 shades of brown paint and a bit of antique gold glimmer mist to emphasise all the nooks and crannies, and then finished off along the bottom with little pebbles made from airdry clay and painted with acrylics, and plants punched out of green card.

The front cover was further decorated with the stamped and watercoloured door, chipboard letters that had been coloured with a dark brown sharpie and then topped with copper Stickles, and a little door handle.

Inside the book I made pockets inside each cover for the stamps, and an intro page at the front, and sign in pages and an address label at the back:







The door knobs on the little sign in doors are "gunmetal pearls" from Papermania - I found these buried in the bottom of one of my drawers and was chuffed to find they fitted perfectly, and the numbers were stamped onto small punched squares of black shrink plastic, and then shrunk with a heat gun.

And after all that of course I had to do my own entry....I had all sorts of ideas for this one, from a fully underwater scene with mermaids and allsorts, to a fantastical alien planetscape, because I love doing outer spacey stuff.

In the end, following input from my creative director/boyfriend, I kind of ended up doing a combination of the two - a kind of unearthly place where Haida orcas swim right up to the sea wall. My little tribute to the beautiful city of Vancouver and its spectacular views out into the Pacific.

here you go:



The gorgeous big orca on the left was stamped with a hand carved stamp made for me by the wonderful Michelle Ward, based on my backpiece tattoo. I use it all the time, I love it to bits.

The whale was stamped on white card in black ink and embossed, and then I coloured in the white bits with glue and a thin layer of pale green glitter. You can see it a bit on this close up.

The background and also the backing for the waves is watercolour paper painted with various shades of Lumiere paint, and in the case of the pink sky, overstamped with various celestial images in different inks.

The waves are made with torn vellum in different shades of blue, and the wall (other than that part of the wall immediately around the stamped door) was hand drawn and watercoloured.

Over on the right hand side is much of the same, with the addition of a hand painted sun and two more stamped Haida creatures. You can see some of the lovely shimmer in the Lumiere paints on this close up if you click on it for a closer peek.

So that's it - now I'll send the book out into the wide world, and it hope it survives on its journey and comes back to me in 11 months time filled with colour and texture and creativity.

Have fun, book!