CJs are like buses....

....none for ages, and then two come along at once!

So here's my Take Ten CJ home safe and sound, and full to bursting with great work!

This one started life like this back in July last year, and it's filled out some since then :)

Without further ado, here is what everybody did, and as with the last CJ's photo shoot, please excuse my messy, paint table!

In each case, the stamp that the person chose to use as their inspiration is pictured on the left, and their artwork is on the right (click on the individual pics for a closer look):

This was a really fun circle journal to be a part of - thank you to all the Take Ten ladies.  Let's do it again sometime :)

The game's up!

And so, this is the end of the Take Ten CJ - and what fun it has been!

The theme of this last journal was board games, can you guess which game I chose to interpret?

Mousetrap, of course :)

I used to LOVE that game, must dig it out, haven't played it in years!

Actually, I say I chose Mousetrap, in actual fact it was chosen for me - as I am the last to work on this CJ and therefore the other nine games had already been taken.  But I think I would have picked this one even if I had gone first, I really enjoyed searching for just the right real-life imagery to represent all the game pieces - the old boot, the rickety stairs, the bath tub, and my favourite, the diving man :)

Here's the layout back in the book, with my sign in tag:

It goes home to its owner next week - and that's when my own book should come home also - can't wait!!!

Thanks to everyone who took part in the Take Ten CJ - it's been a pleasure to host, no drop outs, no delays, no drama - perfect :)

Used to do a little but the little wouldn't do it so the little got more and mowah....

....just keep trying to get a little better, said a little better than befowah!

Yay! I've been waiting for this CJ ever since we started the Take Ten circle, the Guns n Roses theme!  

As I am the ninth of ten to work in this book, I wasn't sure which songs would be left for me to choose from, so you can imagine how excited I was to find that my favourite G n R song ever ever ever was still available - squeeeeeee!!!! I got Mr Brownstone!!!!

I really enjoyed putting this layout together, mainly because on at least two occasions in its evolution it went HORRIBLY wrong, but I still managed to salvage it.

And that somehow is more fun than eveything going smoothly from the get go :)

The song is about the cheery subject of heroin addiction, hence the poppies.

I have just one more journal left to work on in this circle - with a board games theme - and then I'm all done.  It's been a LOT of fun, I'm going to miss it when it's gone!

Don't do it, Orpheus!

Not an art journal page today - a CJ page instead.

This is my entry in the latest Take Ten CJ to reach me - the theme for this one is "couples in literature".

As I'm 8th of ten to tackle this book, most of the classic couples - including Heathcliffe and Cathy, Mr Darcy and Elizabeth, Romeo and Juliet, Edward and Bella from Twilight - had already gone.

But luckily for me, one of my favourite (if rather tragic) couples was still available - Orpheus and Eurydice.

I remember going to see the opera of this with my dad when I was a kiddie.  And the story is a cracker.  As is the moral (I'm a BIG believer in looking forward not back).  So I had fun bringing it to life on paper.

Unfortunately the end result is pretty tricky to photograph because it's a bit shiny in the light, but hopefully you get the general idea.

I enjoyed making the papers for this one, the "flamey" background was made by dragging various colours of translucent fluid acrylic paints across some yellow pearlescent card with an old credit card.

And the rocky walls were made with various paints and Liquitex glass bead medium on dark red textured card.

The devil is a photo of a toy I found on t'interweb.  I drew Orpheus and Eurydice myself, she has ended up with a rather big head and a jutty out chin, but I'm sure Orphy still thought she was beautiful :)

I think I have "Guns n Roses songs" coming next in this circle - I'm REALLY looking forward to that one (although 8 out of the 10 available song titles will have already gone, so I wonder what will be left for me!)

His Dark Materials

What a fun circle journey entry this one was to work on!

This is from the Take Ten CJ, and the theme here is famous books.

I'm the seventh to play in this book so there were only 4 titles left to choose from, and I'm ashamed to say that I hadn't heard of three of them!

But luckily one of the remaining choices was Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, which is such a good one that I would have chosen it anyway I think, even if I'd had first dibs.

A quick how to:

The background is made from a paper napkin that I have been keeping for the perfect moment, and this turned out to be it.  It was glued down with gel medium and then sprayed with a couple of different colours of glimmer mist.  And then I painted in a few darker stripes on the right hand side.

Will, Lyra and her daemon were cut out and then painted with a white paint pen to make them nice and bright white.

I decided that they needed something behind them so roughly sketched a viaduct on some of my scrap paper that I use to protect my table when using spray inks and cut it out.

The airship and scroll (which features the passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost which inspired the title of the book series) were aged with distress inks and then glued down.

Three rusty iron stars finish it all off down in the bottom left.

Next month I have "Couples in Literature" (more books!  don't these people realise that I don't have time to read? :) ) - I have chosen Orpheus and Eurydice, wish me luck!

And don't worry, I haven't forgotten my ten minutes art journalling tonight, no completed pages yet to share, but here are a couple of backgrounds-in-progress:

The second one was made using this fab technique from the very talented Dyan Reaveley:



Clever, huh?


AJED : 26/365

why Norwich, I wonder?

Blimey, posting date on the Take Ten CJ came around quick this month.  What with Christmas and New Year, time has flown, and I've found myself taken a little by surprise this time around.

The official post date was actually today, but I wasn't finished in time.  A mad scrabble this evening though has ensured that it's now all done, and will be on its way tomorrow.  Good, because I hate to be late with CJs, especially when I'm the host and should be setting a good example! :)

The inspirational prompts for this, Sonja's journal, take the form of vintage theatre posters.  The one I chose was this cool man in the moon.  He looks a bit like Willy Wonka, doesn't he?

I almost feel that it was a little lazy and predictable of me to pick this prompt, as I do night skies so often in my journal work.  And the page I've ended up producing is pretty much typical, almost stereotypical, me.

But I got to thinking - what I hope for when I get a CJ home, is a page from each of the other participants that showcases their own paricular individual style.  So hopefully Sonja will be happy to receive a page that is "classic Flo" :)

This one came together nice and quickly.  A background made from three shades of Glimmer Mist sprayed over embossed celestial images.  A treeline cut from textured card on the Cricut.  A moon face made from airdry clay coated with Pearlex mica powder.  And a title made from die cut silver letters and sanded Dymo'd strips.

The title itself is from an old nursery rhyme - which in full reads:

"The man in the moon came down too soon,

and asked his way to Norwich,

He went by the south and burnt his mouth

By supping on cold plum porridge."

I have no idea when he was supposed to come down, why he wanted to go to Norwich, or how he managed to burn himself on cold porridge.  But never mind, it's a nice little ditty all the same :)

and the Highwayman came riding - riding - riding - riding - up to the old inn door

So, I do a lot of these Circle Journal thingamajigs....and I'll 'fess up now, some of them are a lot more fun than others.

And this one was definitely one of the fun ones!

I don't think I am the only one to have enjoyed it either....every now and then a CJ theme comes along that really brings out the best in everyone participating, and from the excellent quality of all the work before me in the journal, I'd say that this is what has happened with this one.  The bar has been set very high.  No pressure then :)

This journal is part of the Take Ten circle, where the theme was prompts or inspirations.  Emma/Cosmic's clever take on this was to provide us with the transcript of her favourite poem (the classic The Highwayman by Alfred Noyes), and we were each to choose a verse from the poem (not necessarily in order), and use this as the inspiration for our contribution to the journal.

It's a wonderful poem, very dark and evocative, so it was a pleasure to work with it.

I chose verse 9:

Back, he spurred like a madman, shrieking a curse to the sky,
With the white road smoking behind him and his rapier brandished high!
Blood-red were his spurs in the golden noon, wine-red was his velvet coat
When they shot him down in the highway,
Down like a dog in the highway,
And he lay in his blood in the highway, with the bunch of lace at his throat.

Most of the rest of the book so far is pretty dark, so I ignored the bit about the 'golden noon', and went for a nighttime scene....I figure this happens later in the evening once the body has been removed from the scene and the police investigation is underway (that also saved me from having to try to draw a dead highwayman!)

And yes, I know that the "POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS" tape isn't exactly contemporary with the period of the poem, but meh, that's what they call "artistic licence" :D

A quick how to:

• the background is distress inks in black, purple and blue blended on glossy card
• the moon was stamped in silver acrylic paint (make sure you wash your stamp immediately after stamping if using paint, if it dries on your stamp it's a dead duck) before applying the distress ink, it acts as a resist
• the tree line and bird are stamped in black pigment ink
• the pool of blood was made with red glossy embossing powder
• the chalk outline was drawn freehand with a white pigment pen (Ranger Inkessentials)

That's me halfway through the Take Ten circle now - it's going by so quickly!  A sure sign I'm enjoying it!

Sunrise....Sunset..... (I love Fiddler on the Roof, showtunes! yay! if I were a man I would be SO gay :) )

  

At first glance, you'd think this is an entry from my Colours CJ... but it isn't - it's the Take Ten CJ - but this participant has chosen colours as her theme.

Confused?  Yes, me too.

All you need to know, is that I chose "Orange" :)

I loooove sun imagery, and sunrise/sunset colours, so this was an easy colour choice for me.

And it was good practice for the colours CJ - it's trickier than you expect it to be, working within a tight colour range - usually I would take a sunset right through from yellow to purple, but with this one it was orange all the way. 

Hopefully it worked, and hopefully Frances, the CJ's owner, likes it

 

Next month.....the Highwayman.....which is going to be an interesting challenge.....

Those shrews can be vicious, you know!

This CJ entry is for the "Take Ten" circle - specifically Annie's book, where the prompts are Shakespeare plays.

Macbeth had already gone, which is a pity as that was always my favourite.

So I went with a fairly obvious but enjoyable-to-put-together interpretation of the Taming of the Shrew

Lots of gesso, distress inks and circle punches used on this one.

Oh, and leather lacing for the whip.  

I've never made a whip before :) fun :)

I think the next CJ coming to me in this circle is "shades of one colour"....I was going to do green, but that's already been taken....thinking cap on time....

Q is for Quilt!

Yes, I know it’s actually R fortnight now, and yes, I know I haven’t even blogged O and P yet, let alone Q! (bad blogger) But I did start this CJ entry during Q fortnight, and therefore it seemed like a bright idea at the time to make a quilted all-fabric page. Three weeks later with sore fingers from all that sewing, I’m not so sure!

But anyway, it’s finished now, and I do rather like it (so much so in fact that I wish I could keep it, sob, I’ll have to put it on the list of things I’ll make for myself one day when I have some spare time, ie never!)

This is for the Take Ten CJ – where you may remember, the twist is that each participant provides ten “prompts” or inspirational jump off points, which travel around with the CJ and each person has to pick one of these prompts and produce a page inspired by the one they chose. My own book in this circle was the little envelope book with postage stamps as prompts.

But this is for Michelle’s book, and she has provided ten page sketches as her prompts, which is a really fun idea.

I enjoyed browsing through the sketches on offer – as I’m only the second person to work in this book there were still plenty to choose from – and in the end I went for this one (please excuse awful photo, I forgot to take a proper piccie of the sketch, this is just a snap I took on my phone to refer to while I was working on my entry)

The strips brought to mind ribbon, ric rac and trim, which worked perfectly with my art quilt idea, so it was a spot on sketch for me to use.

The actual theme of each layout is completely open, so I thought I’d do something to celebrate how much I have enjoyed the great outdoors with my family this summer, as we’ve been exploring the gorgeous British countryside on our geocaching quests.

Hopefully it gets that message across without a proper title or any journalling other than the words on the ribbons…

So, anyway, here is my interpretation of the sketch:

Everything on there was sewn by hand – much of it at Legoland :) (I got a few funny looks sat on a bench by the pirate log flume sewing all day while the kids ran around going on rides :D ).

I changed the large circle embellie bottom left to a satin stitched heart, and my focal photo is a little larger than in the sketch (to the point that it almost completely covers the strip of ricrac), but other than that, I followed it fairly faithfully.

It’s very touchy feely, and I used nice soft batting inside so it’s lovely and squishy :)

I really hope Michelle likes it as much as I do (if she doesn’t, I might ask for it back :D )

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 :)