Circle journal round up - my pages

Now that I've completed all my pages for the circle journal/round robin, I thought it would be fun to gather them all together in one post. My own hasn't arrived home yet, but as soon as it does I'll post all the loveliness from it :)

There was a wide range of journal styles and themes and it was great fun to work in all of them.

Here are the pages and both sides of the sign-in tag for Beate's journal - Fools and Divinities:

Gayle's theme was doors and windows:

These are the pages for Jessica's journal with its theme - exploring the inner and outer.

Lee wanted to know What do you see when you look in the mirror?

Monique inspired us with an Emerson quote:  “What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within us out into the world, miracles happen.”

Susan Jane wanted her pages to be a surprise, so I haven't blogged them in their entirety before. Her theme was trees:

Circle Journal completed!

I've now completed all my pages in the circle journal and am about to put the last one in the post back to Lee in Canada. Her theme was, "What do you see when you look in the mirror?"

My first page was the obvious - I see me :)

But what about the second spread?

I looked at quite a few quotes about mirrors, but some of them had already been used by other participants. That's one of the drawbacks of being the last to work in a journal, I guess. But I found one eventually:

Your self-esteem won't come from body parts. You need to step away from the mirror every once in a while and look for another reflection, like the one in the eyes of the people who love you and admire you.  Stacy London

How uplifting! And it's good to be reminded of it, too.

So now the parcel will go in the post, and eventually my own journal will make its way back to me.

Lee's Journal

Lee's journal is the last one for me in the circle journal/round robin. Her theme was 'What do you see when you look in the mirror?'

For my first spread I went with the obvious - I see me when I look in the mirror! Although I see a reflection of me, not the me that everyone else sees. I have to point out that this is not a self-portrait, though :) I don't like having my photo taken and my portraiture skills are pitiful, so this is just a representation of a woman perhaps looking at her reflection.

I have no idea at the moment what I will do for my other spread. It needs a little thought...

New stamps

I've been busy carving some new stamps. I like stamps with patterns that I can use on their own and also repeating to make a larger overall pattern. The basket-weave and the flower will do that easily.

I also wanted something architectural. This postcard has been sitting on my desk for a couple of weeks:

It's by Avant Card - they distribute free postcards in public places such as cinemas, museums etc. I love the design so used it as a basis for a stamp. I didn't want the image to have a definite end point so tried to make it look as if the column was crumbling a bit and therefore the bottom of it disappears into nothing. I'm quite pleased with how it turned out.

Fake journal page 2

In my fake journal the woman moving through the Gospels witnesses the baptism of Jesus. She's starting to be drawn in, wondering about all that is happening. 

Inspiration!

My husband is always on the lookout for things I might be interested in as he looks at design websites and innovations. He found this fabulous barbecue cookbook that comes apart to give you all the things you need to actually barbecue a piece of meat - the cover is a chopping board, there is foil, greaseproof paper, even salt and an apron included in the pages. 

Now, as a bookbinder, that has really set me thinking...

And what about these gorgeous bubblewrap famous paintings by Bradley Hart? Paint injected into the bubblewrap to act as pixels. Great idea! And I only ever printed with it...

Incomplete

I'm finding myself making very colourful backgrounds at the moment. Previously I would tend to stick to a couple of colours, generally next to each other on the colour wheel, all very soothing. But not for the last few weeks for some reason.

This background started with some pages where I cleaned my brayer off after using the gelli-plate. Then I stencilled on to it, added some gelli-printed greaseproof paper, stamping, and a yellow wash. There was no white space in sight so I added white circles, inspired by Carolyn Dube's 'white space vs. colour' fight.

Well, that circle on the right, the one down at the bottom on its own, was just calling out to be made into a flower. But when I had five petals on it, there was just something holding me back from putting that last one in.  I looked at it for a while, thinking I needed a word.

Incomplete. That's what the page was saying to me.

So I put the word in, and it fit just right where I'd left out that petal.

And then I remembered that I am incomplete, not yet finished. So the riot of colour and pattern that doesn't yet fit together - I shouldn't worry about it. Everything will fall into place in time. And I shouldn't be so hard on myself, because I'm a work in progress.

Just waiting...

I looked at the background for this page and there seemed to be so much going on! Yet I didn't want to add anything else or tone it down.

I left it lying on my desk for a bit. Just waiting…

And that seemed to be the perfect journalling to add - just waiting for the fog to clear and all these colourful elements to fall into place and make a meaningful whole.

Fake journalling

I mentioned a week or so ago that I'd come across the idea of fake journalling. I first found out about it on Creative Every Day through Alternate Amy. Apparently April is Fake Journalling Month, but I was a bit late to join in. However, the idea stuck with me.

So, from now on, Monday will be fake journalling blog post day for me. I thought it would be fun to explore the gospels through the eyes of a woman around at the time. Not anyone particular, just a woman caught up in everything that was happening.

So where to start? I thought the appearance of John the Baptist down at the river would be a good place. But what would that be like for a woman at the time? The thought that came to me was that the women would go down to the river to do the washing. And now here was a crowd gathering to see what John was doing. Wouldn't that be annoying, really? And so, here's my first fake journal entry.

Finding the bright spots

Playing with Derwent aquatone pencils - watercolours in stick form. The background of this page has the clean-offs from stencils used with spray inks. I gessoed over them to mute the colours and then just played with enhancing the colours and shapes with the aquatones. 

I ended up with three flowers. I stamped into the middle with black and a hand-carved stamp, added a border top and bottom- another hand-carved stamp - and then journalled. The bright flowers made me think about how important it is to look for the bright spots in every day. No matter how difficult things might be, there is always something to be thankful for, and that is what I should focus on.

Sharing with Art Journal Journey,  Art Journal Every Day, and to the Colorful Playground community on google + (run by Carolyn Dube.)