Circle Journal

I know, I know I said I would never do one....BUT..after doing the MIMM journal with Kirsty and a fab bunch of girls, 10 of us got together and decided to do a circle journal. So I set up a little f/b group for just the 10 of us, we all ordered the same size Moleskine journal, and got started.

I chose a red journal, they are also available in Kraft,blue and black from HERE, they are cheap as chips, around £6.30 for a pack of three, and free postage.

We each have decorated our front covers, inside cover, first page and 1 tag. The books then get passed on and the next person will do a double page spread and 1 tag, before passing on the book again.

The main reason i have not joined in a circle journal before, is all the rules and specific themes that people insist upon. Apart from a few colour dislikes we don't have any specifics in these journals, the theme is free style, which is great!

The pages in these Moleskines are a bit thin to take paint, so they were glued together in pairs to make them stronger, then each pair was glued to the next pair, leaving the top open to create pockets for the tags. You start with 40 pages, and end up with 10 pages and space for 10 tags.

I gessoed my front cover,I put the gesso on really thickly in parts to create ridges, then started to paint it.

I used the faux lumiere paint that I made, which has a gorgeous sheen to it. I used green,purple and blue. then used dimensional paint to stencil the diamonds.

Next I added some stamped text.

using a stencil as inspiration i cut this girl out of printer paper and started to colour her, part way through I decided to give her a patterned paper dress.

She was glued to the front cover, I then added a small stamped bird and birdcage and the title. I don't know why but she just looked like she should be hula hooping....so after much trial and error..and bribery...I worked out how the elliptical circles should look...drew them softly in pencil then glued bakers twine down with matte accents.

I decided to do my inside cover and first page as all one spread. I painted the background again with lumieres. I added some drips and also pushed some gesso through an alphabet stencil and then colouring it once dried.

I printed out a black and white horse on printer paper, cut it out and then painted it with neocolors, adding a horn to make it into a unicorn. I then stencilled some seed head flowers to the page, added the unicorn and glued some stamped flowers in the foreground. I printed the title onto lightweight cream card and cut it out.

For my tag, I again painted using lumieres, did some stencilling and doodled a border.

On one side I added circles and this quote.

and on the other side I stuck a photo of me and some info.

and thats it all done. I now need to mail it out to the next person. I won't see this book again for 10 months, I will be so excited to get it back and see what everybody else has done inside it.

close up of stamped flowers.

close up of bakers twine hoops and singing birdie.