Circle Journal

So at the beginning of the month Tracey's journal arrived at my house. (click on her name to go have a nosey at her lovely blog and learn all about her wonderful shop)

I made a list of things that I had worked out about Tracey, from her stuff on F/B and on her blog. Things like pink,blue,hearts,flowers,butterflies and zentangles...her only dislikes as far as I could see are yellow and orange.

So I started thinking pinks,blues and butterflies....and this is what I came up with.

I sprayed the page with Dylusions inks and added some Brilliance ink pads.

I lightly stamped some large foam flowers into the background,added a text stamp,next I pushed some gesso through a flower stencil.

I sprayed over the flowers with more ink, and finally sprayed some Shimmerz spray over the page.

Next I found a butterfly poem and tried it out for size on scrap paper.

It just fit, so I copied it out onto the pages.

next I drew a large butterfly and once I was happy with the shape I copied it onto watercolour paper.

I folded the paper again and cut out some sections.

I coloured the front with water colour pencils and added definition with a black pen and white gelly pen.

I coloured the back just using ink pads blended together.

The whole thing was quite flimsy, and my idea was to paint on 3-4 coats of matte medium on each side to strengthen it. however i knew brushing on the glue would smear the watercolour pencils, so first I gave it a light coat of spray varnish to seal it. Then I added 4 coats of clear drying matte medium to each side.

Finally I glued the body part of the butterfly into the book, leaving the wings loose so they can be lifted to read the poem.

side view..

The wings do lie completely flat so that the book will shut, but their weight makes them bend slightly when the book is stood up which makes them seem more 3D.

This is the tag I made to go in the pocket.

the book has now been sent onto the next member of the group and I await another journal to work in...