Baby Circle Journal

Last year, in June, my lovely friend Marie had a beautiful bouncing baby girl. Marie and I met though being involved in a circle journal, and along with the other girls from the cj, we have stayed in touch. So when she had her baby, I thought it would be lovely to make a cj for little Freya. I contacted the girls from the original cj, and we decided to make a book.. pass it around... fill it with love, and keep the whole thing a secret from Marie. 

I made a skeleton of a book, with hard covers.. 

I stitched some pages inside.. 

and we were ready to go...

I made a start on my page. I scraped on some paint and did some stencilling. 

knocked it back with white, and added pink and purple drips. 

Then I started to added images with texture paste, through stencils. some bought stencils and some homemade. 

Once all the texture was in, I started to paint. 

bit more colour..

All the final shading,

 and the letters of the alphabet added that correspond to the images. 

t'other side..

Next I added some patterned paper to the first page and to a couple at the back.  On each of those pages I added these little dollies created by Kirsty Wiseman 

I then sent the book around to the other girls, they each created a double spread. 

These are all the pages. 

Inside the front cover, this page has spaces for Marie to add birth details. 

then my page.. 

Becca's page.. 

Lynn's page..

Jackie's page..

Catherine's page..

Lea's page..

Jayne's page..

Kirsty's page..

At the back are more dollie pages, and also these fab mason jars that were the perfect size to stick in and add little messages to baby Freya from each of us. I found the mason jars ON THIS SITE , they are a free printable. 

There is one jar left empty for Marie to write her own message inside. 

then the book came back to me, and I needed to finish the cover. 

I started with this raggy doll drawn onto fabric, and painted with chalk acrylics and fabric medium. (My friend Jay helped out with the drawing)

building up the colour.. 

Adding details and stencilling.. 

Then I created a slip cover..

I stitched the painted patch to the front..

I glued wadding to the outside of the board book covers, and slipped the whole thing into the fabric cover. 

the covers wrap right over to the inside..

All finished.. marie received the book this morning, so now baby Freya has her very own circle journal. 

Darcy x