Circle Journal

Where does the time go? It's a whole week since I was at Ally Pally for the weekend, meeting my three blog sisters Elaine, Jo and Lesley with whom I run Craft Stamping Quartet  We stayed overnight, and made a weekend of it, and spent some precious time together. We hardly ever see each other, which is why we set our joint blog up in the first place, to feel as though we were crafting together, by completing projects together. We are planning a mini Retreat in June during the half term holidays, and have been busy planning projects that we want to make together while we are there. One of the items we intend to make is a circle journal, but we are going to end up with one each! This means that we each have to complete one page in each others journal, so that everyone has a completed journal at the end of the trip as a memento of our time together. Our covers, and a double page inside are to be completed in advance to give the others a guide as to what kind of person we are. What we are drawn to in terms of colour and style, stamps and papers, to give each other a starting point.

I have finished my covers, and will be starting my inner pages next. My front cover is very different to my back cover, as I have two very different sides to what I like. On the one hand, I love deep jewel colours, teal and aubergine, I love metal embellishments, Tim Holtz ideology, grungepaper, Paper Artsy stamps, etc. On the other hand, I love  the shabby chic, distressed look, handmade flowers, cream lace. I like creams, pinks, browns, printed book pages, script that has been torn and aged with Distress Ink.  Think Webster's pages and you aren't far off the mark. I like butterflies and dragonflies. So I have two completely opposing sides, so my friends should have lots of scope there!

I made a little motivational tag for one of my friends, using some of the things that I bought from Ally Pally. I used some of the new Paper Soft Colour, this is gorgeous, and so easy to work with. I blended the blue and green together on a chipboard tag. I then cut a dragonfly out with my new paper artsy die from some silver metal. I coloured it with Inka Gold in blue and green, lovely! I stamped some inspirational words over the tag courtesy of Wendy V and hung a Tim Holtz ticket from the bottom corner with some jump rings. This was also edged with the Paper Soft.I had fun making my bits and pieces. I should have been at a Donna Downey weekend of classes which were unfortunately cancelled. She is stuck in Germany due to the volcanic dust cloud. You can't control Mother Nature. Thanks for looking, Judith x