The latest circle journal adventure

This time it was the turn of the beautiful Lynn whose lovely blog you can find here.

Once again I am obsessed with trees but it was a complicated process to get to these trees I can tell you!

I started by putting a layer of tissue paper down as I wanted to play with texture for this journal but first underneath it all was a music score I had in my random pile of old papers.

With the tissue paper I scrunched it up to create the texture and once that was dry I painted roughly over it with a mixture of gesso and a pale peach paint. Then when that was dry added some distress inks swiped over the surface and rubbed in with tissues.

Under the tissue on the right hand side of the page though I had stuck a alcohol inked piece of card which was stamped with the friends stamp which I found in my craft box from a small project I had made at a class and wanted to repurpose... This seemed like the perfect opportunity to do this.

I also decided I liked the look of the sequin stars under the tissue so I added another layer of tissue paper on the top of the sequin stars which helped to blend the square piece in a little more, and added the sequin stars. I must point out at this point I really had no plan at all as to what I was going to do ... I was just playing with textures and the found objects I had come across searching for inspiration. It was a hard journal to work on, as they all are, as they are filled with wonderful pages, and on this occasion my mojo went walkabout!

Anyway I then added some doodles (this always helps me connect to what I am doing!) and added the metal friends charm I found. I also then searched for a quote I could use about friendship and hand wrote that. It was then I discovered writing and drawing on all this texture can be a bit of a nightmare.

To finish this side of the page off I added the trim and ribbon from my stash that seemed to coordinate although I must admit this was the last thing I did!

The other side stared at me for an age as a blank page ... Full of texture and painted roughly in the creamy peach but not really telling me what to do next. But then the tree shape emerged in my head and I wanted to try the doodling type of zentangle so this is what happened!

It is difficult to see in this photo but the tree trunk is painted in a metallic bronze acrylic and the tree ... Well green obviously! Then the green is completely covered in circle doodles which I drew myself over the top. I also added the doodles to the trunk and added the quote which I stumbled across as the start to a poem but now have no idea whose or where! Oops!

As one of the finishing touches I then added the black, charcoal, silver beads which I have loads of from a necklace that was constantly shedding beads all over the place so thought why not add them to my trees.

For the tag I went for texture again! This time with a pattern tissue paper that was not as translucent as the plain white and has a silver a grey stripe pattern. This is still visible through the painting ... Same peachy creamy colour as before.

I chose to do another tree ... Even more tricky as more texture, but this time decided to complicate it a little further and also add some white doodles in the souffle pen over the black pen doodles. I also added the writing around the tree.

On the reverse I added the streaks of the gold/bronze paint, some printed name elements and the buttons ... All 10 of them. Just like there were ten stars on the page, I added ten buttons to represent each of the circle journal group as it turned out that was my theme in some way for the journal pages I was creating for Lynn in thinking about our friendship as a group.

I have to say until the last elements were added I really had no clue if I iked what what I was creating ... But in the end I was pleased with it.

Now I am working on another beautiful journal for the equally beautiful Jayne ... But more about that another time as now it is time for my beauty sleep!

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my creative process for the journals.