Stay At Home CJ - January Reveal - Shakespeare

We've all been desperately cultured this month - more of a shock to the system for some of us than others! - as we tackled Virginia's lovely background and her theme of "Shakespeare"

Once again, it's fantastic to see everyone's unique take on the theme, even where some of us chose the same play, our interpretations are very different

In no particular order (and unfortunately missing Katie's entry for the time being, but this will be added in later), here are the January pages:

Carmen : "Call me an uncouth philistine but I didn't realise the Double double quote was from Shakespeare - so was chuffed to bits when I googled Shakespeare and that popped up! I knew I wanted to do a skull but didn't want to go down the obvious Yorrick route. And adding that text makes me think of a page from a spell book. I cut and collaged the skull from an old book page. He's highlighted with oil pastels and Posca pen. The text is Posca pen, written three times because I remember somewhere that being a magic number. Thank you to 6 year old Ruby for insisting, quite loudly over my shoulder, that I add the red to his eyes to make him look eviiiiil. I think it finishes him off perfectly and makes me think of Bob in the Dresden Files.  I have to thank Virginia for her gorgeous background and interesting theme. I always thought Shakespeare wasn't for me but after all this research I actually want to read some... or at least watch a couple of films to ease me in!"

Sarah : "Virginia's background reminded me of a beautiful twilight sky, so I went with Bottom and Titania from A Midsummer Night's Dream - I was going to add the relevant quotation, 'what angel wakes me from my flowery bed?', but then I realised I'd forgotten to paint any flowers in the grass :D  All done with Fresco acrylic paints from PaperArtsy"

(Inspiration image source here)

Pam : "titled Shakespeare in Love and War - painted, drawn, coloured and stamped"  

Sami :  "I went with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, just because I like fairies and magick! I used two magazine images as my starting point and then added paint, ink, prima flowers and a quote to complete it."

More hubbling and bubbling from Pat : "A mixture of pans pastels, inks, cut out and stamped images"

Judging by the quote, this is another Titania, this time by this month's host, Virginia - I (Sarah) like this Titania, she looks a lot less sappy than my own version of her :)

Gill has illustrated a great quotation here, but I'm afraid I don't know which play it is from, could one of you clever literary types enlighten me? 

Lou : "winged cupid from A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Next month it is Pam's turn to host - her theme is 'Innocence and Experience' and here is her fantastically textured background:

Stay At Home CJ - December Reveal - Song Lyrics

This month in the stay-at-home CJ, we have all been working on my (Sarah's) background :

The theme this time was song lyrics.

As ever, we have a varied bunch of fantastic entries to share .....

Katie's up first this month - with her cheerful interpretation of Happy by Pharrell Williams

Next Pat was inspired by "Just Like A Pill" by Pink - I love that skyline!

Lou's entry was based upon the lyrics of "Loving Angels" by Robbie Williams 

Virginia's dark brooding silhouette is "livin' on the edge" - inspired by Aerosmith

Carmen has gone the typographical route this month (love the flowery Os :) ) with this entry based on the song No More The Fool by Elkie Brooks

Gill's fab collage was inspired by the Foreigner Classic "Waiting For A Girl Like You"

Sami had the following to say about her entry: "I chose 'Into the Mystic' by Van Morrison, one of my all time favourites. It is a song I have always loved and evokes a lot of imagery for me, of love, magic and mystery.  I cut the woman out of a magazine, the artist is Iain Lowe. I have a picture of Avalon as the destination at the top of the page as this is where my gypsy soul belongs!  I used paints, stencils, chalk inks and pens to complete the page"

Here's my own page.  The song I chose is Cochise by Audioslave, a brilliant song, and I love this line in particular.  The drowning lady is painted in acrylics, based upon a photo by talented Russian photographer Kassandra.  The lettering is white Posca pen outlined with a pencil.

And last one just in from Pam - in her own words: "It is Paolo Nuttini's 'Autumn'- it always makes me a good kind of sad as it reminds me of my Mum :) I love the lyrics and these are my favourite lines"

Next month, we are getting our culture on!  It's the turn of Virginia's lovely background, and the theme is "Shakespeare" - forsooth!!

Stay At Home CJ - November Reveal - Steampunk

Another month, another wonderfully varied gallery of entries in the Stay At Home CJ.....   This time we were all working on this fantastically detailed background from Pat:

Her theme was Steampunk, and this is what everyone came up with (in no particular order):

by Sami - 'I drew a face onto a book page and then stamped some hand carved wings on Gelli printed deli paper to put behind the face. I tried to do the hair as cogs but that didn't work so well. I used texture paste to put another face and some squares onto the paper. I used a bicycle stamp on tissue paper (given to me by Lou!) to add another detail. I stamped lots of cogs everywhere to finish off and then used oil pastels and spray inks to deepen the original colour of the page.

                                                                                                      by Katie                                                                                                   

by Pam - 'I'm afraid I did 3D again- I used card which I embossed by hand to stand out - cut out the cogwheels and drew on the bird cage with pens'

by Virginia - 'having already had the task of playing with steampunk previously I was quite giddy with this one.  I love the background, dragged out some steampunk scrapbook pages that I had and cut out the elements I had.  Then started to place on the page for effect.  After playing for a bit I started to stamp on the layout then to stick the paper elements down, trying to blend them in.  For a few of the items I had to 'mask' the paper item and insert the stamping thereafter.  I had great fun with this one! 

by Sarah - 'I hope mine is steampunky enough, I did give her goggles :)  this is a two part stencil, which took ages to cut and then I annoyingly managed to rip it making this, so I guess it's a one off!'

                                      by Lou - 'The Mechanics of Meditation aka My Steampunk Buddha'                                        

by Carmen - ‘ "Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.” – G.I. Gurdjieff …. Tried to make her look machine-ish without actually being a machine... if that makes sense. Not totally sure how Steampunky this is but I hope Pat likes it - It was a pleasure playing with her background, kept seeing something new as I was working on it.   I used: Pencil, Neocolour II's and oil pastel’

                                                                    And last but definitely not least - Pat's own entry                                                                     

We're one short this month for the moment, Wisher's entry to follow later in the month....

Next time, we'll all be working on my own (Sarah's) background:

theme "song lyrics", deadline December 31st

enjoy!

Stay at Home CJ - October - Beasties!

Woohooo!!! it's reveal time!!!!

This month in the stay-at-home CJ we have all been working on Carmen's gorgeous background

<=======

and her theme, perfect for Halloween month, was 'beastie'







In no particular order, here are this month's diverse and wonderful entries:

Pam's fantastic Cthulhu - I love the way he's escaping off the page :) - painted with acrylics and using carvable paste and stamps, then inked and used white and red pencil with a touch of silver paste on the tentacles

                                                    the Weaver of Destiny by Lou - that stitched web is awesome!                                                                               

Sami's genuinely scary entry - don't have nightmares kids! - "I had every intention of doing the Loch Ness Monster (I know Carmen's a bit partial to Nessie and Scotland!) But when I looked at the background I could just see this female zombie silhouette emerging from the page. The closer I looked, the more I could see all the elements, the torn book pages looked liked grave stones and there was even a moon in the background. I know Carmen loves Zombies so I thought, that's not a problem, do a zombie then. I got my pen and settled down on the sofa to draw and scared myself with what emerged! I would not like to meet her on a dark night! I used a black biro, a red biro, some white and black oil pastels and letter stamps with black ink."

Most pumpkins are rather cute, but Virginia's pumpkin-head monster actually looks rather menacing! - Virginia calls him her Scooby Doo villain :)  

Pat's lovely multi layered entry this month quotes the famous poem 'the Spider and the Fly' by Mary Howitt

I just love these cute lil' monsters from Katie - "I drew stuff- I don't like my drawings but as this is a CJ I MADE myself draw as an experiment! *shakes*" - I'd say that experiment paid off!

Another Cthulhu - this time by yours truly (Sarah) - mine is mourning the death of his creator, Lovecraft.  Funny how Pam and I, sight unseen, have ended up with such similar entries - even his three quarter stance is the same!  This is all acrylic paints and pencil.

                     Wisher (Gill)'s interpretation of the theme is really cool - the Beastie is within, not without.               

And last, but certainly not least, Carmen's own entry, which I LOVE!!!! It reminds me of one of Dave McKean's Sandman covers, which is high praise indeed from me, fantastic!  - "I could see a figure which might or might not be me and I could see what looked like a crows beak and head - so that's what I went with. I found the quote and it  just seemed to all come together and fit with how I'm feeling at the moment.  I used oil pastels, HB pencil, gel pen and biro"

So that's this month all wrapped up - I'm enjoying this CJ so much, I hope everyone else is loving it too :)

Next month, we're working on Pat's background, and the theme is Steampunk  =======>

So, have at it, stay-at-homers!  Deadline is Saturday November 30th.  Can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.....

Stay at Home CJ - September - For The Love Of Trees

So here we are - our first big reveal day for the Stay at Home CJ!

This month we all worked on Lou's lovely background:

and the theme was 'for the love of trees'

Before we start can I just say a big thank you to all the participants for sending their entries through on time without me having to chase anybody up - that makes my job as host SO much easier :)




So, here we go, in no particular order:

Carmen - acrylics and drawing ink

Lou

Lou's techniques used: I stencilled the tree onto tissue paper and applied with matte medium, unfortunately the tissue didn't 'blend' into the background as I expected not sure why as this technique usually works well.  So I  applied inks to the tissue to help the blending a bit more. Scattered some leaves punched from an old bible and added the quote from the poem "The Tree" by

Tom Splitt:

The calm quiet strength of a tree

Anchored deep in the earth

Reaching high in the sky

The calm quiet strength of a tree

The calm quiet strength of a tree

Full of life from its roots

To the tiniest branch

The calm quiet strength of a tree

And oh, how it comforts me

How it teaches me

Without a sound

Then I realize at once

That this tree and I are one

In eternity

The calm quiet strength of a tree

From the weight of its trunk

To its delicate leaves

The calm quiet strength of a tree

The calm quiet strength of a tree

Showing anyone near

All the secrets of time

The calm quiet strength of a tree

Pat

Katie

Sarah - Pitt pen plus Fresco acrylics

The quote is Emily Bronte, get me being all literary :)

Virginia

Pam

Gill

"Trees are poems that earth writes upon the sky" Kahlil Gibran

Sami

Sami said: Lou's colours reminded me of autumn, walking through the woods once the
colours have changed. I used gelli prints to collage trees onto her
background and although I was going to add more texture and colour, I really
liked how it looked with just the collage. I added my favourite poem by
Robert Frost, and although not specifically about trees, it always reminds
me of the beauty of autumn.

And that's that for this month - haven't we created a beautiful autumnal forest?!!

It's so cool to see how differently (and in some cases similarly) we all riffed off the same background.

Next month, Carmen's background, theme "beastie":

I can't wait to see where you all go with that one! :)