The Exquisite Corpse Project - Sherry's

This was my brief

and this is the finished corpse -

"Denim Girl"

Such fun!

Thank you ladies xxx

Someone Like You DID Entry

Hey Collabor-Artists here is my entry for Pat's DID CJ this month. I chose the song Someone Like You  by Adele which I loved.

I sprayed the background with Dylusions sprays first and then did some of the ghosting technique with a letter stencil. I stamped some background stamps with black Stazon and a Navy SU ink. The stamps were a Chinese character one, a Kaisercraft butterfly one, a VivaLasVegas one and the Unity Brave Girl set I thought fitted the theme of the song.

I have been inspired by some of the previous entries to do some freehand drawing and have been doing heads and shoulders mostly. No faces yet as I'm not happy with them but it's coming. I used some Sharpie poster paint pens and Neocolor crayons to do the head. I actually think the lack of a face fits the theme of the song. The couple on the other side are a Silhouette cut on the Coredinations cardstock which I distressed around the edges and then put some of the song lines on with my trusty Dymo.

I have to admit to making no additions to the other entries this time as I couldn't see how I could add anything else to complement what was there. I wondered if it's because we are in the final stretches of the CJ. I was on a roll so I have finished Sian's CJ entry as well, I'm feeling pleased with myself. It's great seeing the CJs in the last stages and seeing what everyone has done.

PAM'S DID JOURNAL - OOOH I HAD SOME FUN WITH THIS ONE

The difficult bit with circle journals as they near there end is when you first open them and find songs that you would have done if they had been available.  However, the bigger problem is that you've already got a huge amount of gorgeous entries into the journal that you can feel a little intimidated.  When Pam's CJ arrived I loved all that had been done, some fabulous pieces on this circular fabric journal already.  I set too by listening to the remaining four tracks, then read why these were appearing in Pam's journal.  Her statement about the Elbow track being upbeat and fun appealed and the fact she loved the line 'holy cow I love your eyes' and then this kept playing over in my head and I really really couldn't help myself it had to be!

I've done a gelli plate fabric background, then I've put the sun in the sky being a piece of yellow felt stitched down, put some feathery angel wings on the back of the cow, a halo, the cow has been done with white felt and the black splodges on it are actual leather (I was amazed to find my machine would stitch the leather).  I used two pieces of Pam's ribbon on the piece, one made into a flower (bottom right) and the other made into a tail.  I embroidered some fabric onto the piece as eyes and used an applique stitch for the nose.  Hessian for the ground and it was done I had soooooooooooooo much fun with this and I really hope Pam likes it!

 Up close you can see the applique stitch the felt and the feathers

then it was time to 'add' to the previous pieces, iron bars for the criminal seemed a good start on Sian's piece I even made them perspective (not originally intentional)

 Onto this gorgeous piece I added some 'ghost' fish - can you see them?

 Here's one

 And another

 and the third

Onto this fabulous piece I added the 'film strip' element top right as there was a film strip stamp on the left.

This piece really was already sooooooooooo pretty and felt very much 'finished' but in the collaborative way I was determined to add something to it.

 So went for a quilting stitch in two places, I like this scallop quilting stitch

 Sarah's page definitely felt finished so I went for a subtle stitch around the title element only, again a quilting stitch!

 Up close you can see it better in the blurry picture mmmm

And finally Nigel's fantastic layout, I loved the version on the CD and adored what Nigel had done, so went in search of Moulin Rouge inspiration, I found some and decided to add two elements, the first was adjustments to the bodice using an applique stitch which you can see up close in the bottom picture, I was only going to put the lines on the bodice on but realised that the fringing that Nigel had put on was starting to come away from the velvet in places so stitched it down with the applique stitch to help.  I then went ribbon mad.

 Up close the contour lines on the bodice

 And the ribbons around the top edge

I understand that the next journal is fabric too - bring it on!

Page overload to the penny dropping, finally!!

I signed up for the paired journal to challenge me, and it does.  When my journal came back with all of Sami's fantatsic additions and extra pages I immediately decided I'd dived in to the paired journal before I was ready.  I looked at those gorgeous pages and my mind just froze.

 A few weeks later Sami let me know she was ready to trade again and I hadn't made a mark; time to be brave and tackle my journal.  This is where page overload comes in:  Bond,James Bond:

 Oh yes, page overload.  I'm still in the must finish the page mindset here.  Leaving it partially done was still alien to me.  I added lots of bold pieces but when I finally added the hand , I  realised I'd gone completely OTT, and then the penny dropped, 'Less is More'.

No more anguish from this point forward I'm in the zone.  

So here's a selection of my other pages with the 'Less is More' approach:

 Added the golden sunrays and words 'Spirit of Womankind'  This goddess symbol is one of my faves, you might see it in some of my other work!!

The compass was stamped onto tissue paper before adding to the page.  The chinese text was stencilled and the butterflies where a gift from another crafter.

 I stencilled in the clock face and roman numerals and  stamped the words 'tick tock'.

This is fast becoming my favourite page.  Lots of stamping onto tissue before applying to the page with modge podge.

More stamping onto tissue then modge podging the images.

And some new pages for Sami to play with.

Thanks for your patience while I work through my 'creative' issues and to Sami for being so patient with me while I muddled through.  Sami's journal is with me and I'm ready to roll!!

Prayer flag play

It seems like an awfully long time ago that I made these prayer flag bases for Lou's project

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But I thought I would wait until the end to blog everything together

My bases were made from denim cut from an old pair of jeans (the middle section is how they looked to start with)

I printed patterns on them using a gelli-plate and acrylic paints, and then added some embroidered details, and sent them on their way

Round 2:

These are the two flag bases I received from Pam and Sami respectively:

I added an appliquéd leaf to Pam's background, and also added some more fabric and a ribbon border to the bottom.  And on Sami's I highlighted her existing design with lots of beading and silver embroidery, and added a row of jingle bells to the base:

Here's a close up of Sami's as you can't really see the French knots and beads and stuff on the photo above:

Round 3:

Here are the final round flags I received .... the first one started by Pat and added to by Sami.... 

.... and the second started by Lou and added to by Pam

On the first I added this gorgeous embellishment made by my bessie mate Alison, I couldn't believe how perfectly the colours matched, so I just had to use it (sorry to cover up your cool spiral stitching Sami!)

and I also added some "grass" along the bottom:

And on the other, which was already fairly busy and with loads of texture, I added a face painted on fabric, roughly cut out to match the rest of the flag's raw edged style:

So that's all my contributions to the various flags - I hope that all the recipients liked their "to keep" flags as much as I love mine, below:

The first one was started by Lou and added to by Pat and Sami respectively

And the other was started by Pat and subsequently worked on by Lou and Pam

(there's a super cute little cat bead on the bottom left that has got hidden behind a leaf)

Thank you all - I intend to hang these from the tree in my garden, but not until I have made a couple more to go with them, it will be lovely to see them all in a line flapping away in the breeze

SARAHS' DID JOURNAL

Well it's on its way this morning to Donna and all I can say is phew.  I struggled with this one because it's firstly a gorgeous looking journal and secondly already full of fantastic layouts which just terrified me.  So after deliberating and contemplating about which track to pick (also known as pratting around), I finally bit the bullet and got on with it.

Choice of songs - Beastie Boys - You've Got to Fight for your Right to Party as I liked Sarah's story behind why she chose it.

So I set to with the gelli plate initially (throwing paint at the gelli plate and fighting with the brayer was a good place to start!

I used a mask to create the outline of the 'partying' character on the front page, then set to penning part of the double helix, Sarah had mentioned that this track formed part of her Uni life and that she went to Warwick Uni, whose crest includes the double helix and let's be honest music really does form part of our DNA - doesn't it?

Open this page up and I add the logo and the placard!  Unlike others that have had their hands on this book I turned the page so that rather than creating a pocket or taking the piece off, I created a flap (hope that's OK Sarah).

The back of the page has a 'door' on it, Sarah mentioned redecorating her door at Uni with the album cover

 and altering the logo for her and her partner in crime.

Open the door and you've got a ghetto blaster, gelli plate background and the song lyrics scrawled in promarker on the page and the Warwick Uni logo on the right hand side.  A few embossed musical notes and it was good to go and hopefully leaves some scope for others to add to it before returning to Sarah.

 Additions - small paper butterflies to the first page

 Stars on this page

 More stars (you can never have enough)

 Some more masking on this page although it's hard to tell as it's quite subtle

 And finally more stars.

Phew, another one done and on it's way, the next journal has turned up and this one is made of fabric and circular, should prove fun and challenging at the same time!