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!