Lisa J's Guest Spot in Sharon's Vintage Circus Journal

Sharon's Round 2 "Vintage Circus" journal came home to her late last year and, as she still had a few blank pages in it, I was able to do a spread!

Sharon's brief was no bright colours.  Trying to limit your palette to softer vintage colours is quite challenging!  But that's where good old Pinterest comes in.

I found this amazing black and white photo of a clown.  I'm not sure why, but it spoke to me.

Perhaps because the circuses of yesteryear are no more, and we look back wistfully in remembrance...

When I was about 7 or 8, I was living in the USA and got to see the Barnum and Bailey Ringling Bros 3 ring circus.  

What a spectacle!   So much going on under the huge canopy of the big top.  So much to see in the 3 rings - too much really!

So I created my own big top, with the old elephant balancing on a ball, the tightrope walker balancing en pointe above him...

And the strong man wielding his 300lb weights with ease, to the amazement of the crowd...

And the sad clown, about to join the party.  "Send in the Clowns".

Here's the whole scene!  

Painted this in acrylics with some water soluble pencil added.

Beautiful journal, thanks for letting me have a play Sharon!

Cheers, Lisa

Jan does Rachel's Garden of my Imagination

This is a lovely little journal crammed full of lovely pages. I decided to do a fairly calm, un-busy page... but then of course my usual nature kicked in and it did get a bit more on it than I intended.
Here it is. I have also included for Rachel a book mark that i got in Suzhou in China. From a wonderful little street in the old town with lots of books and journals and art, I could have spent all day there. Hope you like it.

Jan's Page in Vintage Circus for Sharon.

This is such a lovely journal with some gorgeous work already done. I was glad of the wee lull in the Round 2 journals moving their way around Australia because I had to have an operation on the elbow that i broke just over a year ago when round one was going around and was in hospital for a few days and incapacitated. However with Physio and rest it is getting better.

I was given a lovely roll of washi tape for a birthday pressie a while ago and was really happy when Sharon announced the theme as I thought yay! I can use the tape.

Then I thought it would be great to include some of the photos from a show my daughter created all the costumes for in 2010 that was a vintage circus theme. The link to some of the photos is <www.behance.net/gallery/209862/lunamorph-show>

She did an incredible job (her ability to design and sew has me in awe) and all the performers were amazing. I had the strong man, Sharon, but no bearded lady. (That's another photo shoot!)

I base coated the page with Gesso then included my circus washi tape and collaged some vintage papers and then bit more gesso to tone things down.

I then got some frames and cut out the pictures and arranged them. My theme was Postcards To Home. Based on the story line of "They called me a Freak and so I ran away and joined the circus"

Hope you like it. Sorry it is a bit more like a scrapbook page but that's how it worked out. =)

Just discovered the link may not work very well. When you get to Behance.net just search Lunamorph... hope that works