While switching craft rooms this summer, I came across a couple old catalogs from The Angel Company. Back in the day, I was a demonstrator with them, before they went out of business. If anyone is interested in a copy of the catalog, leave a comment below. I have two left that I’d gladly give away. While you can no longer get the supplies, it is a great source of inspiration.

On the cover of the catalog there’s a lovely scrapbook page that made fun use of a circle in the design. “Oooh, circles,” I thought, “let’s talk about circles on the blog!”

Little did I realize how rarely I use circles when I make pages.

In looking through previously made pages, there seemed to be three types of pages where I used circles. The first group were all inspired and based upon sketches and page lifts. There were a decent number of those. Another group of pages were obviously inspired by the paper itself, where it had a strong circular motif. The last group, and there were decidedly fewer of these, was story and theme based. Let’s take a look at the last group:

This is one of my more recent pages, where the subject matter–my son’s desire to make art like Jackson Pollack– inspired the use of circles and art inspired pieces. After all if you’re going to make a page that references the master of the paint splatter, shouldn’t you include paint and messy artsy stuff on it?

A little further back in time, we’ve got this page that uses motion to show my son’s reaction to a late arriving birthday present:

This looks like a photo, matted on the blue graph paper, but is actually a window cut into the blue paper, revealing the photo underneath. When you turn the circle you get this:

You know how sometimes you capture a moment perfectly, and want to relive it over and over again? Turning this page into a spinning wheel helped me recapture some of that surprise and excitement. Plus, it was so fun to make.

One last circle inspired page for you:

This is a really old page, inspired, of course, by donuts. The title was computer generated, then cut out using circle punches and an exacto knife. Yes, entertainment is cut by hand. The donut itself was cut by tracing a plate, and then cutting that by hand as well. A bit of color stippling to try to make the donut look more dimensional, and some stickles to bring to mind sugar crystals, and the page was done. Ugly, but done. I can’t help but love this page, because it makes me laugh every time I read the journaling.

Do you use circles to communicate a theme or story? Feel free to share your circle enhanced pages!