Craft Barn Calendar Challenge # 4 - Doodles

The theme for the Craft Barn Callendar Challenge #4 is 'Doodles' and this filled me with horror!! I doodle when I'm on the phone etc. but not really at any other time. I only have some border dylusion stamps and I felt they wouldn't do so I decided to see what I could create by just playing around.

I sprayed some dylusion ink onto card in various colours and dried it. Some random stamping was added using distress ink. Next some large drops of water were allowed to drop on the ink and were then dried. From this point on, I used a white gel pen and my trusty sewing machine to doodle away and create my calendar page. Do I like it? At first, no. Now I've played with it, photographed it and just lived with it, I think it's grown on me so I decided not to redo it, which was the original plan!

Here's my calendar page - get your sunglasses on people before you view:

The colours are bright and bold and I'm pleased that some areas show a little more yellow than others.

I started by drawing a flower around each water drop mark. They are roughly the same shape but are in a variety of sizes.

Next I bleached out some of the colour from each flower using a waterbrush. A second run with the white gel pen was then needed to make it stand out.

Most of the flowers were then given a 'stem' using an embroidery stitch on my machine. I thought about using various colours of thread but stuck to white in the end to link in with the gel pen.
The little flowers in the centres were punched from some of the background card which had been randomly stamped in white ink. Their edges were inked  and the flowers were given some shape and then attached in the centre of each drawn flower.

My dear husband had sent for a little bag of watch parts for me so I used some of those as the flower centres. They are very tiny but really quite amazing, I can't believe how anyone can put a watch together with such small pieces! The calendar was inked with distress and some Tim tissue tape was applied to the top to hide the stitch holes. It was then machined into position. The edge of the calendar was also machined to define the edge a little more. Have to say it's great to use my machine in my craft work as well as in the more traditional way for sewing fabrics.

I hope you like my page. I know it won't be to everyone's taste but I'm pleased with the outcome,

particularly when I didn't like the theme at all!! Thanks for your support and for visiting me today.