Doodling Fun

Hello and a big Happy 2012 to all my friends here in blogland!

felting up a storm

I'm sure I am not the only one, but I fell into a bit of a funk come the new year. I had been so busy with felting up a storm for both shops prior to Xmas that I found that even though I had a brand new bag of the softest white merino wool newly arrived sitting on the bench, I just gave it a glance and put it in the cupboard!

I have no interest in dyeing (something I love with a passion normally), or playing with the wool to create scarves and the camera/iphone/glass cases. What to do? I still needed to create!

join the dots doodle

I had recently joined an online sketchbook challenge as a means to being more disciplined with the design aspect of creating textile art quilts etc. This months challenge was to doodle, nothing more. Nothing too adventurous, just play.

Each day, the author of the blog invites different people to talk about their entry and the first person interviewed ( I am getting to the point here eventually!) spoke of finding doodling difficult. That she spent most of her creative time product orientated (see sales). So having joined this group was forcing her to play.

Doodle, cropped then Photo-shopped using different filters (oops, not reversed here!)

BINGO! And therein lay my problem! I had not allowed myself to play. You know the one? Remember 'its all about the journey not the destination'. Just to create without fear of not having the 'perfect' finished item.

So folks, here I am, having a bit of play time. And will continue throughout the year. In between putting the house on the market and keeping up with my on-line stores. I am going to remember to have fun!

Doodled art quilt

My completed art quilt! First came the doodle, which was a bit of a dot to dot affair. I got a little deep and meaningful in there with a few words about life connecting, blah blah. But really, it was just scribble!

I then scanned the image onto Photoshop, cropped out a piece that was reasonably interesting and played with the filters until I was happy.

A piece of silk habutai was ironed onto freezer paper then attached at the top of the paper to another sheet of printer paper to keep it rigid with a line of sticky tape. This was then printed with the image on my ink jet printer.

Then it was play time! After fusing the silk to some felt it was off to the sewing machine for machine embroidery fun and games. Silk paper was layered with an cut up organza gift bag and sewn into a flower shape. Beads and some silk painting followed.

This will now sit in my journal. Its not an amazing piece of art by any stretch of the imagination, but it was fun. And isn't that what it is all about anyway?I have also started another online course with the Dale at The Thread Studio called Ratty Tatty Papers. Sounds good doesnt it? So in the next few days I will show you the beginnings of some play time there as well.


For now keep safe,have fun and I will catch up soon.
x Julie