LLLC - Oodles of Doodles...

It's La-La Land Crafts Wednesday, and I'm posting a project today in a style I haven't made in a long, long time!

Our inspiration challenge this week is "Oodles of Doodles."  I used to doodle a lot when I made scrapbook pages, but the last time I put my doodling skills to the test was almost 8 years ago. And our Wednesday team is the die cut-focused team, so I wanted to find a fun way to incorporate the die cuts into my "doodle" project - something that was out of the ordinary.

After a couple experiments with different techniques, I hit on this idea...and I hope you find it as much fun as I did. I channeled my inner "flower child" and she came out swinging!

This is a 4 x 10 inch "canvas"...a piece of mixed media paper firmly glued to a couple pieces of sturdy matboard to form a working canvas. (Your eyes are not deceiving you...I did photograph the piece at a slight angle to adjust for the sparkle in the centers of the flowers)...

For the doodled scalloped borders at the top and bottom, I die cut a couple pieces of stencil plastic using the Scallop Border Die  (you could also do this with any thin plastic, like the clamshell packaging that many items come in these days - or even with cardstock), and traced the scalloped edge outline and small holes directly onto the canvas using a Pitt India ink pen. Another bonus of using the die this way is that I now have a stencil I can use again - I'm planning to try using it with modeling paste in the near future.

For the flowers, I cut 6 pieces of the Open Leaf Flourish die from white cardstock, and cut the leafy stems apart to use the individual leaves to form flower petals. I glued the cardstock petals to the canvas using matte medium, forming each of the flowers - they add a fun textural element!

Before painting the piece, I outlined the cardstock flowers and leaves with a thicker India ink pen, doodled designs around the outside edges of the flowers, and hand drew the stems and inside details.

Next was to add some light texture to the background, between the scalloped borders, with heavy gesso and a palette knife. I wanted it to look a bit like a skip trowel wall texture so it would absorb the background colors differently, and I think I got that! And finally, I stamped in a few random areas with a small script stamp, and a cross-stitch stamp, and now it was ready for color.

I used a variety of mediums for colors, building and blending as I went along, and adding touches with a white paint pen and a shading pencil when the paints were dry.

Finally, I found some fun aqua clear plastic flower gems in my stash...the perfect size for the centers of the larger painted flowers, and added a touch of orange Stickles. Here are some closeups of the flower details...

The leaves are also smaller pieces of the Open Leaf Flourish die cut leaves...I cut each one into a different shape, but painted them all the same colors...

Supplies:

Dies:   La-La Land Crafts Scallop Border and Open Leaf Flourish

Text stamp:   Prima Printery-Script           Stitch stamp:   Technique Tuesday - Hanging By a Thread

Color Mediums:   Lindy's Stamp Gang  Flat Magicals (Hibiscus Rose, Pineapple Paradise, Mango Mania, Caribbean Blue);

Magicals  (Merry Go Round Green,  Pop Rock Purple,  Raspberry Lemonade);

Flat Fabios  (T-Bird Turquoise, Summer Lovin' Sun)

Miscellaneous Mixed Media Supplies:   Heavy gesso,   matte medium,   Faber Castell Pitt pens,   Uni Posca white paint pen,   flower gems,   Orange Peel Stickles

You can see the rest of the team's fun projects for this challenge over at the  La-La Land Crafts blog. 

Thanks so much for stopping by today!