First I want to thank all of you who have been participating in this year’s Try Something New Every Month. Stephanie at Swoodson Says did a post showing off some of the projects from last month’s quilting theme and you can also link up your February posts there. There’s also a Facebook group where we are all trying new things and having some great discussions, feel free to join us!

If you want to read more about TSNEM, start with the introduction post.

Josh will always buy me craft stuff for gifts and then he thinks I hate them because I never use them. But in reality it’s just because the stuff he gets me is super awesome and I’m afraid I’ll mess it up.

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He got me the LED stitching kit that I finally eventually used to make the cross stitched Saturn project for &stitches. I’ve had a Speedball Screen Printing Kit*
for over a year now that I need to figure out how to use, which will be happening for the August TSNEM printmaking theme. And for February’s “tactile craft” theme I decided to try out the 3D Doodler pen he got me a few years ago. I’m not sure exactly when he got it for me, but it’s been sitting around long enough for them to come out with the 3Doodler 2.0* since I got it… For a really long time I was afraid of “wasting” the filiment that comes with it even though he kept insisting we could easily order more online. But then Michaels started carrying them and I really didn’t have any excuses anymore.

It was more difficult than I expected. I’ve seen some videos online of people drawing with them and got overly confident. It reminded me a lot of woodburning. You have to get the speed right and I really struggled with that. I drew with the 3D Doodler onto a piece of paper and lifted it up after. If I went too fast the filament wouldn’t stick to the paper. I also kept ending up with a stringy mess like when you use a hot glue gun. 

I made a couple little shapes and kind of scribbled over the surface to make them more solid. I love the look of them. 

Next I wanted to try something three dimensional. I used a bowl and attempted to use the shape as a mold to make a 3D doodled bowl. First I drew vertical lines around the bowl and then connected them. After that I went to work filling it in as much as I could. It took a lot longer than I expected and it’s pretty fragile. It was hard to work on because the bowl was so slick that it didn’t want to stick.

All in all, I did enjoy this craft but was a little frustrated I wasn’t instantly better at it. It wasn’t as frustrating as last month’s free motion quilting attempt but I was a little disappointed I wasn’t able to create an amazing 3D sculpture on my first attempt.

Have you tried something new this month? How did it go?