From one extreme to the other!

I decided to make a prim Raggedy today. I've never made one before and have absolutely no clue how to but, hey, that's never stopped ME before! So I found a free pattern on the internet, with basically no instructions. But I can sew a doll body - no sweat!

Used this fabric that is a decent thread count - no idea what it is - something that Christine Shively uses (I had bought it for her class). Made the doll body pieces. Pattern said to put it together and stain it. Stain it? What the heck is that? A few Google searches later I know it means age it. Okay. How? Can't find anything through Google except for Gail Wilson's website and it says to use Rit dye. I don't want to use Rit. Keep searching. Join another Yahoo group. Go through their files. AHA - coffee and vanilla will age it. Go to store to buy instant coffee. Might as well pop into the craft shop and get some yarn for hair too. Hey, this fabric is nice - bet it will age well in the coffee too. Back home. Make tea. Make coffee. Drink tea. Dip doll pieces in coffee for five minutes. Hmmm, this looks interesting. I wonder if the doll shouldn't be STUFFED to do this? Try to get coffee out of doll. Notice that the coffee also stains your hands. Put doll pieces in oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes. Check and it's still soaked. So is the towel under it. Guess I didn't get enough coffee out. Give it another 10 minutes, and another 10 minutes. House starts to smell like coffee and vanilla. Husband wanders in. Making cookies? Nope, baking dolls. Nothing surprises him anymore - he leaves. Finally the doll is dry (more or less). It's aged. It looks like something my dog dug up in the yard. Okay - now to put it together. Why, they didn't say that after you age the fabric with coffee it turns into CANVAS and you CAN'T get a needle through it. They also didn't say that maybe, just maybe, you should put a pin across the top of the legs so the *stuffing doesn't shift* during the aging process. That way when you put the doll together she might be able to sit up WITHOUT a prop behind her! Okay, she'll just have to lean against something, it's not the end of the world. Now to find buttons and felt. Tried red felt and she looked like Rudolph. Get out the good wool felt and that works. This looks strange. I don't like prim Raggedys but I'm determined to make one. So let's keep going and see .. cut some black thread and lay it on the face for eyelashes and a mouth, just to see what it will look like. Have no clue how I'm going to embroider on something I can't get a needle through but that's for another day. Lay some yarn across the head. Hey, it's not so bad after all. Maybe when I get her dressed she'll be okay.

Stayed tuned for the next episode ... LOL.

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He's back ...

Working on the cherry pitter again. For those of you who don't remember .. this is a kitchen appliance I found in a box of junk. I wrapped his body with four different yarns and then green 20 gauge wire. There's another cherry (berry?) that goes on the top of his arm but it keeps falling off. I'll get it back on there when I'm done with the hair. This hair is a PAIN!!!

I'm making the hair out of cotton quilting thread. I thread up a long piece on a needle and make about four loops in the same space. Then I make a loop around the base of the threads and knot it off. The knots make the threads stand up. Finally I clip the top of the loops. It's going to take HOURS .. and HOURS .. and HOURS. I have some leaves and berries that are going to go on the back of his head as well.

Notice his little 'loincloth' - I didn't do that on purpose - the yarn just loosened there by itself. I think he was telling me that he's not an exhibitionist. If you look closely you'll see some color under there. I'll leave it up to your imagination to guess what it is, LOL.

Here's a refresher on his progress:

The beginning:

Next step:

Where he is today:

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Funky figures

One of the swaps I'm doing this month with my Embellished Circus mail art group is Funky Figures. At first I tried making a figure using a wine cork as the body but it didn't work out very well. I mean, it worked, but I didn't like it. So then I dug into my embellishment box and came up with two metal pieces that I decided to work around. I think they came out okay.

The first one is a traveler; the head is a half globe with the map of Australia, the banner says Travel, one hand is a charm shaped like Alaska (it's sideways in the photo, oops), the other is a Chinese coin. What's fun is that all the pieces traveled to get to me -- I got the globe from a mail art friend, the travel banner came from Heather in Michigan, the Alaska charm was bought down in Anchorage by my daughter, and the Chinese coin - well, maybe it came from China, LOL.

The second figure is pretty self explanatory. Both the metal body pieces are scrapbook embellishments (from Heather - thank you very much!)!. It really is fun trying to find things that will work with your visions!

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A fairy nice present!

The holiday craziness is over! I've enjoyed the breathing room I've had the past few days. My daughter loved her quilt - I'll post a photo of it soon. Wanted to share a photo of a little fairy figurine that one of my girls bought me.

I think this is just a resin figurine - the wings feels like plastic but I'm not exactly sure what they are. I do love the shape of them though. Cute little outfit - kind of like a faerie in lingerie! I love hanging figurines like this from the ceiling in my studio! I've run out of hooks though so it's another job for the hubby!

I'm a lucky girl!

One of my internet friends, Natalie, sent me this absolutely breathtaking pin doll. I absolutely love her faces and now I have three pieces of her art. I'm a lucky girl!

Happy Solstice!!

I am always glad to see Winter Solstice - now we will start gaining daylight back. We will only gain about 2 minutes a day for a month or so then over time it will increase to about 6 minutes a day. Before I know it summer will be here and it won't be dark at all! I can't wait! But until then I'll just be a house mouse and burrow away in my studio. Here's a photo of where the sun was at 2:00 pm today - nearly below the horizon.

Now that I have the gifts done I can play again. Today I bought some canvases to try my hand at collage with. I might be able to get to them tomorrow - depending on how long it takes to clean the house. It's such a shame that has to be done. I'd love a cook and a housekeeper but that's probably not going to happen in this lifetime, LOL.

What a difference!

Thought it would be fun to show a now and then photo of faces I did. The upper portion of the photo shows one of the first faces I did (back in 2001) and the lower portion shows a face I painted this year. I've come a long way in four years! You can too! Just practice, practice, practice.

It also helps to have some good books and some good teachers to learn from!
My picks are:
Sherry Goshon's Watercolor Faces book
Patti Culea: Creative Cloth Doll Faces

One of the best instructional packets I have is from Anne-Marie Brombal but you can't get it anymore. Awesome step by step photos.

Doll stands

I'm sure this isn't new to you but I think it's pretty neat. My friend Shirley had bought some candleholders to use as doll stands and they looked really nice. So when I was wandering around the store today looking for presents I found a couple on the clearance shelves.

What's nice about these is that they don't have that little spike in the center that holds the candle on it. Bumble's not the type to have a stick up his butt, LOL. Shirley makes little pillows for her dolls to sit on - just a circle of material gathered lightly with some fiberfill inside. I don't need to do that with this one as the candle holder is pretty flat. I will with the other one though - it's pretty well cupped. You could really embellish this with drop crystals and things. I imagine you could cover it with clay and make it look like some strange tree too. Lots of ideas. Too bad it was the only one they had in this style.

Scissor Fobs - remix

I noticed from my stats that I am getting a lot of visitors from Shashi's website.

I am guessing that you want to see my scissor fobs
since she mentioned them in her post about fobs. The link above is to my post with their photos. The class isn't up anymore but I can send you the file with all the instructions if you're interested in making some - for the low price of $5.00. Just click on the PayPal button below or leave me a note in the comments. They are quick and easy and fun to attach to presents. I need to make some more myself! Of course that's AFTER I get all these other presents done! HA!

Bazaar bust

Well, can't say that the bazaar was a huge sucess today. I should have known better than to sign up for a bazaar in my town instead of down the road in Fairbanks. There might have been 100 people who wandered through there. My spot was in front of an empty store and down a side aisle near a doorway. Good and bad things about it .. when people go to the craft shop they go in this door but if people come out of the grocery store they don't turn down the aisle I was in. I did sell a couple of things but it really wasn't worth my while.

On the upside - my troll was a big hit - everyone got a bick kick out of him. Lots of people didn't realize that my necklaces were dominos and when I told them they would say 'That's clever". No wonder the craft show on HGTV is called that! I thought that was funny.

What I learned today:
Check your table cover before you set up. Then you don't have to run back home for a bigger tablecloth.
Little girls like to take lids off of boxes to see if there is anything in them.
Having a bright yellow table at a Xmas bazaar is bizarre.

Here is my table, doesn't look crowded but I had 66 items for sale:
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Busy, busy, busy

I've been keeping busy making presents. Can't post photos because then the presents won't be a surprise! I am working on the last one now. I was looking around on Amazon and I found a book that is called Patterns for Theatrical Costumes: Garments, Trims, and Accessories from Ancient Egypt to 1915. It says it is basic shapes that you can embellish. I wonder if this would be helpful for doll costuming. I imagine the patterns must be fairly small since it's a book, not an actual pattern packet. One review says to enlarge on a plotter by 800% so they must be good doll size patterns! Anyone ever heard of this book? I just might see if I can get this through my inter-library loan program. It might be in a University library somewhere. I'm trying to stop buying books just because they look interesting! Bought quite a few lemons that way! Of course I have gotten some really good ones too! I *LOVE* books!

Blatant Advertisement

I've had quite a few inquiries about the dominos .. they are $15 each and shipping for one or two is is $4.25 for priority or $2.00 for first class. I have a PayPal account so if you pay that way I can ship right away. I can ship overseas too but it won't get there in time for the holidays. I'm told the deadline for mailing is Dec 12th for the states. Well, that's if you want it to get there in time for Xmas/Channukah.

I've also been asked about how I make these ... so ... I'm taking photos as I go along and might make it into an on-line class. It's just too complicated to write up as a tutorial. Especially if you haven't worked with some of the supplies before.

That said - as of this evening I have all 70 dominos stamped and glossed and only have about 25 more to bead. Then it's on to making 70 necklaces! The end is in sight!!!!!!!!

All fired up!

If you've been reading my blog you know that my husband has some glow in the dark powder that he's been fooling with. He took it to his knife-making class last night (he teaches how to make damascus steel) and he and his students tried to put some on a piece of wood then emboss over it. He found out real quick that a hair dryer doesn't work on the embossing powder. Just blows it away. So they looked around for something to use to melt the crystals with and ended up using a torch. A bit high powered if you ask me. But what did this lead to? When he came home he found me sitting with my heat gun patiently melting layer after layer of the UTEE on my dominos. He grabbed one of my dominos and some of the crystals and went out into the garage where he taught me how to use a propane torch to melt the stuff. Wow! I love it! It's way faster but also way trickier to use. It's totally easy to heat it too much. But when you have about 50 of the little stinkers to enamel I guess it makes sense. And hey, Kai .. I didn't burn the house down either!

Same old stuff

Finished stamping about 25 dominos today and inked up another 25. I took everyone's advice and made more of certain types and none of others, LOL. I did use the Staz-on ink this time and I ended up with 3 that I didn't like so I collaged them. I thought I'd take a photo of them before they were enameled .. less glare. Here's the latest bunch ...

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Here's the batch I inked ... there's a lot of green in this batch. I'm afraid the bluish purple one in the bottom row will have to be collaged .. it's way too dark.
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and here's my niece's treasure box that I made for her holiday present. I actually got to do something today besides doms for a little bit! Yay!

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