Stone Cold Troll Pattern

Finally! Here is Mossy McCavern with the one that got away! He's short, stubby, and very cute (in a manly sort of way!).

Learn a new faux stone painting technique - go from plain muslin to granite! I have instructions for all the accessories - the altered bra, the club, and the wristbands. I have two ways of making his loincloth - the mossy one uses Paverpol - but if you don't want to buy it - then I have instructions for a leather/fake fur one. I have two pages of color photos that you can decide if you want to print or not. What else? Oh, he is 12" tall, and he is in a fixed position with a brass rod up his ... leg! What did you think I was going to say????

I will email the pattern to you.

Price: US $8.00.

I email to you :

A little bit of a diva

Celeste turned out to be a bit of a diva. She was very particular about what she wanted to wear - which turned out to be nothing. No sleeves, no shrug. What can you do? I was lucky she let me give her a hat. Which turned out great, by the way. Celeste is going to live with my friend Kate but I think she might have to wait until after doll club to leave home. Oh - she was made from my Stump Sisters pattern.

A wedding procession?????

I took this photo to talk about making the illusion of a hat and it struck me that it looks like some strange wedding procession. I have to admit I do have weddings on the mind - Jeanna got married last weekend, this weekend I had my other daughter's bridal shower, and her wedding will take place in about 3 weeks. I'm actually surprised I haven't made a bride yet! But anyhow - this shows the hat once it has been immersed in fabric stiffy and it is drying. By covering the head with plastic you can mold and pin the fabric in place, creating the illusion of a hat. When dry you just add flowers, feathers, and so on and so forth. Maybe I should make her a little bouquet to hold, hmmm.

This next photo shows what else I did this weekend. We put up nearly 40 cans of wild Copper River red salmon. Each can holds about 1.4 lbs. So that's a lotsa salmon! Gotta love the artistic filters that come with Photoshop Elements. Plain old cans are so boring to look at!

How to use beaded trim

This may not be new to anyone but me! I have a lot of beaded trim and the ribbon is usually so wide that I haven't found a good way to use it on dolls. When I was searching for trim to use on my Stump Sister I found some pre-beaded trim that was perfect. So I played with it until I figured out how I could reduce the size of the ribbon without cutting it. Twist, twist, twist! It's all in the wrist.

Start with your standard beaded trim


Start to twist and pin the end. Keep twisting. You can either twist the whole thing or twist and sew as you go. You have to sew the twists into place - I used a running stitch.


Place your piece on your doll and sew into place. Make sure you sew one fringe to either side of the center ribbon.

Posted by judi at 2:43 PM | Comments (15)

A wonderful day

Today my daughter Jeana got married. It was a lovely day and I am thrilled to have gained a great son-in-law. We had the wedding here at my house. I'm not cleaning a thing until tomorrow, LOL. I'm just going to sit here and finish off the champagne!!! Here's a couple of photos for you to enjoy.

Jeanna & Shane





Don't give the pregnant lady a knife ...

Posted by judi at 9:50 PM | Comments (16)

Charmed .. I'm sure ...

This is the beginning of a charm bracelet holder. Sherry Goshon designed her and is teaching her in an online class. This part is made of canvas - and glued to an Altoid Box. Those things on her are rubber bands - holding the body to the box until it's dry. It's a great shape and we are going to paint, stencil, and who knows what on her body. I have to say that turning a canvas body right side out was quite interesting - I think I built new muscles! I've since gessoed her and I'm waiting anxiously until the next lesson is posted!

Photoshop Elements

My friend Kate Erbach turned me onto the Photoshop Elements software and I really like it. It helped me create this little advertisement. Kate told me about this great website where you can find royalty-free photographs for use in your art. That's where the star shaped ice cubes that I use as the background for this piece came from. I think that Anuuk is going to be my little logo girl - she sure fits the bill!

I'm happy now

I'm much happier with this face. This is the fourth head I made before I was happy. It ended up being that I was making the features too big for the head so I downsized some and it worked out better. I can live with this!!! Phew.

If at first ...

If at first you don't succeed then cover it with cloth! I screwed up needle sculpting a head and tried to pick the stitches out. Yeah, right. All I did was make holes in the fabric. So I thought I'd try covering with cloth. It was fun to do but she looks like she doesn't have a nose, LOL. This is the second head I've made trying to get a good one for my project. I'll try again tomorrow!

Front page news

I'm working on a project for Doll Crafter and Costuming so I can't show any progress reports right now. Instead I'll post the front page photo of the doll my student made. I need to get in touch with a couple of these gals and see how their dolls turned out in the end. This one just has a skein of yarn stuck on her head for the photo shoot, LOL. I really do love this cherry fabric!

Today's photos

We haven't caught anything fishing and I haven't picked up a pencil yet. Thought I'd share a couple of photos I took today. These two bald eagles are dining on a couple of salmon carcasses. The multi-colored eagle is a juvenile bald eagle - they turn white when they are adults. The second picture is of a pink salmon jumping over a couple of rocks on its way upstream. Click on the images to enlarge.

A little bit of a vacation

I'm away for the weekend ... and I didn't take any doll stuff with me! I did bring a sketch book, some pencils, and some oil pastels. We will see if I end up using them!

My PSA ... the mammopad

Since I'm not doing anything creative lately I thought I'd recommend this new pad that goes on a mammogram machine. It is a special foam and it's awesome for cutting down the discomfort. If you go to BioLucent's website you can check to see if your Breast Cancer Detection Center or hospital uses them. If not - you might want to suggest it ... these really make a huge difference. They say that 3 ot of 4 women experience a 50% decrease in discomfort. It's really true too - I was astounded at the difference when I got to use it! So check it out!

The Beta Fish Tank - another altered project

Drop down about four posts and check out how this fish tank looked when I bought it - with little Nemo's on the sides and seaweed waving to and fro. It's kind of changed now. I'm not sure if I like this or not -it's really busy, maybe too busy, on the border of messy. But I'll live with it for a while and see what it tells me. I do know I want to add more orange to the top part (with the antennae). I think I will refrain from adding any 3-D embellishments though. They would probably just get lost. But this is the first thing I've done in nearly a week, art wise, and it felt good to play!