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Friday, November 16, 2012

Another Meeting of the Quilt Barn Doll Club, Nov. 14, 2012

 It is always so much fun to  drive up to Puyallup to see our "Northern Friends" and work on dolls together. This time they made a doll dress form, using a clear vase as a base; most put buttons in the vase. It was very cool but I am "behind the old eight-ball," needing to make items for our Art Guild's Christmas Sale at our co-op gallery, Six Rivers Gallery, in Hoquiam, WA. So I worked on a sock monkey, and watched them make the little dress forms. I hope they will all send me a picture when their's is totally done. I will post them here, then.

This is a picture of Doreen's collection of dress forms she has collected. She didn't make any of these but brought them along to inspire everyone:
 
 
Karla had put the finishing touches on her elephant that she showed us the month before:
 

 
 
Next time we are all going to make a giraffe! I will be participating in that one, because I will be done with my gallery projects by then.
 
 
Stephanie brought two of her reborns and I couldn't reist this one:
 
I haven't named him yet. I am waiting for that imp that calls herself my "muse" to inspire me. I hope she doesn't come up with some hairbrained name; if she does, I will have to override her yet again!!Here are some more of Stephanie's reborns. I love them all!!!




 
I am glad that Stephanie loves to make these dolls because as much as I love them, I don't want to make one myself.
 

 

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Monday, November 12, 2012

Linda's Very Cute Cat Pattern




This is a very cute cat pattern:


http://www.naturalsuburbia.com/2012/06/cat-knitting-pattern-and-tutorial.html

Thanks for sharing, Linda!

Doll Club, October 17, 2012, Puyallup, WA



We meet once a month, USUALLY on the third Wednesday, at the Quilt Barn in Puyallup, that's pew AL up, WA.  Here are some dolls that were displayed in October:
This is Doreen's pretty little girl doll. Her boots are made Tyvek; didn't they turn out cute?

 These are Kathleens' Halloween dolls;they're tiny, only about five inches tall.
This is Karla's elephant. It's hard to believe he's made of cloth, but with a coat of gesso and paint, he becomes unclothlike! He is not finished in this picture. Karla painted him again and then finished him with varnish. The two dolls below were also made by Karla, from a Deanna Hogan pattern.


 



This is Doreen's troll. I'm sorry there are two copies of that one picture. I don't know how to remove photos once they're inserted!!! Anyway, we talked Doreen into letting the baby peek out; not sure if we should have done that!!! It's kind of strange-looking. Then we said, "She needs a zipper!!" and then we all cracked up, thinking that any little kid looking at it would think all women had zippers!!!  Do troll's have pouches? I don't know!! I guess we could ask Ute; this doll is made from one of her patterns.

Anyway, these were the pictures for October, 2012. Stay tuned for more doll pics from this creative group. Oops! I almost forgot someone that you've met before! Here's Screamer in his new Halloween Costume:

Shop Local


Photo


This is to remind everyone to shop local during the coming holiday season. There are many small businesses in your area that are trying to "hang on" during these tough times. They depend on holiday sales to remain solvent, and believe me, their smiles are wider than any you'll see at the "big box" stores!

There are also many craftspersons and artists who would also appreciate your business.  So keep that in mind when Black Friday, November 23, rolls around. If  there are businesses in your city neighborhood or your small town, that you'd really HATE to see leave, please patronize them, and then they'll be able to stay.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Continuing Progress on Doll-in-Progress



I continue to make progress on this doll, although not FAST progress as I've been sick lately (cellulitis!!) and I've also spent time decluttering (yay!!!!) and working on my art journals.

I am happy with her face now, having enlarged her eyes from the ones I first gave her. She is a child; I achieved that desired result from making her eyes larger. It could be that her eyes should have been a bit lower on her face, but she's an older child rather than a younger one, so I can get away with her eyes being a little high.

My next decision will involve what kind of hair she should have. I'm sure I have a doll wig that would fit her, but I'll have to try some and see what it looks like. And of course, I'll have to make the arms and legs which are not my favorite parts to make. But they won't take long, so I should just "bite the bullet" and make them as soon as I can.
I probably mentioned in my earlier
post that this doll has a cloth body/head in one piece with the molded face made from Paper Clay and  cloth over that. Stay tuned. I'll try to get this doll finished soon.

Second Blog Book!



 I'm working toward the point of having my blog printed one year at a time, but my first book ended in July, 2011 and covered a couple of years. So this one begins in July 2011 and goes to Oct 2012. Next year's will begin in Oct 2012 and will go to Dec 31, 2013. From then on, they will begin on Jan1 and go to Dec 31 of the same year.
 
The service I use is called Blog2Print and it is not the only one out there. The book costs about $30 in soft cover/color, less in black and white; hardback is also available and costs more, of course. I didn't do much  research before I ordered the first book, so I'm not sure if this  company has the best price or not. I WILL say they have great software,  their process is totally easy, and I've been very satisfied with the results, and that is why I went to them again.
 
I find this an easy way to have a printed record of my doll-making experiences.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Dolls in Progress






This is a doll I've been working on for a couple of months. The face mold is made of PaperClay which I prefer over Sculpey because it air dries, is lighter in weight, and it's easier to get off your hands that Sculpey. She looks like a being from outer space with that endearing yellow/green skin!! I used a soccer shirt scrap for her face covering (I'ts some manmade fabric), and I don't suggest anyone ever use that  for covering a face mold. It is NOT cooperative and it fought me every step of the way. However, I can be stubborn, and I didn't want to start all over on the skin, so I just kept adding extra Elmer's Glue and holding it down where it wouldn't stick with pins. Finally it gave up before I did, stuck and dried, and I could take out the pins.
Then I added some PaperClay to a couple places where there were folds or wrinkles in the fabric. This doesn't usually happrn with cotton, but I had them with this fabric. She'll eventually have hair, so I really didn't need to patch the top of her head, but I wanted to, just in case I change my mind about the hair.
Next, I added three coats of gesso to prepare the doll for painting:
The first coat of gesso was white, the second bright pink, and the next the light pink you see here.  I'd tinted the gesso for something else I was working on, so this doll got the same stuff.
Next, I paiinted her flesh color and painted her mouth, but I didn't like the mouth, so I painted over it. I had drawn on some eyes with a pencil, but didn't like them either. They were too small and I decided I wanted a child doll, not a woman doll; this means that her eyes needed to be bigger and her lips less full than I'd had them, so I painted over them and went to bed.  This morning, I drew an eye the size and shape I wanted it on a piece of "sticker paper." This can be an address label or whatever. I always save the part of an invoice that is sticker-paper and use that, or sometimes I save and use the margins from sheets of stick-on mailing labels. I never waste that stuff, because you really don't need very much to make eyes on. Then I stuck the blank eyes on the doll's face and penciled in the pupil and iris of the eyes-- sometimes I draw the eyelid fold, too. If you want realistic eyes, it helps to look at every eye you can find: eye's on people you know, eyes on people in magaizines, model's eyes, movie stars' eyes, children's eyes, any eyes you can find. The nice thing about using sticky paper is is that you can move those eyes around on the doll's face until you get them where you really want them.  
     Even though I have made lots of dolls and painted lots of faces like this, I noticed that I had one eye a lot closer to the bridge of the nose than the other one. This is SO easy to do, and unless you look at your doll's face really closely, you might just miss it. So I had to move the eye on the right over a bit, to where you see it now; I decided I like them where they were now, but  I had already penciled in eyebrows (I should have waited--I tend to work too fast and live to regret it), so I had to erase the right one and pencil in a new one. It's good to pencil everything lightly, and only use a white eraser. Some mechanical pencils have white erasers; if you don't have pencils with white erasers, you'll need to buy one. Pink erasers tend to leave a pink mark.
     So now, she is close to being ready to paint, and it would have been good if I'd stayed away from the paint until this point, but as I said, I tend to hurry things and then I'm sorry. But I like this girl's face now, and I will probably paint it today. I've already blushed the cheeks lightly, as I like to do that when painting the skin color; I mix a little of the shade of pink I want with the face paint and use that. Be VERY careful when painting cheek color on dolls; too much and she'll look like a harlot!!
I doubt that this doll will have ears, but if I decide she should have braids, or have her hair in a "updo," I will add them then. I can make fabric ears and stuff them a tiny bit, glue them to the head, and then gesso and paint them, or I can make PaperClay ears,  cover, gesso, and paint them, and then glue them to the head--with either style of ear, it's up to you when, in the process, you glue on the ears--before or after gessoing and painting. The tops of the ears should be just about even with the tops of the eyes, and the size varies a lot from person to person and thus from doll to doll.
    That's all for today. The decluttering is coming along--slower than I want it to, but I'm finding I just don't have enough extra time to devote large blocks of time to it. So I do what I can in small segments of time and keep the effort moving forward.
The next time I post, which I hope will be Tues or Weds (it's Friday now), I will report on my Art Journal Workshop, which is Monday, Sept 29. 

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Art Journaling, a New Adventure

 As if I needed yet ANOTHER interest, I purchased a book on making art journals in July, on our way  (mine and Karla's) to Puyallup (that's a native placename, for those of you that don't recognize it; it's pronounced Pew AL up) for doll club. Traci Bunkers' book is called: The Art Journal Workshop: Break Through, Explore, and Make it Your Own. And I can truthfully say I have done that.
     Although most art journal blogs are written by younger women in search of self-discovery, I believe that older women like myself can also "get into it," with an emphasis on our lives and times.
     I had  recently read the book Leaving a Trace: on Keeping a Journal, by Alexandra Johnson, and so I had journaling on my mind when I laid eyes on Traci's book. I think that is why I was so attracted to it; I was "primed." I picked it up once, leafed through it, put it back (deciding I shouldn't spend that much), and walked off to another part of the store.
      But I couldn't leave without it! It was in a Joann's store, the nearest one to my town (50 miles away) and they'd recently reorganized the store--moved  EVERYTHING around. I had real difficulty finding my way back to the aisle where I had seen Traci's book. (WHY do stores DO that to us?!?!?!? I may as well have been in a strange store I'd never put foot in before!!!)
   I finally located the aisle with Traci's book, and  even put back a magazine I'd planned to buy, so I wouldn't feel guilty about buying it. Since then I have been on the proverbial roll, buying old books that I won't feel TOO bad about destroying--think of it as giving them a new life, as these books were within days of going to the dump. Going through gesso like a house afire, and dragging my barely begun art journals around for all my friends and acquaintances to see. I have even set up a workshop day at our co-op gallery, so I can introduce them to the art of art journaling; that will happen a month from today--I thought October first would be easy for everyone to remember, including me.
    I guess the best way to describe an art journal is that it combines classical journaling (writing about your life, etc) with art and or/ scrapbooking. Some scrapbookers also journal on some of their pages. I guess the difference would be that scrapbooks are mostly photos, with a few words added, and art journals tend to be more words and art, and fewer photos. The thing is, your art journal will not be like anyone else's; if it is, then you aren't being original. I would say that if you are nervous about "doing your own thing" at first, using another person's page (IF it fits you, as well) as a guide is probably permissable, but ONLY at first and ONLY if you credit the originator of the page on YOUR page. Giving credit where credit is due is important and only fair.
     As for me, the days are long gone when I felt nervous about "doing MY own thing." (My friends and family will attest to this fact.) I have started one art journal titled "My Dolls and Other Things I've Made," another called, " Welcome to My World," about me and what types of things I enjoy doing (I'm "leaving a trace," as Alexandra said in her book.)
      Speaking of giving credit, I was intially introduced to art journals by a doll maker, elinor peace bailey, in around 2004. Our son Kevin had died shortly before I took a class from elinor at Doll U that year, and the pages I began then were about him. I used an old ledger book I'd gotten at a garage sale, as that is what elinor used. I'd only done a couple pages in that book before I put it away. I'm hoping to keep working on that one, too.
     I have two more art journals started: one called "Art Rocks" that I think I will just use to play around it and see what I come up with, art-wise, and another one called, "Gratitude," in which I feature things that I am thankful for in my life. Will these four journals overlap occasionally? Sure, but that's OK. Elinor was hoping to have a journal to leave with each grandchild who wanted one, and I'm thinking along those same lines; I have three granddaughters now, but I'm hoping to have more grandchildren in the future, so I'll definitely make more than three. If some of my progency are not interested in having one, I can always leave them for our local museum, which is what we did with my grandmother's diaries and journals. They will be safe there and if any of her extended family down the line are interested, they will be able to find them there.
 
      Here is the cover and first two pages of "Welcome to My World:"


    Here are the covers of two of the other art journals I've begun:
 


     I really enjoyed playing with paint to make these covers, as I'm a doll maker, not a painter and so this is a different and new art form for me and I'm having a lot of fun trying out painting methods and seeing how they come out. It seem it's always a surprise.
     Here I am gessoing pages in the hardbacked books I'm preparing for the workshop. It's a warm day and the pages are drying very quickly outside. It will be different in the winter, but I'll still be able to get them dry near the fireplace. (just not TOO near it!)

 
       .
     And here is my "studio:"  Too bad I don't have one!!
 

 
     Well, that's more than enough for today. The next thing I'm going to do it to make a list of topics I want to include in "Welcome to My World." And, of course, I'm making sheets to hand out to the participants of the Workshop at the Gallery, too. I never run out of things to do, but I ALWAYS run out of hours, every single day!!! Stay tuned.
     Have a good September, everyone. Stop in at Traci Bunkers' blog: it's https://www.tracibunkers.com/blog and is called "Welcome to My World." I didn't realize that's what it was called!! Sorry, Traci!! Remember, "Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!!!"
 
PS. Yes, for my ever-watchful cousin and some of the rest of you who are wondering, I am still working on organizing my home; I have moved such things as picture frames out to the garage, and am doing some organizing out there, too; I have given many items to our Starving Artists' Yard Sale and just yesterday, took some items to a PAWS yard sale, so yes, I AM making progress. Is it fast enough to please me? NO!! But I keep on anyway. Today I am trying to hook up my wireless router and our new TIVO machine. My doctor recommended it so I'd get to sleep at a decent hour; I should have had him fill out a prescription for it! LOL.

Monday, August 6, 2012

Polly and Her Friends Go to the Fair


Took some time out from organizing to get a few dolls ready to go to this year's county fair.
This is the group of dolls I am showing at our county fair this year. All were finished except the gourd-head doll Polly, with the green hair ribbons--she was not quite done, but was sending me silent  messages that she expected to be finished so she could go to the fair!! Non-dollmakers won't understand for sure, and some dollmakers don't subscribe to the "doll as messenger" either. But, nonetheless, Polly made it known to me that the fair was where she wanted to go.


Polly is made almost completely from recycled goods, from the top of her head (hair made from old black thrift store sweater) to the bottom of her soles (repainted baby "saddle" shoes).

I don't know why I get so much joy out of making dolls out of old stuff, but I do. I must admit, however, that Polly's body fabric and the top of her dress are new fabric. I tried to get fabric that would match the "mottled" look of the gourd, and I think I came pretty close:


Tea-dyed muslin would have worked, too. But I was being lazy. I am almost out of gourds; time to contact Helen (the Sandlady) in Nebraska and have her send me some more. These have been just too much fun to stop making them now.