Monday, January 29, 2007

Just an Old-fashioned Girl

I just had to work on this gal last night. Once I got started and posted the basic photo of the parts put together, I realized what I wanted to do. Here she is from the front:



And then I had to take a bit of a side shot, so you can see Shashi's charming hat a little better:


Incidentally, I found out from a comment in yesterday's post that the body was made by Sherry. I'm pleased with how it all came together. Amazing, really, when you think of all the different parts coming from different places. As pleased as I am with every part, I especially have to thank Cherie Day for her lovely face. A great face just makes a doll, doesn't it?

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Teapot Swap

Way back in the end of November, I submitted teapot parts to Sherry Goshon for her teapot doll swap. I made five handles, embellished, to submit in my name. Other people made spouts, bodies, heads and hats and sent them in to Sherry, as well. Sherry mixed them up and sent them back to us. I received my parts last week -- face by Cherie Day, hat by Shashi Nayagam, handle by Linda Pieratt, and spout by Kathi Butler, and body by a mystery person!)

So far I've been playing with putting the parts together, but haven't made permanent attachments. I still want to do some embellishing on the body, and think I'll do that before I attach the other parts. Though it looks like there are buttons and trims on the body, it's just the way the fabric is printed. Here are a couple of different angles on the doll:

With a flash:



Without a flash:


These dolls are so cute when they are done. What a unique idea to mix up the parts. I'll post more when I get things firmly attached and embellished.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Fabric with Cling Wrap

A few days ago, Linda F on the FDA list posted a link to a tutorial she had found making fabric from scraps ironed between two sheets of cling wrap (tutorial here -
http://faerydi.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-i-made-my-cling-wrap-fabric.html




My local grocery store had two colors, violet and rose, so I tried the violet. I realized that I had a lot of prints in my mixture, which were only printed on one side, so when I did the second layer, I focused on covering the back side and obscuring the unfinished aspects. I think I want to try making one where I could experiment a little bit with folding/layering/pleating the cling wrap before ironing. If you try this, make sure you have the parchment paper over the whole thing, so you don't get cling wrap on your iron.

Monday, January 15, 2007

What Planet?

Linda F. posted a "what planet are you from?" test, and this is my result:

***You Are From Uranus***
You shine with brilliant creativity, and you're more than a little eccentric.You love everything unusual and shocking. You're one far-out chick or dude.Anything unconventional excites you - and you have genius potential.Just don't let your rebel side get the best of you, or else you'll alienate everyone.Your original thinking and funky attitude is all you need to be you.
What Planet Are You From?http://www.blogthings.com/whatplanetareyoufromquiz/

It's so funny -- I'm sure my DH would agree, he thinks I'm quite unusual, but I don't like to be around way out people. I don't like a lot of attention when I'm in public, so weird hair-dos and piercings kind of turn me off. But I hate being or having things the same as others. When we still had our gift store in NC, it about sent me around the bend when the other retailers would copy display windows, or source gifts from the same companies. After all, why would you WANT to sell what everyone else is selling? Why would you want to be the same?

I can't tell yet how I feel about this planet thing...I think they based too much on my sun sign (Aquarius). Mama always said I was one of the cuckoos of the zodiac! LOL.

Friday, January 05, 2007

Medusa is back



I can only post a little bit of what I'm working on. Actually, my main project right now is the Wish for the New Year Angel challenge doll and I can't post pix of that till the challenge is over (assuming I get it done in time!) but every so often, I take a break and work on whatever DIP starts pestering me.

This Medusa I started months ago. I was going to test the pattern, and got a little fed up with the omissions in the directions and had to take off on my own. I figured it wouldn't be a very good example for testing, so I set her aside.

So far, I've sewn two heads and haven't gotten the face right, so I painted them out with gesso, and started over. Wednesday night I remembered that I had these rather eerie, almost serpentine looking eyes that I bought from Barb at Joggles, so decided they'd been waiting for the Medusa. I've done the work on the face so far on the flat white of the gesso, and feeling it's just odd enough for the Medusa. Whaddya think? Kind of creeepy?