Happy New Year!

When we were little, my Mom bought a 'birthday angel' for each of us four kids. The angels were about 5 inches tall and each held something related to the birthday month. I still have my angel who's holding a heart, since my birthday's in February. Now I've decided to make myself a set of 'special occasion' dolls, a doll each for New Years, Valentine's Day, my birthday, St Patrick's Day, Easter, May Day, July 4th, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Instead of angels, I'm making little paper mache queens about 5 1/2 inches tall. This is my first - The New Year's Queen.

Dave's Doodles - Stangely Precise

Thought y'all might wanna see some more of brother Dave's cartoon art. Here's this year's Christmas card depicting him and me.


Next up is a drawing he did especially for me last year. It depicts him, my other brother, and me at the lake as kids. Mom had that "no swimming for 1/2 hour after eating" rule, so here we're waiting to go back in the water. (The shark in the background is eating our old neighbor, Robbie Downey.)


Dave's always liked to draw baseball players. I think he likes drawing the gloves and hats...


Flying things and dinosaurs and robots are other recurring themes in Dave's drawings.


I call myself the female version of Dave. I can't draw, but we definitely share the same warped sense of humor.

Doodle Book

My brother draws cool cartoons. For Christmas I made him a book to doodle in. I put a copy of one of his drawings on the cover and filled it with blank pages. The cover is made from regular corragated box cardboard covered in fabric, paint, paper and shellac.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

Just a little icicle angel I made for a friend.

Elspeth is here

In the Art Doll Cool-Aberration project, I have Karma's doll, Miss Elspeth Darkly, now. Elspeth is a female private investigator. Here's what she looked like when Karma first sent her out, just a 7" felted torso and head with a clay face.



And here's how she looks now after visiting 4 other artists in the collaboration.




She's a really cool doll. I've already made one addition and am pondering my next. Be sure to check out our Art Doll Cool-Aberration blog to see details on all the additions made to the project dolls and their journals.

Christmas ornaments

These days I just put up a tiny Christmas tree on my kitchen table (where I spend all my time). I have this thing about digging up small trees that pop up around my place and putting them in pots till they're bigger. Then I replant 'em somewhere they can stay. For several years, I used a potted cedar for my Christmas tree. This year it was just too big, so I'm using a potted holly tree. It's quite cute. For the past 5 or 6 years, I've decorated my trees with colored lights and natural stuff (pinecones, dried flowers, holly berries). This year I dug out a few of my Christmas ornaments including these Shell ornaments I made in the late 90's.




Unfortunately, the tree is in front of a window where I can't get a decent pic.

Peace doll swap

Here's the Peace Doll I received from my swap partner, Brenda. She has the cutest little feet in tiny sandals.

Christmas Icicle Dolls

Made these ornaments for my brother's girlfriend and her daughter to hang on their tree.

Pretty Package

This is what I found in my mailbox yesterday.



I love that Shawn (my 3D swap partner) wrapped the package in gift wrap. Such a pretty surprise to find in the mailbox. And inside, a pretty Christmas angel.


Thanks, Shawn!

Peace, man

The 3D group hosted a doll swap to commemorate 2009 being the 50th anniversary of the peace symbol in the US. Here's the tiny doll I made for Leslie.



I happen to love peace signs, so I had several kinds to choose from.

I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of my Christmas and Peace dolls from my swap partners. You'll see 'em right after I do. :)

Christmas is upon us

This is the Christmas ornament doll I made for the 3D group swap.



I was making an angel, but she reminded me of a mermaid... So I decorated her with real seashells that I painted gold. Her face is an earring I picked up in a thrift shop, and she has a spiral halo and a wing of painted chicken feathers.

An odd pair

Right now I have 2 of the Art Doll Cool-Aberration dolls at my house.



Persia the Pirate Queen is the largest of the dolls in the project at about 2 feet tall. Miss Elspeth Darkly is the smallest at about 9 inches. They make an odd pair, but they like each other. :)

Princess Bitchinbrat

Princess Bitchinbrat
was certainly that,
her utterances all curses.

Even from birth,
she lacked in mirth,
and scared off all her nurses.

She had no mates,
and nary a date.
In fact, from her all hid.


Queen Mother despaired
lest she never pair,
and, indeed, she never did.

Persia's Journal

I wanted to show you Persia's journal cover. Em made this felt cover with ribbon and fiber trims.


As Persia's made her rounds, everyone's been adding pirate-ish charms to the cover. Here's what it looks like now, after 4 of us have added to it.


Pretty cool, huh? It's kindof an extra bonus of fun. In my stash I just happened to have a set of earrings I picked up at a thrift store or somewhere. Is this a pirate woman?

If not, it oughta be. So I added one to Persia's journal cover.

Then in my pile of old rusty metal cabinet hardware, I found an old metal drawer pull with a piratey looking ship on it. Perfect! So I made a doubloon and embossed it with the ship and a "P" for Persia and added it to the cover.


On the cover there's also fish, seashells, a parrot, a ship's steering wheel, an old rusty bit of metal, an octopus, another doubloon, a skull, etc, etc... Lots of tiny treasures.

When I was at the beach last month, I bought this little book about pirates for ideas.

I'm sending the book along with Persia for inspiration, and hoping Em's little girls will enjoy it, too.

Finally!

I've finally finished my additions to Persia and her journal. So, with no further ado, here she is.



I added a pirate belt complete with sword and dagger and a gold flask (Persia is partial to gold).


The flask is polymer clay that I embossed using some jewelry I haven't worn in awhile. Persia is a rum drinker (of course) and can drink most men under the table. She'll also be traveling with her own real bottle of rum - one of those airplane minis.



I bought the cheap knife set on ebay and attached the sheath to her belt. Persia is a lefty.



I love little doll shoes, but I usually don't like making them because I'm not fond of making two of anything. Persia gave me the perfect opportunity to make just one boot! It's paper mache painted with a mixture of black acrylic paint and gel medium which gives a leather look. I attached one of the doubloons I showed in an earlier post to the boot.



Persia's peg leg is decorated with gold paint and stickers and 4 layers of clear polyacrylic. She has 5 notches in her leg now - her method for recording the Captains whose ships she's seized thru the power of seduction.



My journal pages depict Persia's reputation as a powerful seductress with the ability to bedazzle sailors into surrendering all their worldly goods for a night in her bed. If you click on the pics, hopefully you can make out the writing.





Persia was a blast to work on! The added bonus is that I did her last journal page upside down by mistake. Duh. Instead of getting upset about it, I decided to see it as a funny reminder of my normal discombobulated state of being.

Persia of Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2009

In Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2009, I'm currently working on Em's doll, Persia the Pirate Queen. She's a larger and very pose-able cloth doll. Here's what she looked like when Em first sent her out.



Dontcha love her piratey peg leg?

Here's what she looked like when she got to me after visiting 3 of the other project members.



I'm giving her some pirate-ish gear. Pics coming soon. Meanwhile, take a look at the Cool-Ab blog to see her step-by-step progress.

Teensy Tiles

More unearthed treasures. Some teensy tinesy kiln fired tiles I made several years back. I meant to paint them, but never did. Maybe I'll do it now.

Bravura Personified after her third visit

Here she is looking grand and snooty. She just left Karma who added her clay face, headdress, and ribbon flags to her skirt.





Sadly, Karma didn't have time to work in Bravura's journal. I'm pretty disappointed since the art journals are as crucial to the project as the dolls. She's promised to send some pages. I really hope she gets around to it so my journal doesn't end up with a hole in the middle.

On the bright side, that's the only dissapointment in the project so far. The players are really going all out in adding to the dolls and journals. Go check out the dolls' progress at http://artdollcoolab2009.blogspot.com/.

This may make you jealous...

Here's the thing you might covet... if you're into rusty metal treasures, that is.



A couple years ago, I bought a 5 gallon bucket half full of old cabinet and drawer pulls and embellishments at a nearby junk yard. Some of the stuff is junk, but there're lots of nice ones like I've shown. I'd planned to use some on birdhouses, but (of course) I haven't gotten around to building more birdhouses yet.

Well, today I wanted to make some doubloons for Em's doll, Persia the Pirate Queen. So I pulled out the decorative metal hardware to emboss and stamp the polymer clay doubloons. Here's what I've made so far.






The doubloons above are about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. I painted them with gold and antique gold acrylic paints. Then I was having so much fun, I decided to make a larger one.



This one is 3 1/2 inches in diameter. I used a hodgepodge of the metal designs to emboss it and then made the V (for my last name) over the embossed surface and embossed it, too. Not sure what it's supposed to be - just a pretty to stick in a display case, I guess.