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.

Momiji Swap Doll

And here's the cool momiji doll I got from Jeanne in the Decidedly Different Dolls (3D) group swap. Momiji dolls have a secret compartment where a message can be concealed. Jeanne used a pill bottle. She made the head by paper mache-ing over a styrofoam ball that fits over the screw-on cap. I can't believe she did such a nice, detailed face with tissue paper paper mache. I love her little bobbed hair do.




Here she is with her head off and the message Jeanne included revealed.



I'll be storing my shark tooth collection in my momiji doll. So I'll have treasures inside a treasure!

Gift in the Mail!

Check out this gorgeous beaded bracelet my friend Jeanne sent me! I love this bracelet. I'm keeping it in my new display case when I'm not wearing it. It's too pretty to hide in the jewelry box. Jeanne makes gorgeous beaded dolls, too.




And look at the sweet little matching clasp she used. Perfect!

More Unearthed Treasures

This is Eugenia. I made her a couple years ago and just rediscovered her in my display case. I like Eugenia - she's tiny (less than 4 inches), but huge on attitude.

Forgotten Treasures

Found these cute little booklets when I was sorting thru my treasures for the new display case. I made these several years ago. The covers are handmade paper I made with dried flowers. And the lavender is my homegrown lavender, pressed and glued on. I believe these covers are all sealed with wax. They're about 5 1/2" X 4".

This is fun!

I bought an old glass front cabinet a year or so ago and I've been meaning to fix it up to display some dolls and other treasures. Well, I never have done anything to the outside of it, but this weekend I did a quicky job on the inside so I can use it. It had a horrible picture of a hot air balloon glued onto the inside back wall. I got rid of it by collaging over it with pages from some old farmers almanacs and sealing with shellac. I had a small open curio shelf that just happened to fit perfectly inside the cabinet.



This morning, I filled it up with treasures. There's still room for more small swap dolls. The cabinet is on my fireplace mantel surrounded by some paintings done by my mom and her father.



It was lots of fun going thru my treasures and organizing some of them in the new display box.