Fabric Book

Made another book. This one is fabric that I created by felting a crocheted rectangle to a piece of upholstery fabric using my embellishing machine. I left some areas of just the fabric and also loose threads around the edge.


I made a text block using beige copy paper (just cos I had it on hand) and sewed it into the cover. Then I embroidered and beaded the spine with multicolored threads and beads.



I likes it... even tho I have no idea what I'll use it for.

Serenity

I just mailed Serenity, my 2nd doll in Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010, to MA in Canada. Here's what I added to her.

As soon as I saw Serenity, I knew I wanted to make her a seahorse centaur. A seahorse is a very serene little critter. Having semi-useless fins, it prefers protected waters like a bay or inlet, and relies on the currents to carry it from place to place. Serenity's posture and long neck, and the shells and moons and horsehair added by Yvonne, all led me to creating a seahorse centaur. Since she was already 11 inches tall without legs, it was also a way to finish her length without exceeding our 12 inch goal by much - she's just shy of 14 inches tall now.

Her seahorse tail is slightly stuffed fabric over a wire armature and is embellished with copper netting (from a repurposed scouring pad) and copper wire. I just had to use the vintage lace with leaves that so closely resemble those in Amy's fabric torso, so I painted it to complement Yvonne's lace headdress and made a paper and lace belt. She could probably use a belt adornment, but I left that for someone else to decide.





Check out our project blog to see more of the dolls and their progress.

The Smoking Queen

Made this little book just for fun.



It's 3.5" X 7.5" and has a paper mache cover with a ribbon-striped spine.


And pages made from old book pages, gesso-ed and painted.

Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010 Doll 2

I have Amy's doll, Serenity, with me now. She came to me from Yvonne as shown here.



Check out our project blog to see all the dolls and their evolutions.

Legs traveling in style

I made a pretty envelope for Raisa's legs to travel in. Hopefully she'll be off to MA in Canada on Monday.

Mail Goody

Look what flew into my mailbox! Her name is Scarlet and she was made for me by my internet pal, Susan. Scarlet is only about 3" from the tip of her beak to the tip of her tail feathers. Isn't she a treat? Another tiny treasure for my display case.



Thanks, Susan!

Finished my first Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010 doll

I'm the first in the round robin to work on Yvonne's doll, Raisa, who came to me from Texas thus:



Raisa's figure may be a bit "boxy" (hee hee), but now she's got some sexy legs! Four sets, to be precise. Each with a different pair of sexy, high-heeled shoes.


I also gave Raisa a fringed tulle miniskirt and a pink garter that she can wear over her hanging legs or tuck inside her box. I was thrilled when I found the tulle trim -it matches Raisa and her journal perfectly!


Her two-sided interchangable cardboard legs are painted and stitched, and hang on a tiny screw hook I attached to the bottom of the box lid. She can be displayed on the edge of a mantle or shelf with her legs hanging below.



My journal page depicts Raisa's shoe addiction and includes a little bound booklet of interchangable legs and shoes.




I'd love to have worked "inside the box", too, but I thought I better leave that for one of the other participants. I'm finishing up a pretty envelope for Raisa's legs to travel in, and then she's off to MA in Canada.

Itsy Bitsy Book

I'm still working on Raisa (Yvonne's Art Doll Cool-Aberration doll) and her journal. No reveal yet, but I can tell you I'm working 'outside the box'. LOL. I'm having fun - I just love working on these collaboration dolls.

I do have a tiny little book to show you. I made this to carry in my pocketbook for writing down the names of authors I like. So when I go to the library I can remember who to look for. It's very tiny, but has lots of pages. - for years of reading. I made a very simple codex style using cardboard and collaged paper for the cover.



Speaking of books, I've just ordered some new used books from Amazon and I can't wait till they get here. A couple on book making and some on vintage shoes and hats. Oh yeah, and one on amulets. I love pics of cool shoes and hats and I'll hopefully find inspiration for some future dolls! I put several more expensive books on my wish list (so I can keep an eye out for reduced prices), including a new book about vintage undies (corsets and such) that hasn't been released yet. And a book about horses in African art with loads of pics (also not yet released). I love horse art, too. Apparently, so do Africans - they have few horses in Africa, but they depict lots of horses in their art. Interesting, huh?

I'm having fun!

Paper Doll

Well, I decided to try making a paper doll for a change. Here's the start of my first.


She's an 8" tall (legless) flapper (I love flappers!), and is actually made of cardboard with a layer of paper mache and some fringed fabric at the hem of her dress. More later as she progresses.

Raisa Arrived

I got my first Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010 doll (other than my own) in the mail yesterday. Raisa flew in from Yvonne in Texas. I "borrowed" these pics of Raisa from Yvonne's blog.



Yvonne used a recycled doll head and a wee (2.5 x 3.5") petit point box for her doll start. And Raisa's travel journal is an altered book. Very cool. Check out our project blog to see it and all the other dolls and journals.

I've already started my contribution to Raisa. I found a perfect trim for Raisa at a local home decor fabric shop!

A Wider Face!

Yep, this one has a wider face for once. And, as you can see, I solved the ear problem, too. LOL. She's a sun burnt beach gal. She turned out kinda boring looking.


I liked her sketch better before I painted it.


And this is Gramps. He's been retired for eons, but still wears a tie every day. From the looks of his ears, he has a bit of Elf in his ancestry.

And another

This one reminds me of a cross between a pouty Julia Roberts and a pouty Princess Di.



I'm drawing these first in pencil and then painting with acrylics and watercolors. So far my faces are always too narrow, ears a bit too high, and various other skewed proportions. I'll have to try drawing a fat face next and maybe it'll come out right. Sometimes I use a model to get the basic face shape, but then I draw blind. I figure it won't end up anywhere close to a model picture anyways. :)

Expressions

Another coupla pages for my sketchbook here. I've been playing around sketching and painting faces on top of collaged backgrounds. After I'd painted these faces, I thought they showed certain expressions that combined with the backgrounds to reveal a theme.

This woman looked very sad and downcast, and the collaged newspaper clippings behind her looked like news headlines showing a brazen young woman. So I wrote "DAUGHTER MADE THE HEADLINES" & "BAD NEWS" on the page.

I really like this next one. The girl looked to me like she was holding her breath and listening for something. The background looked like dark nighttime and her face looked lit up by moonlight. So I added a werewolf or grizzly or something emerging from the dark behind her. And she whispers, "Did you hear something?" She kindof reminds me of a girlscout with that hat and sweet blouse. Poor girl better run like hell! LOL!

More Drawings

I drew these at work yesterday since it was slow. I always like em best upside-down. :)

Here they are right-side-up.

I'm enjoying doodling, so I ordered a book on how to draw human heads and bodies and some new watercolor pencils & crayons. They're on the way here! And brother Dave got me some charcoal pencils that he'll bring me next visit. New stuff, whee!

Meet Audacity

Got a new art doll collaboration starting up! Art Doll Cool-Aberration 2010. This time there are seven of us participating and we'll wrap up in May.

Here's Audacity, my doll start, and her travel journal. Audacity is a paper mache form built on a stick, not quite 7" tall. She's sporting an old decorative metal hardware piece.




Her journal is also paper mache and 7.5" X 4.5".





I'll be sending Audacity off to Mary Anne in Canada very soon. Can't wait to get my first doll from Yvonne in Texas!

Another Sketchbook Page

This one is another paper mache page colored with watercolors, markers, acrylics, pen and pencil. These are a lot of fun to make.

Sketchbook Project and Sketching for Real

Here're a couple more pages for my art journal for The Setchbook Project 2011. The first shown is a paper mache page of 3 denim-clad pals smoking in the alley. (I've started using paper mache for everything - may even start patching stuff here at home with paper mache instead of Duck tape. :) ) I started this page by cutting out the body shapes in cardboard and gluing them to the page. Then I paper mache-ed over the entire page and painted, penciled, and markered over that. The facial features and clothing, etc just evolved from what I saw in the initial paint layers. I may still add some text.



The next page just kindof evolved on it's own. I'd doodled some human shapes I saw lurking in a painted surface, and I thought the expressions were of dismay and perplexity as the people looked up at something. That made me think of the Towers falling on 9-11-2001. At the time, I was also experimenting with embossing some paper using a grid-like metal cake cooling thingie. The embossed paper reminded me of many-windowed buildings... like the Towers. So it all ended up together on this page.



Then, surprise, surprise! I sat down with pencil and paper and started trying to sketch a nose that really kindof looked like... well, a nose. I've never been a sketcher or a drawer. And always wished I could. So I'm pleasantly surprised with these first attempts at sketching faces. No, they're not real good, but they're a hell of a lot better than I thought I could do. I really like doing noses and lips so far. Apparently, I like older faces with character lines and frowns. And REAL, ugly noses!

Totem Dolls

Messing around with paper mache again. These little totems are decorated with colored sections of the newspaper. Twine hair. The larger one (about 5" tall) is a rattle. The small one woulda been a rattle, but I got impatient and dried him in the microwave, and he ended up not having a hollow inside after that. Oops. :)

Here Goes Nothin'!

I joined The Sketchbook Project 2011. While waiting for my sketchbook to arrive, I started stressing badly over having joined. Didn't have any ideas for pages (the ones I had when I was thinking of joining had all flown the coop), couldn't believe I'd spent money on joining something I couldn't do (I'm not a sketcher or a drawer), etc. I'm just coming out of a loooooong creative block and I felt like this stupid idea of mine was gonna throw me right back into it.

Well, thank goodness I got past that. It's only a silly little sketchbook and a few measley dollars. It's supposed to be fun. So I'm just gonna fill my pages with whatever strikes my fancy at the time. My theme is "Coffee and Cigarettes" and, since playing in the sketchbook is something I do while drinking coffee and smoking, I figure anything I come up with falls into my category. :)

So here's the first spread I've made for my sketchbook.


It's mostly watercolors (watercolor crayons, which I love) with some pen, magic marker, and cut & paste. I used all my fave colors.

Collage

I'm not a very good collager, but I was messing around with it the other day. Trying to come up with some background material. Here's what I made from magazine bits and a touch of paint.

A Black Tie Affair

Animal skulls, sticks, paper mache.

And she came bearing gifts...!

Not only did the Cool-Aberration gals do wonderful work on Bravura and her journal, but some of them also sent tiny gift dolls home with Bravura!



Thanks (left to right) Robyn, Mary Anne, Barb, and Yvonne! Your wee dolls are living in my doll display case and are much appreciated additions to my tiny doll collection.

Bravura's Journal

Bravura's travel journal turned out as wonderful as Bravura, herself. It arrived home chock full of art and treasures right to the very last page!

When I sent it off with Bravura last June, my journal cover looked like this.


Bravura came home all purples and greens. So I decided to redecorate the journal cover to match. Mary Anne was kind enough to send me a button like those she used on Bravura's cape.



This shot shows the journal with some of the fold-out pages showing.


If you wanna take a look at all the entries in Bravura's journal, check out our project blog here.

This has been a great round robin project. We managed to stay on track and finish on schedule, and everyone did really nice work on every doll. Thanks so much to my fellow collaborators: Barb, Mary Anne, Karma, Em, Jeanne, Robin and Yvonne. I had a blast and Bravura will be cherished keepsake and reminder of the fun this has been.