Bottle Doll Published!

My doll, She Emerged Triumphant From Her Exile (To the Attic), was chosen for publication in Art Doll Quarterly Magazine's Bottle Doll Challenge. I'm thrilled, of course! Here's a scan of her page in ADQ. (She's the top doll.)



There are some really great bottle dolls in that issue of ADQ. You need to check it out.

Another

Here's my second mask.



Similar style to the first mask, but with a bird on his head rather than a lizard.Here're some detail shots.





Wish I could get a better shot of his lips. I love the way the painting turned out on them.

Boo!

Did I scare you?

This is my first paper mache mask.



Coupla detail shots.



And me wearing it - to show size.


I'm working on another.

Kiss my Hand with a 'Kiss my Ass' Attitude

That's what this queen has. She's my latest creation (and a long time coming, huh?). I'm not a real prolific crafter. :) And my photography skills seem to be gettin' worse instead of better. I HATE taking pics of inanimate objects. Oh well, here she is as best I can do with my limited motivation and even more limited skill in the art of photography.

I was just starting this doll when I read that Art Doll Quarterly magazine's next challenge is Bottle Dolls. So I'll probly mail her off to them as a challenge entry sometime before September. Anyhow, I started with a cruet bottle. I was eyeing it up, thinking the cap would make a good crown, when it came to me that I could also use the bottle as a skirt. From there, of course I started in with the paper mache...



Her crown is filled with tiny dried roses from my garden. Her hair is regular old household string painted, and adorned with decorative tacks.


Her bottle skirt is also filled with my dried rosebuds and petals. I created a bottom ruffle with an upside down glass dish that is painted on the underside and embellished with a string of glass beads.


I did some texturing on her paper mache torso and gave her a collar that resembles leaves or petals. Also a 'clump' of glass beads at her neckline.


Her waist ruffle is paper mache that I molded over the glass dish used as her bottom ruffle, topped off with some tulle home decor trim and a couple dried and shellacked rosebuds.


Small oyster shells made great hands.


The old queen looked kinda lonely, so I made her a fuzzy wool doggy with a tiny macrame and beaded collar, french knot curls on her head and tail, and tiny seashell ears. She's mincing around on a metal 'ribbon' leash.


The queen is about 14 inches tall and her friend, Sir Floof, is only 2 3/4 inches tall. I think I'm gonna title this piece "She Emerged Triumphant From Her Exile (to the Attic)". (Yeah, I know it's long, but I've always loved long titles.) The reference to her attic exile is cos she has a kind of chipped and marred antiquey look to her patina.

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.

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. :)

A Black Tie Affair

Animal skulls, sticks, paper mache.

Happy Birthday to ME!!

My little paper mache Birthday Queen.

Shudayra

I've been working on Shudayra, MA's Art Doll Cool-Aberration doll. Here she is as she looked when she came to visit me.



She still looks exactly the same. Except now she has her own pony!



Shudayra is on a spiritual and physical journey gathering runes. I gave her the rune Ehwaz which means horse. It implies controlled change, progress, a journey. I altered a horse figurine that I already had. Paper mache'd over it and added the bridle, saddle bag, saddle blanket, and floral wreath.

Shudayra is thrilled to have a companion to accompany her on her journey.



I also made her a paper mache umbrella to give her some shelter from the elements.



I'm working on my pages for her journal now. Pics soon.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Here's my little paper mache Valentine Queen.

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.