Am I A Doll Yet ?

aTTACHING hEAD tO cHEST.....

                                                                                                   

  hER bODY .....

 i'VE gOT mY eYE oN THESe CURTAINS, fOR HER dRESS. dON'T wORRY i'M NOT BEING dESTRUCTIVE, tHEY aRE a fOOT AND 1/2 tOO LoNG AND NEED TO BE HEMMED ..

 sTARTED wITH fOIL.....

hAIR.....

  




oNe aRM   laTER....

 aM I a dOLL yET ???

                nOT qUITE ...

Das Letzte Einhorn ! Bookstore Mission...

  This time I am not hunting for books of the crafty kind  , but my favorite story of all time ..

            Why Oh Why Do I Not Have This !?

The Last Unicorn has been my favorite movie ever since I can remember and I just realized I do not even own the book ! The movie, based on the novel by Peter S. Beagle was released in the U.S. in 1982 ,one year after I was born. America did the soundtrack for it and it is such a wonderful story about conquering evil and preserving everything that is pure and magical in the world, no wonder I fell in love with it as a kid :)

So, upon going to the bookstore ...

                                   
   YIPEE! ! not only do I find the book , I find a Graphic Novel that was just adapted this year. Hpmph. Only have enough money for one ,This is a dilemma.. which do I choose ?

So I open the the comic ...

Naturally , I could not pass on all the visual goodies .. I am Thrilled  ! next time I will get the other book  :)


 " When I was Four years old , my mother-she was a school teacher-brought me into her classroom one day and I wound up telling her students a story about unicorns . Once I was done, according to her , I very formally said to all of them "Thank you.I will come back and tell you more about unicorns someday .  I like to think that when I wrote The Last Unicorn, two decades later. I was finally keeping that promise."

                                                               ~  Peter S. Beagle

Thanks Pete 

My Hands are Small , I know .

I decided I would try my hand  (hee hee ) at some Yoshida style doll hands and of course I do this...

um ..two rights don't make it right ! whoops , I guess I get a little overzealous and don't pay attention to what I'm doing. Owell I'll have an extra hand for the next one.

I started her the other day and I have been brainstorming on how to do her body , I didn't want to make her whole body out of clay this time because I really like the cloth/rag doll feel ,but I also like the detail you can get from the painted paperclay head , hands and legs. I want to do her half cloth / half clay (kinda like a porcelain doll I guess) and just trying to figure out how to put it all together..

She's just a head and doesn't look like much but I have faith that I can make her awesome,  I guess that is part of the process. Sometimes I just know something is not working how I want and I am not happy with it almost the whole time but when I stick with it and get it finished, it all seems to work out in the end .It becomes transformed into what I envisioned in my imagination or gosh dern close to it.
I'm going to attach a paperclay chest plate and sew her on to a cloth body I think , It should work. I am going to make her arms and legs all the way up to the body out of clay and attach them at the shoulder and thigh . Well , if that makes any sense ! It makes sense in my head anyway.

Coming along , now that I have made two right hands I'll have to do the other one over and still have to work on them a bit anyway , They are not easy ! I also have to sew her body. Then comes the fun part , clothes and finishing touches , can't wait ! now If I can keep my art a.d.d. in check long enough to finish something completely before I start working on something else.

Noodle The Pug ...

 Oh that's right , I haven't introduced you to our newest family member yet , this is Noodle and she is a pill.

 Will I ever sleep again ?  Yes, I forgot that having a new puppy is the equivalent of having a new born child in the house.. she poops , she cries , she chews ! but we love her just the same .

She also enjoys baths...  

 Naps ...

 Her fish and  "her chair "..

Being silly ...

and farting ..

Tofu is a little jealous of the new baby , but he will warm up to her I'm sure !

Baby Owl Art

I had the pleasure of making this for my friend's grandbaby girl who is on the way .They are doing a super cute owl theme for her room. Right up my alley, love babies, love owls !  Besides, painting for babies is so much fun , I'm not as good at painting as I would like to be and babies aren't to picky !  Owl Love You !

Here I am, a Rabbit Hearted girl Frozen in the Headlights.

  Today I've just been listening to Florence (still not burnt out on that cd yet) painting, day dreaming , fooling around with collage stuff and loving this beautiful Saturday. It is perfect outside and my husband and I are going to work in the yard this evening , probably drink some beer and burn some twigs and things. We got plenty to burn after all. Did I mention , I love this season?

 

 This is my new doll I've got in the works, not even done but  I'm gonna  walk away and enjoy this beautiful day.

Off The Subject , But Bothered.

this tree was older then me...and you .

      

It was the biggest and most beautiful tree in our yard and provided mucho shade for our house, but it was dying at the top and was hazardous because the dead limbs were falling. So we let a tree removal company butcher it all ...the whole frickin thing ! I wonder if we did the right thing, after having about three other tree guys tell us after the fact that it was ridiculous for someone to take out the whole thing because it was soooo big (It was about 4-5 feet across at the bottom) and would have outlived us all. If they had just clipped out the dead stuff like we wanted in the first place. I now realize that the whole tree probably didn't need to go, but the first tree guys told us it was diseased and kinda talked us into having the whole thing taken out for our safety.Once they started hacking away at it and cut half of it off there was no going back , we were stuck with a 20 foot stump.This is what happens when you take people's word for it ! God it was a such huge expensive mess and has taken us months just to get it all cleaned up .


STUPID STUPID STUPID!    I am so heart broken over this stinkin tree

This is what it looks like today ..

                                  

yuck .. I am kicking myself in the ass for this and probably will be for a while. I hate making dumb mistakes :( The only thing that comforts my mind about it is that we provided fire wood to a nice old man that needed it this winter and came and got a bunch of it and it is not going to fall on our house ( I don't think it would have anyway tree guy ass!) That and we are going to plug the stump with maitake to help the stump and root system die and maybe one day it will decompose enough and I can plant something else beautiful in this area of my yard. eeeh , what a shame.

Hobby Lobby , Why you so Awesome?

 I thought I would also post this cool Hobby Lobby find.. I love Hobby Lobby, I have heard people complain about how they don't have good paint and what not compared to other hobby stores. I guess they don't carry golden and some other really good brands but whatever, I could stay in there all day.

Behold , I found a Portal !

   Ok so it is not so magical right now but I thought this was so super cool , maybe it's nothing new but I have never seen fairy doors there before. So I snagged one ... I gotta paint this mug , put some moss on it and hang it on the wall in my art room . Should be a fun project , I'll post it when I'm done.

 While we are talking about  things to hang on the wall , I also found another neat little door in the clearance section at a gift shop downtown, they had some really pretty cards in there too , I purchased a few of those and made some nice wall hangings (also for my art room) with them. This card in particular I loved because of the owl. I don't know what my obsession with owls is all about but I have obtained a ridiculous amount of owl paraphernalia. I just love them , they are beautiful. In fact I am planning on getting a barn owl tattoo very soon. A mama barn owl with two baby barn owls . It's gonna be SWEET.

                                   
  YAY pretty things!  the other card I put in a shadow box . I don't  know who the card artist is cause I cut them all up... sorry greeting cards you are now wall art . "Great Minds Think Alike "  I like this one a lot . It reminds me that ideas are worth sharing and it is ok to be inspired by other people and that nothing is ever really truly original. Your ideas came from somewhere .You ever feel like every idea you have ever had , most of the time you find that someone has  already thought of it ,done it, said it ?  Or you look at a painting,  hear a song  and feel like it could have come out of you?  There is most likely always someone out there thinking similar ideas that you are right now .I like the thought of that , and being inspired to learn from other people instead of feeling like , Oh man, I could never be that good at something.

   

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
                                                                                                  ~ Mark Twain

Speaking of Puppets ...

 This is not one but I just realized I hadn't blogged her yet . She was the last doll I finished before "the move". She is kind of a bear/girl/tutu wearing uh.. thing .Wouldn't it be cool to lose the stand and make paperclay stick puppets like this? Make a little wooden theater  (now that I have mad carpentry skills hee hee)  and have an awesome puppet party ?  Just Sayin.

Creativity is the one thing you never run out of .The more of it you use, The more of it you have.

 Well ,  we had a pretty productive day. Weirdly enough , it has been daunting trying to get back to making things again. I felt like I hadn't done it in so long that I forgot how. I had so many cool ideas for so many different things when I couldn't work on anything because we were working on the house and now that I finished my craft room and can make stuff whenever I want , It's like... OH EM GEE where did all that pent up creative juice go?  (maybe it's hiding somewhere between laundry , the yard , the house and dinner) Owell, I'm just trying to let loose and have fun.I did pick up this really neat book by an artist named Katherine Dunn on one of my recent trips to the bookstore ( I swear I could spend all my money on art books) It's very colorful and wonderfully inspirational. I love her art , It's very kind of primitive , free, fun and childlike which is really the kind of art I am most drawn to these days.
 http://www.katherinedunn.us/3/Gallery.asp?GalleryID=63565&AKey=L6DFL793
She mentioned having an idea box, One that when you have an idea for something and can't get to it right away, you write it down on a little piece of paper and stick it in the idea box for later so when you draw a blank you always have your idea box to go back to and you don't miss out on some of those awesome fly by thoughts that would maybe otherwise been lost, It's good idea the idea box :) I already do something similar with a small note pad but I like the box idea better because you can decorate it..
   Here's Mine , not pretty yet but oh it will be, and soon it will be full of ideas also

  
 I did decide yesterday to throw together a little rag doll just for fun sake and try to get some doll ideas flowin again.. I tried a new thing which was gesso on her face and a little paperclay to paint . She is kinda fugly, has no neck and is haphazardly put together but she is for me and I like her anyway so, neener.

I'll have to experiment with the clay over cloth thing a little more later, and I was right ,this inspired a whole other idea during the process, that and a little good music. Love it when that happens ,so I have been working on my new idea all day. Now for the part I hate the most , waiting for stuff to dry. We also made some paper bag puppets . Didn't I say it was a productive day?  Well , we have fun anyway.

              Kashi is quite proud of his elephant , her name is Ellie, who'da thought.

Back to the Blog

Sheesh it's been a while since I have posted.(not like anyone reads this anyway) but I guess if you don't post for months what's the point! I have been way to busy , a lot has changed in the past oh, two three months.We bought our first house and did a whole lotta moving & repairing needless to say, I am exhausted, but I wouldn't have it any other way. I love my new house ,my family and feel so fortunate to have such a beautiful place to call our own.

  So things have  finally calmed down and are back to a somewhat normal state. I am so super excited to say that I completely gutted our what would have been formal dining room and turned it into a crafty art sanctuary. I say sanctuary because that is what it is to me! I realized these past few months how much I need creativity in my life.I seriously get bored and do not feel like myself  with out it .That being my biggest motivation to get the "art room" done as soon as possible ! This is what it looked like before, when we first moved in.

 I do not have one single nice thing to say about wallpaper , and I will just leave it at that :) It took me about a month to get it done but this is what it looks like after

I found a cool and somewhat simple inexpensive idea for a DIY craft desk and built this desk myself. There's nothing like building something you have wanted for so long all by yourself with no help. It feels awesome and I appreciate it even more. I love it , it has cubbys for all my nifty junk and supplies. Plus it is HUGE ! I could not have bought a better desk and like I said, it didn't cost me all that much to do. A little bit of sweat and almost tears at first lol , being that it is the first piece of furniture I have ever built and I made some oppsies ! I guess this desk is all the rage because someone put a tutorial up and it seems many people have built one like this. This is the most detailed tutorial I found on it tho , anything that wasn't on here I just had to figure out myself.
 http://www.jandennison.com/2008/10/diy-craft-desk-revisited.html

It wasn't too complicated , and I don't think target sells the cubby shelves anymore so I ordered  mine from here.
http://www.thegreathardwarestore.com/Closetmaid-9Cube-White-StackStorage-42100-p/832552.htm

Anywho, my art room has been functional for like 48 hours and I am already back to the grind. Working on doll ideas etc. having this beautiful room to work in where everything is right at my finger tips is inspiration enough to do all the things I want to do. My only regret with all this house buying and moving business is that because I was so busy and not making, I will no longer have time to have a booth at Praters Mill like I had wanted to do and planned on doing this year, but that's alright, there is always next year. It is in October, no way would I have time to get enough done. Regardless I will still be hanging out at Praters Mill , drinking homemade root beer and eatin' fried boloney samiches while basking in all the crafty goodness  ! Oh and not to mention Halloween, my favorite holiday is right around the corner . I love October ! That reminds me, I haven't even put any thought into what my costume is gonna be this year. Oh to be a grown up , you forget about the most important things in life sometimes! I'll catch you folks later , I'll be posting more once I get my groove back. Happy Autumn ! Happy Crafting!