Inspiration & Buttons!

I've been busy sculpting my cousin's angel. It's been a real process; one in which the sculpture is making itself, it seems. I start out with an expectation of how it's going to look and it decides differently. I had this idea for a seated angel, that would be first sculpted with paper clay and wire starting with the head first. It was nearly impossible to felt around the paper clay. So I had to scrap that idea. Next, I started with a wire form and started felting and before you know it my seated angel became a standing angel. He began to remind of one of my very favorite paintings, Marc Chagall's Juggler. I was both frightened and fascinated with that painting when I first saw a picture of it in my Childcraft encyclopedia. I think I was about 4 years old. I remember as a kid pounding out some horribly loud bass piano music as my ode to that bird man. And here some 50 years later the juggler seems to pop up in my angel. Lol. Hopefully, I will get his feet done today and will be starting on his head. Let's hope it doesn't decide to be a bird head. I don't think that's what my cousin had in mind.

I, also, wanted to share with you a recent thrift store find. Buttons! I bought 4 very big bags of assorted buttons for $6.00. I love the shapes, textures and colors. I could just spend hours sorting through them.

Buddy

I'll be posting little buddy on ebay tomorrow night. He's just 4 1/2 inches tall and comes with his very own "gilded" polymer clay acorn and fall leaves to play in.  I hope you like him.

Update: Buddy has sold.

Some Works in Progress

First up, is the start of a chipmunk that I'm working on. Second is a skull base for a doll.  My cousin after seeing Hailey, approached me about creating an angel doll for her sister. After giving it some thought and doing some research on angels, I decided to do Gabriel. It didn't seem fitting to do him out of sewn felt and I didn't like the way it looks kind of fuzzy. I wanted something between sculpted polymer and sewn cloth. I recently came across a very talented doll artist, Lisa L. Lichtenfels.  Her work has inspired me to try something different. I'm going to needle felt over a wire and paper clay skeletal structure and then sew nylon over the finished sculpture. I first started to sculpt the head out of styrofoam and when I glued and sewed the felt base to it, the foam core just collapsed. I then tried sculpting the head out of paper clay around a foil ball, like I did for Haily. This time because I was so impatient, I added way to much clay and it cracked while it dried. Plus the weight of the clay smooshed his lower jaw too far out giving him a caveman appearance. Finally, I decided to try sculpting the foam base and then adding a layer of paper clay over it. It will definitely need some sanding.  I've learned a couple of things with this. When working with large areas of paper clay, it's best do it in layers. Also a damp paper towel placed over the sculpture will help keep it from cracking while it's  drying. 

Pigling Bland inspired by Beatrix Potter

I just finished Pigling Bland this morning and have him listed on eBay.  I hope you like him :0)

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Needle-Felted-Pigling-Bland-inspired-Beatrix-Potter-Pig-R-J-Andreae-/190579358389?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5f6a3ab5

Little Autumn

I finished little Autumn a couple of days ago and have her listed on eBay. Her auction starts tonight.

Pics of Wowl & Bullet Retry

Here are the pictures. It's so weird how they didn't show up before. I had loaded them from my drive onto my blog using Picasa. I've had this problem before when I did that. This time I loaded the pictures into my web album.

Hailey & Licorice

I just put the finishing touches on Licorice, the little black cat, this morning and snapped a few pictures of him and Hailey, my first ever doll. I had quite a bit of trouble turning those tiny fingers. She's 4 way thread jointed and was completely hand-sewn, save for her cape. I brought out the sewing machine for that one. I rarely use it as it usually devolves into ranting and raving and cursing at the sewing machine. When my sons were little, I would always sew their Halloween costumes. They both knew when to take cover when I brought that thing out. My youngest says that's when he learned his first cuss words. However, it went fairly smoothly, this time. I found that the more I did on this doll the more little props I wanted to make. She has a paper clay witch mask, a broom and a polymer clay jack-o-lantern treat pail with goodies inside. It's kind of funny, too, how I started with a pattern and ended up using none of it. I never was very good at following directions.

I'm out of Wool!

I just finished this massive turkey. He's nearly 16 inches tall and 19 inches wide. He took over a pound and a half of  core wool. He has 9 different hand dyed  colors in him.  He's so big that used up my entire supply of  core wool and 2 ounces of  brown  llama wool. He  cost over $60 to ship him to my customer in the states.  I believe he is my largest felty to date. I named this fellow "Chief"/ 

Pictured below "Chief" is a  doll that I've been working on.  I wanted to learn how to do pressed and mo lded felt. I thought it might come in handy for chimp faces and a few  other things. I checked out several books from the library on doll making by Susan Oroyan and bought a kit from Susan McFadden on ETSY. http://www.etsy.com/listing/73591500/vasalissas-doll-kit I promptly destroyed the paper clay mask and  sculpted my own with the generous supply of paper clay included in the kit. It's also a good thing that she included more felt as I've destroyed a few body parts. A seamstress I am not! I've got her body completed and am working on costuming her. I thought I'd do a witch's costume for the Fall. We'll see how it turns out.  I can't wait to get my core wool that I've ordered and get back to my comfort zone. Lol