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