Time to make dolls.........

So, here it is such a long time since I posted and what have I been doing? I have had a couple of days where I have been motivated to do something.......... and then it goes. I have been doing a lot if knitting - see knit4charities
- only because I like this time of year and I have so much wool and I like to knit, it is relaxing, which is what I must be needing at the moment.

Any way I HAVE tried to make a start on a pattern doll with the trapunto face. I am feeling a bit happier with this design, but too distracted to actually think and design the clothing at this moment.







I have also made a start on one of the paperclay styles. She has heavy paperclay shoes which I am not so happy with.

So I am a bit stuck with her.......
Here is another girl waiting to be dressed and given a face and identity. I thought she was going to be a Red Riding Hood but she has other ideas I have yet to work out.



And now I am working on another project - to dress a Polymer doll who has been hanging around the studio. It's not that I don't finish anything I start, it seems I need to have the identity develop before I progress, sometimes it happens quicker than other times. I will post a picture of that progress soon. I seem to like costuming but it is torture trying to work out what colour/style/fabric to use!

I'm back - I think!

It has really been ages since I have had the energy to even look at my blog. Sometimes life gets in the way and you can lose your motivation. I have tried to work on my pattern dolls, but did sidestep with a drawing class that was a disaster. I cannot draw. Have you ever tried to draw a tissue box? when I thought I had actually managed to draw a box - I realised I had just drawn a box as I knew it to look - not actually the box in the still life on the table! Then there was the issue of relative size and perspective........I could draw the items, but they were nothing near the actual size in reality! I cannot draw.....and I haven't even mentioned the mess that charcoal makes.................

Anyway, my greatest achievement was the 'Capsicum' in willow. What do you think?

TRAPUNTO MASK FACE DOLL

By the way, it seems I have had visitors to this site, and it would be lovely for someone to make a comment or contact me. Sometimes art and craft can be a very lonely business so if you have viewed my dolls or have a 'constructive criticism' - let me know you are out there.

crazy pattern making......

Well I HAVE been doll making in the last month, but I have also been taking every spare minute to recreate some pattern dolls that were waiting for release. I remade the Princess, giving her a book to read and a tuffet to sit on.

More UFO's

Oh dear, I just can't get into doll making mode. I have tried and tried, you can see from the various attempts in the last few posts.............I just keep getting distracted. I am itching to work with air dry clay, I prefer it over polymer because you can really sculpt and sand it and smooth it. It takes time to dry and is messy, I always think back to making mud pies when I was very little........I actually liked making mud pies.


This is a Santa head I whipped up just before Xmas, I was so busy making Santa's, this one was a 4 foot decoration.


Remember Gordon the Rock Collector well this is another unfinished fellow in that style (spoon doll), who I may never finish, but he is in love with the impossible princess so even if he does get dressed, he will stay with me.



So again I am wanting to start afresh and make a whole new doll. The fairy godmother has to wait, the little Lottie has to wait, the polymer fairy has to wait and Nathan's Santa definitely has to wait. I have a clay fairy head waiting for a body, and another clay head for a 20" doll. But I want to start a whole new doll. Just to see who it will be. That is if I ever make the time to sit down and start!

Some days are very trying........

You see my dilemma. Here I am tring to create an older face on a cloth doll. I don't want to use the "common" method of needle sculpting, so I am experimenting with trapunto - a stitched and stuffed method, air dry clay, and next I will just try - needle sculpting..................

Because I want to make this a pattern doll, I need to consider how easy/difficult it should be. I am totally rethinking my pattern designing becuase I don't want to limit the possibilities for doll makers who buy the patterns.

clay over cloth

So I am trying to develop an easy way to add clay to cloth in a pattern form. As you can see from my pics of my first pattern in this technique, you change the complete look of the doll. That's okay, but the cloth only doll to me is more difficult than sculpting in polymer or air dry clay! I may be working too small, but then I don't want to do anything bigger than 20 inches. I have to make a lot of dolls to get this right.

Work in progress

Today I had a breakthrough, as an "artist" I seem to get stuck making design decisions, and it is the whole process of creating a doll that is all about decision making - height, pose, hair colour, costume, eyes. Every doll that is designed goes through this process. Susanna Oroyan wrote about this in her book Designing the Doll and I am terrible at it. I can't draw a sketch of what I want to do, I often look for inspiration from other sources, pictures, fabrics, other dolls. And I tend to get side tracked because there are so many options it can all get a bit hard - well it is for me. After talking to my sister Ingrid yesterday, I started with new determination to just start somewhere - like at the beginning - sculpt the head. My friend Jill said - make it and they will come.........the doll lovers, enthusiasts, buyers, it will all happen, just do it. And I did. I sculpted clay over cloth on a flat face and then I tried a seamed face. Next I will do the cloth sculpted face with clay over. All this is about getting a mature look to a cloth doll. I have already experimented with this method for my pattern doll Aliyah. Knowing what I want to achieve and creating it are two different things, but I am getting there - very slowly...........

Oh Dear it's the New Year!

It has been such a long time since I have posted anything here. It is not that I forgot or didn't care - life just gets in the way and I am still getting the hang of recording my efforts. My darling eldest son Nathan married his long time dream girl Shannyn in November and with all the birthdays and Xmas I really didn't have time for my blog. I was madly making Santas to decorate the house and give to my family etc. etc. Here are some WIP pics......














So I am working on another pattern doll. I sometimes get very lost. I tend to have doubts about how good or bad my dolls are. If I should just sculpt and sell - which I tend to undervalue myself - or should I create lots of pattern dolls and sell those? I have just created the first part of my new pattern and I like what I have done - but will it be "acceptable" to those who buy the pattern. So much self doubt..........

I have just spent 4 days doing the newsletter for our doll group. It is more time consuming than I remember, but I am very fussy about the format and layout, so it takes ages to get it just right. It seems to satisfy a creative mental need whereas dolls satisfy my physical need. I haven't posted a picture of my Impossible Princess so here she is.............

She is a mask face doll. I intend to do a workshop on her in the new year. It is such a busy time at the moment and with Nathan's wedding just weeks away, not many dolls will be made. I have so many things on the go right now - I was going to release the Princess (and frog) pattern ,

while I am still designing the trapunto face and body for the Fairy Godmother - all of these to be patterns.

Then I think, well maybe I should just make dolls and sell them on Ebay, it would be so much easier. I am going away for the weekend so it mayhit me as to what I really want to do. Design and sell patterns, sculpt fairies, do clay over cloth, sell at craft fairs, sell on ebay, teach workshops................ oh boy...................I can do this - I just am not sure what this is!

Patti Culea

In my last post I hinted that we had a special guest at our doll group meeting. It was Patti Culea! She was able to offer a couple of workshops while visiting our part of the country. I was not able to attend the doll making workshop and because it was Father's Day on the next workshop I could only stay a short while (my boys wanted to have a BBQ with their dad).

I would have liked to have made the paper doll the girls embellished on the day. I LOVED paper dolls when I was little and am still fascinated with them. Patti's was the prettiest fairy which could be embellished with tyvek, angelina and embroidery tecniques. I have the pattern, so when I have time I will try to make her, she is such a sweet fairy.

Anyway........Patti was the sweetest lady. She is tiny, probably 4' nothing (Australian expression......) and was just so nice to talk to. She made time to mingle with the ladies and talked about the dolls and was genuinely interested in what we could do. Her comments were very kind, she said our dolls were better than some she had seen at the Houston Shows. We did excel ourselves with our display, and there were a lot of entusiatic dollmakers who brought a doll for Patti to judge. I do not know who won because I left early - not me had to take my doll and run...............but I will find out shortly.

Now Suzette tells me I am such a groupie and I am a bit for rubbing shoulders with famous faces, so I took my Patti Culea books for her to sign and she graciously put in a personal messge in both. I was so pleased, little things like that mean a lot to me, becuase when I am 99 and can't do stuff anymore at least I can sit and look at all my stuff and see I did meet some great people and had a great time learning from some very talented artists. Well that's my plan anyway, I still have lots of artists to meet!