I have been on a long Blog "sabbatical" but hope to get back into the swing of things soon.
Being invited to participate in this Wonderful Doll and Bear Show

28th Annual Bristol Teddy Bear and Doll Show
September 30, 2012
10am-3pm

Clarion Hotel
42 Century Dr.
Bristol, CT 06010
http://collinsgifts.com/showsched.htm
 had me busy all summer, and I hope to meet some bloggers there!


Mention my blog and you will get 10% off one of my new creatures, the Wooliquins, small felt ball jointed mannequins that are great fun to pose and dress.

 

 

I will also be debuting  the new Soft Sculpture called Porcelain doll, but her formal photos haven't been taken yet.

Hope to see you there!

Time is speeding along since I got back from the Phila. Doll and Teddy Bear Convention! I've already had info on next year's event. Susan And Terry Quinlan are the Supreme Convention planners, designing every move so that It will be a "One of A Kind" experience.http://www.quinlanmuseum.com/convention/  After one of these pampered stretches it takes time to come back to earth and get down to the business of following up sales, paperwork, etc.

Mary Jane found a new owner,

also Grapefruit Baby,

and Adri may be on his way soon.

This week I'll mix some gardening in with once again attempting to work out a small ball jointed mannequin in felt, and the sketch for my next sculpt.

I'm really excited about this one; as with Adri I have found a face that intrigues me to the point of wanting to work round the clock once I get started...

Summer seems to stretch out endlessly before me, but I won't be fooled into relaxing too much.

Till the next post, have a creative day in your little corner of the world!

Six days to Convention...

Flying around with my lists; I'm excited to go but I'll be happy to get back, take a week to relax (sort of) and then get onto my next project.

Mary Jane is finished, and though I'm happy with her, my favorite thing about her now is that she is small and slim and will fit in a corner of the suitcase!










Having to go down on the bus again, I'm limited to two suitcases, weight limit of fifty lbs altogether, and that means I can't take a lot of heavy display props. My pieces will have to stand on their own, but it's worth it if it means I get to take an early class on Thursday morning from Ankie Daanen, an amazing Artist.

Meanwhile, I have brought the large suitcase  up from the cellar, and once again there is a cat in it!

Mary Jane

Mary Jane is making progress, finally. She is waiting patiently now for me to piece her dress together, my least favorite part of the whole dollmaking process. In one month, all the rush will be over, at least for a week or two!

One Down, Three to Go

I finally put the finishing touches on Birdie, my Fairy in the Wind Soft Sculpture.
She really came together at the end, and will get packed up to go to Convention as soon as possible.
Now I can concentrate on the other three new pieces; Grapefruit Baby, about three quarters done and waiting for her oversized Grapefruit basket, Mary Jane, who is waiting for my unsurpassed costuming skills (lol), and Adri, an Indian boy whose head sculpt I would spend all day with if I could.

So things are progressing, and though I'm sure I will still be scrambling the night before I have to leave, I'm beginning to see beyond these four to wonder what's next?

I have two or three ideas that are jostling around in my head wanting to be the next to "come to life" !

There May be Kittens Along with the Spring Blooms...

Our little stray kitty who showed up last summer with her Mother may have some little strays of her own any day.
I knew what I was in for when I let her hang around and get friendly, but what's a soft hearted person supposed to do when another cat gets abandoned and ends up in your back yard? Her Mama disappeared in the Fall, and she was all alone.

She quickly found friends, probably cousins, who heard that there would be a place to get in out of the rain and maybe something to eat.
Our little core group of three; the original we called Nanny after she brought a kitten about her age called Tyler, and then Tyler's Mama seen in the photo above.
Soon our poor Nanny was attracting every male in the neighborhood, and now she's definitely about to be a Mom.

The sad ending to all of this is that all of them, kittens included, will end up living outside because they are too wild to be caught in cages. By me anyway.

When this same scenario happened years ago, I was able to take in one of the kittens and give it a home, but this time around that space is occupied by Mocha, also a rescue from a shelter, who I have been warned will not tolerate any other cats.  

She's been through enough trauma herself in her nine years, and I have no desire to put her through any more.

So for now we wait, and hope that those who started all this by abandoning Nanny's Dad get their just reward.

Nanny's Dad, by the way, who we just call Dad, an unneutered beautiful pure black whose family picked up and left him without a backward glance, still comes around infrequently but has made a life for himself a few blocks away, scrounging food and living in the condemned house his family moved out of, making more kittens who will become the problem of the people in that area who choose to take pity on them...

No good ending to this story, except that summer is coming and all the poor orphans will get a break while we try to get a handle on this out of control situation before next Winter.

Quick update

Time is ticking away until Convention Day( http://www.quinlanmuseum.com/convention/) when all must be completed, and I have been racing the clock.

I haven't been taking a lot of photos, but I do have the concept sketch of Mary Jane, who is starting to subtly indicate that she has another name in mind.







She's my first attempt at an African American Soft Sculpture, and will have three layers of nylon to achieve the proper skin tones.
I'm on layer # 1, a reddish orange that is proving very hard on the eyes for stitching. The next layer will be a brown tone which may or may not be easier to work with...

Yesterday her head sculpt turned the corner from impossibly hopeless to "hey, there's the child I envisioned! I knew you were in there somewhere!"

Meanwhile Birdie

 is basically finished and waiting for photos. She will be getting her closeups this week as they go to ODACA for the second round of judging. I didn't take as many photos of her costuming process as I would have liked, but got caught up in the details of trying to get the bodice the way I wanted.

More photos soon of Grapefruit Baby and the next in line, an Indian boy who  was the first ever to start life as a head sculpt with the body to follow. We'll see whether that was a big mistake!