My first submission!

I recently decided to just go for it, and send one of my dolls in to Art Doll Quarterly for possible publication. Their March deadline is for the fall issue, which always includes lots of Halloween-related dolls, so I sent my witch from last fall. 

An acknowledgment postcard just came the other day from ADQ, with "Thanks!" written in big green letters, so I'm hopeful! That doesn't mean that she will ever grace their pages, but my fingers are crossed. I know they'll keep her for a good long time, as that's the usual process. Hopefully, she'll be back home in time for this Halloween! Here she is, sitting next to our Faerie Door.


I have been so remiss in posting lately. I've been meaning to mention the wonderful playday I had recently with my new doll maker friend, Lulu. I had the pleasure of visiting her home a few Sundays ago and seeing some of the WONDERFUL dolls and other artwork she has created. Her place is filled with vibrant color and so many interesting things to look at! We spent a few hours working on dolls together... sewing, stuffing and chatting, and finding out how much we have in common- not the least of which is our mutual fascination with Frida Kahlo. I absolutely love her Frida doll, and am so inspired now to make one of my own. Thank you SO much, Lulu for a memorable and fun day... hopefully, the first of many more to come!

I made an attempt at a Frida about a year ago, but you may recall I really got stuck and never finished that project. Now I have a better foundation to work from, as I recently joined the Cloth and Clay Doll group, and took Jane DesRosier's (aka "Gritty Jane") video workshop. I highly recommend the workshop (it's quite affordable at only $25) and the group! There is much talent and inspiration to be found there. I will be using Jane's cloth-and-clay technique for my Frida doll.

I am just finishing up a doll I started prior to taking the Gritty Jane workshop, in which I did use paper clay over cloth, then painted with acrylics, in similar technique. Let's just say I learned a lot from both Jane and plain old experience! This doll is a 1920's "bareback rider"... circus theme-inspired...and styled after a re-pro Barnum and Bailey poster that has hung in my daughter's room for years. I have yet to name her... and alas, can't post any photos yet as my camera took a little trip to South America with my in-laws. So, stay tuned!

Would You Like to Swing On a Star?

Yet another fairy, based on a design by Salley Mavor from her book, Felt Wee Folk. I like the purple and green together. This one is going to be a surprise gift for a friend, who I know doesn't know about my blog, so shhhhhhh!

The Angel Agatha

Last November, I made this angel doll for my good friend, Laurel, as a birthday gift. I forgot to photograph her before she flew away... but her new owner graciously snapped a few shots and sent them to me, so now I can show her to you. I was inspired by a doll made by Nancye Williams, that I saw just a partial view of on her website. I humbly admit to basically copying her color scheme and facial expression. Thank you, dear Nancye, I hope you don't mind.

I used techniques I learned from Judy Wise last fall at Art & Soul, so Agatha is constructed of Sculpey clay. Her arms and legs are attached with wire joints. All body parts were then painted with acrylics. Paper wings and crown are collaged with vintage text and decorated with jewels, sticker stars and plenty of glitter. She wears a smidge of a vintage quilt as a wrap-around dress. Agatha is approximately five inches tall.

Christmas Butterfly Girls

Once upon a time, there were two sweet sisters... who took my heart long ago and inspire me daily. Christmas just wouldn't be right without new dolls for each of my granddaughters... so Happy Christmas to my darling girls, Iris and Stella!


These 13" butterfly dolls were made from a pattern designed by my favorite prim diva, Donna Veal of Mooonchilds Primitives. They are sewn and stuffed muslin, painted with thinned acrylics and stained with a coffee/cocoa stain, with wired cutter-quilt wings and skirts. The petticoats are cut from a vintage curtain.

Stella with her Flutterbye on Christmas Day. :)

Paper Doll Collage

These two collages started out as birthday cards... and morphed into gifts for my sister and her daughter, who celebrate their November birthdays just one day apart. I decided to let this project take me "along for the ride", knowing only that I wanted to use some pages and text from a box of my grandmother's writings. Once a journalist, Grandma has been gone for many years now, and I am in possession of numerous rough drafts and manuscripts of her short stories and articles from years of writing. Included in this box of treasures are several rejection letters from such prominent publications as The Saturday Evening Post and McCall's magazine!

Some of the paper is old newsprint school tablets, with her stories hand written in pencil. They've been rolled up and rubber banded for many decades, and now are practically falling apart in my hands as I unroll them and try to read the fading pencil marks on yellowing paper. I decided that since much of her writings will probably never be read by anyone, I would sacrifice a select few of the pages... either written in her own hand, or typed on her ancient manual typewriter... and create art! I wanted to bring the spirit of our Grandmother to life again, in a small way, by creating a collage that contained some of the phrases and words that she wrote long ago, no doubt with high hopes of being published.

I let her work speak to me as I skimmed through the pages... my eyes falling on a phrase or two. Sometimes just a single word would jump out at me. I tore these bits from the pages... simply because I like the effect of a torn edge, especially when dealing with vintage paper. Soon, I had a pile of phrases, and somehow, as I arranged them, a theme emerged.

I decided to create a jointed paper doll blank from card stock... and collaged the entire doll with random text, then highlighted individual words in certain spots. I used collage sheet photo images for the two doll's faces. One is the famous ArtChix "Spoil Me" girl, as many of you will instantly know. I've lost track of exactly which sheet the other came from, so my apologies for not now being able to credit it's origin.

Each of the dolls sports a skirt of pleated pattern tissue, which were a little smashed flat in the scanner, but in reality, add a nice 3-D aspect. The red and yellow piece, with red flower behind her head, was for my niece, Nicolette, who was turning twenty this year... so finding and including the phrase my grandmother had written, "scarce twenty years old", in some of her notes for a story she was writing about Rob Roy, was a stroke of luck!

Both collages are 8" x 10", on foam core, with wrinkled tissue paper as background. The paper doll's limbs are brad-jointed and fully pose-able. Gel medium both adheres and preserves all the vintage papers. The back of each collage is covered with pages from my grandmother's college notebooks from when she studied Journalism at the University of Missouri in 1927. I added a wire hanger and a small paper pocket, inside of which is a short note, describing the process and origin of the papers, and the occasion for which the piece was created.