Friday, October 19, 2012

Art Dolls Only... and ME!


This has been a real banner week for me. I was accepted for membership in Art Dolls Only, a group I have been following for several years, wishing I might someday become a member of their "inner circle" of artists. This is a huge honor. I'm humbled... but so excited!

ADO supports and encourages doll artists of all kinds... with widely varying styles, from all over the world, and provides them a means of promoting their work for sale. They sponsor regular doll making challenges, based on various themes, and welcome the general public to participate in many of them. In 2010, they did a challenge based on Alice in Wonderland characters, for which I made my Mad Hatter doll.


The current challenge is based on the Mexican Day-of-the-Dead... and specifically, we're doing Catrina calavera dolls, in the style of a famous illustration by Jose Guadalupe Posada. A Portland-area friend of mine, Lulu Moonwood Murakami, is also an ADO member and her beautiful work is featured on this image, promoting the challenge:








I'm hard at work getting my own Catrina ready in time for the Day of the Dead-line (pun intended!), November 1st! Here's her lovely calavera (skull) so far. I started with a large walnut shell, covered that with Creative Paperclay, then sculpted the final layer and facial features from Super Sculpey. Lots of work to do!
Just two days after I got word of being accepted into ADO, I got my business license paperwork in the mail... so I am legal and ready to go. Etsy shop will open next week, if all goes well!

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Etsy: We're getting closer!

I've been finalizing details and taking photos for etsy listings. Waiting on my business license to clear and trying to learn how to set up my shop for Washington sales tax. It won't be long, folks! Here are a few of the items I hope to be listing soon....




More to come. Hard at work here!

Sunday, September 9, 2012

Journal Your Art Out

Giving my rational mind a rest today and making art without rhyme or reason. I highly recommend it as a spiritual practice. These snippets I offer... without further explanation.




























Friday, September 7, 2012

Where Women REALLY Create

Stayed up way too late last night, waiting for my room to cool off and my head full of thoughts to settle down. Paged through the latest issue of Where Women Create, looking for inspiration... but was left with a sort of empty, anxious feeling of being nowhere near the level of perfection and professionalism displayed on those gorgeous pages.

Walked into my studio this morning, coffee cup in hand, and took in the full 365 degree view of my weensie space. And sighed. Table strewn and piled with ongoing projects, sketches, rolls of wire, pliers and cutters randomly left lying around (instead of neatly organized on a magnetic strip as one jewelry artist's studio in WWC sported). Shelves stuffed with boxes of buttons, findings, paints and adhesives. I just wondered to myself... if those artists had no advance warning and had the magazine camera crew surprise them on a random, ordinary day, would their studio really look that cool? That tidy and coordinated?

No, I thought, THIS is where women REALLY create...
At least a dozen projects going on at once.


My new flush cutters get used so often I just leave them out. I should really just wear them on a cord around my neck.

Learned how to make my own long kidney ear wires the other day. Take a chance... you never know!

The remains of the old jar that used to hold my antique marble collection... until it jumped off the shelf and committed suicide one day. Now, the shards have all been tumbled and are waiting for me to wire-wrap them into adornments.

Brand new birthday brush sticks! Can't wait to muck them up.

Another birthday gift... this gorgeous old button!


Random scene on my nearby supply shelf. Some things are even labeled.

A sneak peek at part of what I'm adding to my current piece of the Hot Flash collaborative project.

Potentially... that doll will also sport these hands, once I decide whether to cover them with clay or not. I'm thinking yes.... although I like their skeletal-ness. These are made from old plastic-coated telephone wire.

And last but not least, since my upstairs studio is also the back entry hall, the ledge above the stairs seems to always serve as a staging ground for whatever is currently being harvested and/or needing to ripen. Currently: TOMATOES GALORE! Wonderful, beautiful, vibrant red home-growns! Something tells me I'll be making sauce soon... stirring the pot while crafting, no doubt.


Friday, August 17, 2012

Vintage Button Strands

When the weather turns so nasty-hot that I'm stuck indoors, panting in front of the mini AC unit, nothing makes me happier than a quickie project I can do while watching movies with my feet up on the coffee table. These are so dang fun.... two-yard-long loops of crocheted C-Lon cord studded with some of my favorite vintage buttons. They can be worn long, doubled, tripled, or knotted.

 This one is all white... mostly vintage shell buttons. I fell in LOVE with it!

Love to wear these wrapped around my wrist as bracelets.
Sometimes I do just beads.... on a colored C-Lon. A bit shorter and more elegant...