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.

Witchy Woman

Hallowe'en snuck up on me this year. Didn't I just turn the calendar page to October last week? I had much greater intentions than just finishing ONE doll... but as it turned out, I had to scramble to finish this one at the 11th hour, literally as I was throwing my own costume on for trick-or-treating in the neighborhood with my daughter.

I have wanted a witch doll for years, so was determined to make one for myself. My original idea was an all-cloth "prim"... and I definitely knew I had to design this pattern myself. Wanting a really classically "witchy" face, but not being able to figure out how to accomplish that in cloth, I reached for the polymer clay and modeled one up over a core of crumpled aluminum foil.

I used simple rag doll construction for the body, arms and legs... with button joints at the shoulders. I stuffed the muslin parts, then painted, sanded and aged with a coffee stain.

I've been dreaming of those black boots with turned up toes, and green and black striped stockings since I was a little girl, and was downright giddy while watching them take shape!

The hat is also a simple muslin form... stuffed, painted, sanded and stained.

Next came hair... grizzly gray, of course, to perfectly play up her beady-yet-bulging yellow eyes. I used some lovely Romney wool fleece, so fresh from the sheep it still had hayseeds in it.

See the perfect blend of wit and wisdom in her expression? (And the ever-so-slight resemblance to Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein?)

Her clothing is minimal, and casual... as witches go. She's not in full-tilt flying attire here, with cape and all. I think she looks as if she's just finished up some sweet herbal brew in the kitchen... and thought to go sweep the porch before the kiddies started knocking on the door. I used part of an old curtain for her skirt- simply painted and aged it, wrapped it around and tied it with a bit of jute. Her collar is vintage, with some extra aging added. The broom is made from twigs cut from our pear tree.

I may make some little tweaks and additions before I stash her away for next year... but all in all, I'm pleased. Call her Brunhilda, if you wish... but when I look at her, I can't help but call her "Witchy Woo".