felt dollie

We made these sweet little felt people the other night. They are completely hand sewn, clothes doll and all. It went pretty fast actually. I love sewing by hand and especially with felt or wool. I think there will be more of these made in the future. They are a little addicting. Thanks Kate for the pattern.

"Collage Couture"

Today I went to a great collage class. I have been admiring Julie Nutting's artwork for several years in the Stampington magazines. Earlier this year she came out with her own book titled "Collage Couture". The book has lots of great ideas, but I am the type that needs to take a class and "make" the item - then I can take off with it. So here is what I made in class today. I LOVE it! It was so fun. I am a blog and youtube addict and should have a degree with all the art I have looked into and watched. I admire all the collaging and painting - but just could not do it myself - that is - until today! It was so much easier than it looks and I can't wait to try some more. It is hard to get a good photo of this without glare, because there are several coats of Mod Podge Hard Coat on it. It sure dries wonderfully and not smelly or sticky like the regular Mod Podge - it has the purple lable if you are ever looking for it.

felted vessel and little dollie

Friday night I took a class to make a felted vessel. It was a wonderful evening and the teacher, Michele, was great. The class included everything you needed to make this - All I had to bring was a couple towels and a pair of scissors. So nice not to have to run around and buy all the supplies. There were 7 of us alot of familiar faces and a couple new people. Everyone's piece turned out so amazing. I did not have my camera, so when I get a photo from a friend, I will post that too. (all the vessels are in their photos). Mine went in such a totally different direction than I had planned - Everyone else's was full of color - and I went neutral - with the surprise of bright yellow on the inside. I am going to bead and stitch with hand dyed threads to give it the color. It was a great time.
Then today I was with my mom and saw this little Blythe doll at Aldi's, of all places, and she bought it for me. If you remember little kiddles when we were kids, she is a little bigger than that- still pretty darn tiny though. I love her sun glasses with the flowers! What a riot.

A Good Day Off

Monday I was off for Columbus Day. My friend came over and we spent a great relaxing day together. We spent the day working on this book. She taught me how to make it and she made one too (the cover anyway). It was alot of fun- we used packing tapes, duck tape and glues. I enjoyed the day - thanks Pam!

my little troll .....

Here is my sweet little troll. I met with friends to work on dolls and I was able to put her together today - I still have to add her tail and add some details to her, but, I couldn't wait to share her. She is too cute for words. I just love her - I am going to make her a dollie to hold - when this is all done - I will post, yet another, photo of her - in a few weeks....
Tomorrow I am taking a mannequin collage class with a crazy fun group of friends. It is an all day affair and we will have a great time and take home a new project. I have been so busy these last few weeks with so much to do and art/dolls to make. I will welcome a boring weekend! hahahaha - you know how it is - all or nothing when it comes to a social life! The best thing is all the great time with friends and family lately - It fills my heart.

My BJD!

I went to the Cleveland Doll Club Luncheon last weekend. It is their big annual event. The theme was Paris. Robert Tonner was there and we each received an Ellowyne Wilde doll that was specially designed just for this club! It was my first experience with this doll world so new to me. It is an addiction I really do not need to acquire. The dolls are beautiful. He presented a fun program and he signed each of our dolls. He has a great sense of humor and appears to really enjoy his life in the doll world. There were several of the Ellowyne Wilde dolls there - all kinds of awesome dolls to drool over. I did also buy this little Marie Osmond doll - I am going to apply to the club and they bring their travel dolls to meetings and events - so this will be my little travel doll. Oh what am I getting myself into?????

How cute is this?????

OMG - what a WONDERFUL class this was. Is this the cutest little person you ever saw??? I am in love with her (yes her). I can't wait to finish her. Ute was a GREAT teacher and the Time For Dolls doll club hosted a wonderful class - yet again.
Hope to finish her in the VERY near future. Too cute.

time for fun!

Well... I shamefully see that I have not used my spell check on the last few posts - whew! Mental head slap - How embarrassing.
Any way - this is what I will be making. I am taking a class with Ute and we are making trolls! Never thought I would be doing that, but I am so excited. I want to make a girl and of course she will be in pink (as my friend would sarcastically say - "imagine that..." hahahaha). Will post the finished little person soon.

paying again

I wasn't feeling the green background with the bright red title anymore. It is cool here and so very cloudy with thick grey clouds all day - So....this is what I put together - sure goes with the goth girl posted earlier tonight...

goth girl

FINALLY finished this one. This is a Kate Erbach pattern. She has 2 versions - a fun colorful girl and a goth girl. OMG this was fun to make. I made her a dollie of her own! - A little "dude with horns". She has Styrofoam cones on her head covered with the fibers. I am really happy with how this turned out. She has quite a presence on the wall which I think is really cool.

I am working on a fat little doll. I have wanted to do a fat doll for a while and she should be done soon. I hope to have it posted later this week...

8 Gilrs project

Well we met on Monday an showed our first cloth journal pages/fabric project we completed. Remember I did the dresses? Well I don't have a photo of what was done - but I do have a photo if what I did for the book I chose. I really enjoyed doing this and will have a lot of relaxing hours doing this type of thing to my little art quilt posted a little while ago. It is addicting. I will have photos of all our items/pages when we are done - that will be months from now but it will be here before we know it.

Hope you like it -

bad girlz night

Last night I had the bad girlz over. We had fun making these dolls - First I had made up the little dolls with plain fabric. Then we decorated them in a type of fast forward roound robin type of thing. We had 7 minutes to add something to the doll then passed it to the next person until each person had worked on each doll. When we were done there was lots of laughing and stories about these little people/creatures. It was such fun. TTT & suzie glue should really use theirs as travel dolls. I think the other traditional travel dolls would be s jealous if they ever met! hahahaha

I graduated today! - tee hee

It has been a fun and busy weekend. Yesterday a few of us met and worked on dolls, for the day. Such a nice day with friends. Then today, I became a proud graduate from "The Chicago School of Fusing". I took a class from Laura Wasilowski in Peninsula, OH. It was the Tiny Homes and Gardens class. Here is the quilt top I made today. The size right now is about 13"x11". It is nowhere near being done - I have to do all the handwork and the binding. Right now it is all fused - yep her quilts are all fused, then hand embroidering for details. My mom and I went to her lecture at the Lake Farmpark Quilt Show a few years ago and I have been following her blog ever since. (Artfabrik- see on my list of blogs). Laura dies all the fabrics and fibers for the quilts. Her work is colorful and joyful. These are Art Quilts - It is so freeing to make a quilt without all the measuring and precise-ness of conventional quilting. I LOVE conventional quilts, but cannot do the exact sewing, "piecing, etc. I was fortunate to take this class with (3) friends today too - which made it that much more fun.

If you EVER have the opportunity to take a class from Laura, try to do it. Laura is a great teacher, shares alot of information and is very entertaining too.

I am "art-ed" out....lots of creating for 2 whole days - and back to work tomorrow...... oh well - if I want to have the fun, I "gotta make the donuts".....

Soul Collage

I went to a Soul Collage class today. We had a wonderful teacher- Jeannetta Holliman. She came up from Columbus to teach us. There were 13 of us, and it was such a nice blend of women. I made (3) cards in class and (2) tonight. They are rather addicting. Here is what I made. It is a journey with personal meaning. I am not really there yet, but I am working on it.

1 little, 2 little, 3 little, 4 little BFH!

FINALLY - I finished these 4 bears for a friend of my mom's. They are made from very old drape that hung in this woman's home when she was a child. Take a good look - I won't be making bears again... not fun. Give me a complicated doll pattern any day.

I must say - I think they are distant relatives of H.R. Puff-n-Stuff - notice the family resemblance??? hahahaha.....

playing with templates

Not sure if this blog will stay green - but like the design. It has been purple for so long - it is strange for me to pull it up and see green - but I like it.
Have you seen the video on teesha moore's site? Check it out - Jane Davenport also has videos on youtube that are pretty nice and inspirational...he blog is cool too.

little dresses

8 girls ares at it again... we were prompted to make fabric journal pages and will swap them out. Each time we will be required to use another technique. Beading, hand stitching, mixed media, and collage(with paper & cloth). The majority of the decorating must be in one of these mediums but some writing is allowed. I decided to make these cute little dresses. The largest is probably 7-7 1/2" long. I will make a garland type project when they are all done - maybe hang over a window in the art room. (2) of the 8 girls are making a book, and the last 8 girl is making individual pieces to hang from her art room ceiling or possibly a mobile. These are going to be cool. Our first round is hand stitching.

busy weekend

This was a very busy weekend and a nice one too. Yesterday I took my mom out for her birthday gift to Sanctuary on Green. It is a neat old house filled with European gifts and a wonderful tea studio. If you ever are in the area of South Euclid OH (suburb of Cleveland), it would be worth you time, and money. It is not cheap - but it was a beautiful experience. We ate outside on the patio and you are in the trees. The food is all VERY natural and gluten free and vegan. They do have chicken salad, but were out of it yesterday. SEVERAL teas if you are into that sort of thing, and wonderful coffee. It was such a lovely day. We also went to J Ellen quilt shop on Mayfield, in Lyndhurst, (near the tea studio). It is a fairly new shop I think a year old. She has lovely fabrics. I had sewn the Queen Ann prim doll of Barbara Schoenoff's and originally wanted to use some nice rose civil war fabrics I had - but I do not have enough and cannot find it up here - I had purchased it in Columbus. I was so lucky to find something better at J Ellens and it was only $4 a yard! It is a line she is fading out and I LOVE what I got- MUCH more antique looking like I wanted it to be.

This morning I went to JoAnn's for (2) things......and came home with alot more - but check out this cool felt.... it is the kind you buy by the square. There are some other cool prints too - but this one caught my eye. Then today I went to Coventry with my friend - got the coolest ring at Passport to Peru - great clothes and all kinds of cool stuff there. It is a gift for myself to celebrate my new job.

Oh- and one more very cool thing - My sketchbook came in the mail last week! I am really excited about this. It is called The Sketchbook Project. You send $25 and receive this book in the mail - it is bar coded on the back with your name and the theme noted on the sticker. They have themes on the website you can choose from - mine is Tree house. You complete the book and send it back by January 31, 2012 (not that far away really). It will become a permanent piece in the Brooklyn Art Library. The books will travel to several museums in the country and people will be picking up the books and looking at them. I think it is so cool that people I do not even know will the handling my art; not to mention my work will be in a museum... OMG! I will post photos as the pages are completed. I will make a color copy of my book before mailing it off, because I will never see it again. I really am thrilled about this project. You should give it a try! Go to thesketchbookproject.com and check it out.

goth face

Working on the goth doll today- here is the face - I think it's fun- when the fixative dries I will apply the sparkles - all dolls need a little sparkle - don't they? I think so - since they are all so fantasy...

Cage doll done!

I finished the cage doll today. The jury is still out for her face- I need to leave her alone for a while and see if it is going to remain as is. She turned out so sad, not the look I was going for. But - any doll maker will say that the doll tells you what she wants to be - so this just may be the way she wants to be! I sewed buttons around her waist- some antique some new. The hair is felted and sewn on her head. Her crown is a trim I bought at Hobby Lobby a few years ago at MMM in Kentucky. She has fresh water pearls for ear rings. The inside of the cage has scrapbook paper on the bottom that I stitched to the cage with embroidery floss. The heart is from a Santos site I found on the Internet. It is like a Christmas tree ornament. It is glass and has beautiful etched designs on it.

Now on to the next project!

All or Nothing and Time for Dolls round robin

I just wrote this whole thing and added a photo and it did not work! Hopefully it will not end up as a double entry when I am done.

OK - Either I post like crazy or go too long without posting at all - between my new commute to work since the move (it is longer) and my new position at work (a month ago - can you say stressful?!) I am exhausted. But now that there is actually daylight I have a little more energy and hope to work in the art room more this summer. OK - so on to the postings.

This is the 1st post of three - there are 2 more after this one. A couple weeks ago I met with 2 groups and we exchanged our round robin dolls - Time for Dolls and 8 girls. I was on a roll, and I finally finished the final project we exchanged with No Rules back in December. So that weekend I ended up with 2 new awesome dolls and a wonderful new wall hanging. It was a GOOD weekend.

The Time for Dolls round robin was fun. We had to make the doll and include the fabric and trims we wanted used on the doll. Pam did my legs - she beaded the feet - how cool are they? And she made I Dream of Jeanie pants for her. Sue had the arms and she made these cool sleeves for her. Mary had the body and used jingle bells on her skirt, so she makes noise (I love that). I did the face before I handed her off. I really like how she turned out. I added a loop on her back, so she will hand on the wall. Thanks everyone.

No Rules

Our No Rules group had ended in December. We had a project we started a year before that and finally finished for our last meeting. We had to choose a theme (mine was birds-fancy that!). We each did a quilt square - 6"x6" for each person and then exchanged them all. Here is mine all done. The top one is from Pam - she did a Teesha Moore pillow quilt, the next one is from Theresa, the next one is Mary's and mine is on the bottom. I had this stick for over a year. I had picked it up on a walk with Nellie when I was at my old apartment. I finally put this all together and it now lives in my new art room - I really like it. Thanks everyone!

8 girls dolls

A couple weeks ago the 8 girls finally got together - it has been a long time between our times together . Every one's busy with life these days. We finally did the final exchange for our round robin dolls. This time, everyone made whatever doll they wanted out of muslin. Your own pattern or a printed pattern. We each had to pick a theme for the doll. We passed the dolls and did whichever body part we wanted when we got the doll. We did our own head (if we wanted to). One was going to be hanging in an art room on a trapeze, one was about birds (mine), one was whimsical, and one was to create a character that would be in the Nightmare Before Christmas. Well - that one is a story in itself - literally. For that one, we each had to write a chapter about this character and decorate a body part. It was truly an amazing process. I was terrified, because I had to follow 2 incredible chapters. But - like I say - the planets lined up and the story and the arms turned out awesome. I think they ALL turned out AMAZING! Here are front and back for all of them and a few of mine. I did the face on mine and made a mask from scrapbook paper and wire - turned out really cool. Hope you enjoy them. What a great group of talented women we all are.... if I say so myself,,hahaha...

Cage Doll

This weekend was AFIC in Columbus Ohio. I did not take classes this year - but went down for the day yesterday, with some friends. We shopped, looked at the incredible doll exhibit and saw our friends that did take classes. They all were in Leslie Molen's class. They took her cage doll class and the dolls looked amazing. I cannot wait to see them completed.

My friend and I each bought little bird cages from JoAnns a while back. I have a photo of the cage and the sewn doll parts from a couple weeks ago. Today we got together and worked on the dolls. I LOVE mine so far. It is just as I had imagined it to be. I still have to do the face and the hair - hopefully this week - but thought you may like to see what I have so far. Going to AFIC was a great hit if inspiration.....

Advanced Style

Check out the blog I added over on the right - called Advanced Style - It is so awesome - it is all stylish, eccentric, "vintage" adults on the streets of NY. It is a lovely breathe of fresh air. There are videos to watch too - hope you enjoy it. I heard of this on another blog a while ago, but did not check it out until today. Voodoo Cafe has an interview with the gentleman who started this. Check that out too.

Hitty has a new dress!

OMG - My friend made my Hitty the sweetest outfit! I loaned her my doll as a sample, because she was making one for herself. I am still not too comfortable making clothes, and my little girl has been standing in the art room in her bloomers for over a year. We were with friends a couple weeks ago and she set her in front of me at the table. I was so thrilled, touched, thankful - This is one of the most special things I have ever received. She has lace and a snap on her bloomers, the dress and the apron are just darling. I think the sweetest thing is that our dollies now have matching outfits! She made the same for her Hitty. I just love it. Theresa, thank you so very much.

a body part kinda day

The planets lined up again - I have been wanting to make a doll - so today I sewed up 3 dolls! I am making a birdcage doll with a friend in a couple weeks- so that is started. I can't wait to see this done -

I have wanted to make the Barbara Schoenoff Queen Anne Style doll for a long time and finally got her sewed up - I am getting together with another friend and we are making her. Then there is Christine Shievely - my favorite - and I am making this just because - not sure what colors or anything - it is a collage doll- painting the doll and stuff - should be interesting.

I made the little rag dolly for another doll to hold. I received a children's book "Fanny", by Hollie Hobby (I had her books, doll, figurine, when I was a kid) , for Christmas from a friend and this is the little girl's doll. I am going to make the Colleen Babcock Finders Keepers doll into the little girl. She has been hanging out with no clothes and just batting for an outfit - for a LONG time. I cannot wait to see how she looks holding her dolly.... I LOVE dolls holding a doll - just too cute.

I have 1 more doll to make - a goth doll and she will hold little "dude with horns" dolly! I really can't wait to see that either.

Tomorrow my mom and I are taking a beaded cuff class. I am looking forward to this - I have been trying to find a class for this since Christmas of 2009!!!! Hard to find a class, and teacher who is affordable and in the state of Ohio!