Steam

I hate work!

Ok so I know I have to work to be able to afford my house, the car and my art supplies but between work and looking after sick MIL free time during the week seems to get less and less. I have so many things that I want to do and projects that I want to progress sometimes it's just FRUSTRATING!

This is what I have been trying to get to work on the last few weeks but somehow never seem to get too.

The GWE main exhibition is at the beginning of next year just a few short months away and I'm not even started. I think that part of the problem is the thought of working in a sketchbook to try and develop my ideas.

I've never been good at drawing and painting ( a fact that I was constantly reminded of at school) and get frustrated by the fact that I can never seem to translate the ideas that I have in my head onto paper. I think this is why I tend to get stuck straight into the doing rather than concentrating on developing ideas.

I have an idea of what I want to make for the exhibition but in order to get to where I want to be I know I need to thrash out and develop my thoughts in the sketchbook. I'm going to try and shift my thought process slightly and try and think of this as a 'sample' rather than 'sketch' book to see if that helps.

This book arrived from Amazon today. I'm hoping that it will help me on the way to realising the piece that I want to make for the exhibition. I have several good doll/figure making books now. I've only had a chance to glance through this one so far and while I don't think there are any particularly new techniques it's a lovely book with some great colourful photos to inspire. I'm going camping at the weekend, this will come with me so that I can read and digest properly!

Sorry I know this is turning into a bit of a rambling post but before I sign off for the day for any blog reading addicts out there I just want to mention a new blog on the block. I recently 'met' Vicki as we are partners in a swap being organised by Quilt Pixie, thanks for hooking us up Pixie! Anyhow please drop by and visit Felines and Fibre Arts from time to time, I'm sure Vicki (and her gorgeous moon faced kitties!) would love to hear from you!

Take It Further - Rags and Bones

Well I've been AWOL for the last few days what with MIL duties, car trouble and frantically trying to finished my TIF project I haven't had time to blog. But here we are just one day late my February project is done.

Last month I chose to work purely on the colour scheme but Feb's colour palette didn't really appeal. Instead I stuck with the concept, What are you old enough to remember? As with the January challenge an idea just popped into my head and I ran with it. I was born in 1976 and one of the earliest things that I can remember is the sound of the Rag and Bone man clip clopping down the road with his horse and cart ringing his bell and shouting. So I have made a mixed media doll using rag and bone as the inspiration.

I took some pictures along the way so thought it might be fun to share with you how my doll was 'born'.

First off I picked some fabrics

And then using some Fimo clay I made some body parts :)

Back to the fabric for more body parts

A skeleton emerges from all the parts. So that's the bones done .......

Now it's time for some rags. A once pretty dress ......

... is starting to show the signs of a street urchins life.

A girl is emerging, but even a skeleton needs some features right?

Some hair in the making... I picked some more felted yarn from my stash. I figured a street urchin would probably not have a hair brush to hand and I thought this yarn would give a matted unbrushed look, plus it's in my favourite orangey colours, so who could resist.

I read here, that some rag and bone men used to hand out balloons to children who bought them enough rags. So here is my girl with with her prize balloon... I guess some people might think she's macabre but that isn't my intention. I'm hoping she's more corpse bride than the exorcist but I guess it will depend on the individual point of view.

Just like last month she is looking for a name, if you have any suggestions please leave a comment. There will be a prize if I pick a name from your ideas.

Take it Further - January endings and February Beginnings

A little later than planned here is my finished doll for the January Take it further challenge.

This is the first larger art doll that I have made and am so pleased with the way she turned out. When I first read the January challenge on Sharon's blog I was really stumped by the concept so decided to concentrate on the colour theme. Immediately the colours bought to my mind a peacock. After thinking about it a bit more I realised that peacock colours where more in the blue tones that the purples shown here but I just couldn't get the idea out of my head so decided to use a bit of artistic license and raided my stash for some appropriate fabrics and began work. Seeing the little feather wings on the finished piece I think the colours have turned out to be a good match in the end.

Once the doll was finished I was really nervous about painting on the facial features as I'm no artist. I wanted to go with big eyes near the side of the face to try and suggest the way that real peacocks have eyes on either sides of their heads.I choose the lightest colour in the pallette for the legs of the doll, but after having lived with her for a couple of weeks I decided that I didn't like such large blocks of light colour. I didn't want to add shoes (peacocks don't wear shoes right?), so this morning she went back on the operating table and I added some green ribbon to break the legs up a bit. Overall now I'm pretty happy with her. The only other thing I may do is add some arm jewellery, again to try and break up the blocky colour of the arms but I will let that one mull over a bit before I decide for sure.At the moment she is known just as the Peacock Princess but I would like to give her a name. I would love to hear your suggestions. If I pick a name from the suggestions that you make I will send the winner something as a Thank You.

Now that I have finally been able to share some pictures of January's finished piece I can take some time to think about February's Challenge. I've really enjoyed making my doll so I think I will try another for February, but I think this one will be a bit different.I'm not very keen on the colour pallette this month so I am going to go with the concept, What are you old enough to remember? As with the January challenge an idea just popped into my head and I haven't been able to shake it out. I was born in 1976 and one of the earliest things that I can remember is the sound of the Rag and Bone man clip clopping down the road with his horse and cart ringing his bell and shouting. It seemed a very incongrous sight as we lived on a busy main road with cars streaming past most of the day. So my themed doll is going to be based around the Rag and Bone tradition.

As my post has already turned into an epic today I won't say any more for now but already I have some ideas of how I want my Feb doll to look ......

Angels and Fairies

Yippee Blogger seems to have gotten over it's brain-fart yesterday and will let me post pictures today, so here are the snaps that were missing from yesterdays post. I have quite a few to share so I've only uploaded 'small' pics but you should be able to click on them to get the full sized image.

First up a full length shot of my fairy. This is a view of the back showing her wings and the flower detail I added to her dress. A close up shot of her face.

Some shots of all the fairies and angels that were made in the class. Lastly Lois had lots of wonderful dolls for sale, including some wonderful witches and ghosts perfect for this Halloween season. I fell in love with this adorable ghost and he just had to come home with me.

Antique Angels

Well my workshop curse struck again. The Janet Bolton class was supposed to be this last Thursday but sadly Janet was feeling unwell and so it had to be cancelled (well hopefully more postponed than cancelled as they hope to rearrange it for sometime early in the new year, wow talking about the new year already hasn't this last one just flown by!).

It hasn't been all bad news for this week though as yay I finally managed to find a workshop that actually went ahead. The class was called Antique Angels and the tutor was a lovely lady called Lois Brooks. The idea was to use old pieces of lace and antique fabrics to make an angel or fairy. I don't really have much old lace and things so I decided to bend the rules a bit and go modern and (yes you guessed it) orange.

Sadly blogger won't let me put any photis up at the moment so I will just have to keep you in suspense. I will try with the pictures again tomorrow.....

Arryanna

I spent a little bit of time beading yesterday. Not one to do things by half I signed up for not one but two beaded doll round robins at the end of last year. I really enjoyed making and sending my forms on their merry way but ever since this rounds dolls arrived with me I have been wondering why oh why did I ever sign up.

Apart from the lovely beaded tree spirit tutorial that I took with Ronda Kivett I have no beading experience whatsoever. I've been feeling totally daunted by the prospect of starting off on these wonderful little forms. As the end of the month deadline for this first round is fast approaching I just decided I had to sit down and get on with it.

Here is Sue's little Mermaid Arryanna before I started on her.Here she is after a little work by me. I'm fairly please with what I did to her and actually once I decided exactly what it was that I wanted to do it wasn't as bad as I imagined. I just hope that the fact that I am a beading beginner doesn't show my work up too much against what everyone else will do on this lovely little mermaid form.
Today I plan on finishing up a couple of birthday postcards, making a couple more fabric charms (I am slowly working on my little stitched hearts a few at a time), and thinking about how I am going to start beading the doll for the second round robin that I am in.

Morvoren the Mermaid

When I posted pictures of my spirit doll last week you might recall me saying that I had signed up for not one but two doll round robins. SO today I thought it was high time for me to get on with making my second form so that I will have time to go on it's first leg of the journey by the end of the month.

This second group I'm in has a mermaid theme. I made my doll form using a free pattern I found on the web. I will post a link just as soon as I can find it again.Rather than go for a traditional blue or green I decided to Jazz things up by going with my favourite colour of the moment, orange. As I'm not really a doll maker she turned out to be trickier to put together than I thought and some of the joining stitching isn't great but hopefully that will mostly get covered up with beading anyway. I used my InkTense pencils to draw out a simple face, as you can see I'm no artist but I think she has a cute kinda charm none the less.