Sculpting tutorial

I want to share this cool video on sculpting with air dry clay. There are many ways to make a doll head, and this is one of them:



My friend Mary has so much great info in her blog, don't forget to pay her a visit:

http://www.air-dry-clay.com

Traveling doll from the BBQs

Lola arrived here with a lot of bling but no limbs.

She said she wanted to cha-cha and dance the night away, so she needed legs. Well, legs she got, and a nice pair of shoes in the same color as her dress, and a fancy fur stole.

I made the legs out of polymer clay, and painted the shoes with acrylics.  Now she is unstoppable! But I told her not to ever go to the "Copa Cavana"... just in case (Lola and Rico...?)

And as Lola was dancing and swinging, the next traveling doll got here. Moriah's doll arrived all dizzy and pale, poor thing. She said being shipped in a bumpy box at 107 weather was no fun:

Desperate to get out of the box:

Don't worry little doll, you will get a tan in California in no time!

Miss Rat and a tutorial

I finished more little things for Miss Rat. She now has a bib (in case she has an accident with her baby bottle), a big white bow,  and she has socks. I was seriously considering to make a puffy skirt, but it looked like too much already, so forget the puffy skirt. She will be ready to go back home to Barb after I take some more pictures.... I will miss her :o)

I also want to share this super cute tutorial on how to make a bunny hat:

Adding hair to a doll

I am bringing this tutorial from it's old location (In my other blog) to share here. If you have any questions feel free to post them. Click to see larger image.

Moonie tutorial

I brought this tutorial from my other blog to share it in here as well. Thanks for visiting and please post a comment if you have any questions or suggestions. (Click to see larger)
I'd love to hear if it helped you!

Waiting on my table

I have 2 dolls on my table waiting for me to work on them.
One is Miss Rat, who will now own a big bottle I made for her yesterday. I will give her a couple of more baby things and publish a post in the Touring babies blog. This was her last stop and now is on her way back to Barb!

And the other doll is from my BBQ team in the Traveling Doll Project from ADO, which keeps me thinking what to do for her. I want to give her limbs but since she has no way already to add them, I will have to drill a hole or come up with some other way to attach them. So I have been thinking and rethinking how to go about it...

She told me she wants to dance, so hopefully next time you will see her doing the cha-cha :oD

Stay cool my friends! We were 102F yesterday, will be warmer today... so enjoy some nice ice tea (unless you live in the south and are starting your autumn!)

June already!

I can't believe it is June already. The kids will be out for their summer vacation tomorrow. Raise your hands any mom that is ready for that?? LOL

This is a quick recapitulation of my traveling doll team Eager Eagles, from Jenna in Ohio, Jan in Texas and me in California:

Jan's doll as she arrived to my house

Keep reading more after the brake line!

Doll Pile

I want to tell you about Doll Pile. It is such a nice website for dolls only. It looks nice, the members are doll makers that you have seen before, with their shop there. And Dave, the owner, has been working on upgrading the website recently.
Have a look and why not open a shop while you are there? It's totally free!

Clicking on the logo will take you to my shop there :o)

changed the name and all!

After much deliberation and balancing of pros and cons, I decided to make this new blog about dolls and not paintings... and leave my old blog about paintings and not change its name, since it was going to delete ALL links, followers and basically lose 5 years for work.

So.... welcome to my new doll blog!! I am planning to have a giveaway and will post about it when I finish moving things around in this blog, and in my Paintings blog too

Back in April. . .

I made her a dress, bonnet and that's the hardest part of all, not being a seamstress... But what do you all think? I picked a very cheerful orange color :o)

Here's with the other baby girl and a Teddy bear to give an idea of size.

Another picture:

I am not sure yet where I'm going to list them. I guess I can try one in each site? (Etsy and ebay)
Thanks for visiting!

Paints on wood

These are some of my older paintings on wood. They are all sold and have been posted before in my other blog, but I thought it would be a nice start for this one. All of them are small format, about 5 inches tall.

 

Test

Just a quick test.
Paraskevidekatriaphobia.

How to add glass eyes

 

She is such a funny girl! The first thing she said when she came to visit me was “Are the lights out?” I thought she was kidding, but then I realized she still didn’t have eyes! So I told her it was a sunny day, and she was soon to see it. We found a nice pair of glass eyes and after getting Emily’s OK, we removed her eyelashes and started to work on her face. This is the "how to" do it.

The first thing was digging out the clay to make room for the new eyes. It was a scary thing, but this doll is very brave. She was telling me it was almost like going to a doll Spa:

We measured the eyes in her face and decided that she needed to restructure her cheeks so not to look like a gold fish.

Once she had the cheeks it was imperative to have a new mouth to match and that lead us to a new nose, of course!

The only thing original left in her head, is pretty much her ears!

When the clay was dried, it was time to sand. She said it tickled and kept giggling. With a little bit of more clay and water, all the bits of bumps were soften and sanded again:

Usually I mix oxide red, ochre, white and a bit of purple to make flesh tones, but since more people will work on her, and not everyone is into painting, I decided to use colors really easy to find everywhere.

When the painting is dry I will add a protective varnish, hair and her eyelashes. Will she have black hair? Blond? Brunette? She will decide later, for now she is just relaxing after all the hard work. :o)

After that she will be ready to keep traveling and get to see more places.

Awesome Saturday!

I had great awesome things waiting for me in the mail box... Guess who is back?? Luna!

Little green Luna came back home with lots of treasures and her journal full of mementos and her traveling story:
Here's with Victoria, who will be traveling back to Florida on Monday!

For those new readers that don't know who Luna is, click HERE to see the beginning of her travels, also HERE for more and HERE too. Thanks Jasmoon-Butterfly and DellaRae Dezines!

*This is an old post re-posted here from my other blog.

News about Luna

So, Luna finally arrived to the UK, right? After all the grounded planes, delayed shipping, volcanoes erupting and all that. Well she's been having fun with Victoria, just look at the pictures HERE in Tracey McCartney's blog! I love the golden moon Raedell made!

photo by Tracey McCartney

I already made Victoria's story, now all I have to do is wait for her to get here, and I'll make sure she gets some clothes on LoL Something nice, with a great color for a redhead. hmmm I am thinking green. Well, yes, I was thinking green with Luna too, scratch that.... Maybe dark blue.... or pale soft pink.... black and white polka dots....
What do you think? :o)

* This is an old post, re-posted from my other blog

Luna, the Magazine and a new Gourd

Where should I start this post...? Should I start by saying that my traveling doll Luna is in a magazine, (yaay!!) or should I say that I still haven't been able to find that magazine in town so I chewed up my nails to the quick? (Agghh!) :oP

I am not even going to mention that poor Luna is still swimming somewhere between FL and the UK, in the middle of the volcanic ash clouds from Iceland and all. I'll say a little prayer for her safe arrival, she's such a little thing after all.

As for the Gourd part of the post: Just listed one on etsy! It is Frida inspired. She is holding a pineapple and a calla lilli.

Tomorrow I will be hunting for the Doll Magazine!

*This is an old post, re-posted here from my other blog

The day Luna ran

For the ADO "Traveling doll project" I made a paperclay doll, sculpted over aluminum foil, and painted with acrylics. She will travel to Florida to Raedell and then shipped to the UK to Tracey. After their hands are done creating and modifying her, she will come back to me.... I made a story for her:

The day Luna ran ....and ran

For centuries, every month on a full moon, there had been some little green figures that come to dance in the moonlight, giggling at their shadows, singing and stripping off layer after layer of their fanciful clothing as they get too warm from frolicking around. Their attire is made of nice petals, twigs and shimmery fabric delicate like bug wings.

One night in particular, they were so distracted romping and dancing, they didn’t see a human getting close until he trapped poor Luna, the youngest of them all, who was sitting on a rock. She had danced since dusk and was enjoying the full moon, thinking of climbing on sunflowers and catching rain drops.

The mean human stole her clothes; he took her crown away, her shoes and also her long shiny hair! He knew they liked to dress up and gather treasures and would do anything to keep their things.
With a very unpleasant voice he told them the only way he would give the stuff back, was if she could find him the best tea in the world... or something just as good. He was tired of boiling old dusty, dried California desert leaves. He threw every item he had stolen from her and tossed it far, far away into the East blowing wind... And stomped away.

Luna never was one to lose her temper, so she sat and closed her eyes to think. The little green people gathered around and decided to give Luna a nice bag to bring back whatever she could find and told her to run… to run East.

Luna ran and ran all through the continent, but only at night. She was a bit wary to travel without a single stitch on in all her green splendor and no hair on her head. Every time she could, she would sit and close her eyes, thinking of sunflowers and clouds, pretty dresses and flowing hair…
She kept running passing rivers, hills, valleys, rocky roads and swamps, until she arrived to Florida, where she found something special.

After a while she kept running until she clear ran out of land, so she swam and swam heading East as she was told,’ till she found land again on a big island next to the continent in the other side of the world. Which was a good thing since the water was a bit too chilly.

Will she get her possessions again? Will she be able to find her way home?
Follow her progress here, and also the adventures of Victoria and Selene, my team partners Art Dolls.

Photo of my doll

My traveling doll. She is about 4 inches tall, about 8 if she was standing up. I'll post the story separately.
See you soon! :O}

*This is an old post, re-posted from my other blog

New year. New dolls. New projects...

Are you enjoying your new year so far? I hope you are.
This past weekend we had the best weather ever, of ANY year we ever had around here. Sunny, blue skies, even a bit warm...
Not even last summer we saw bluer skies. I was in heaven!
Of course today was back to school for the kids and the fog came along LoL cold and humid Monday, but that's ok, it was a nice brake from Winter anyway!

I am currently working on my ADO Project for the Traveling Doll. I am a little nervous since I have not done it before, but it will be thrilling to see other dolls and get the chance to work on them. My doll will go to Florida, and then to the UK, then back home. How about that! I wonder if I can mail myself in the same box? ;o)

Go visit Tracey http://jasmoonbutterfly.blogspot.com/
And Dellarae http://www.dellaraedezines.blogspot.com
to see the progress of our traveling dolls.



I am also painting the heads I showed previously, the are looking good!

*This is an old post, re-posted here from my other blog

How to fix a dol face

How to fix or re-work paperclay doll face / heads:

Before and After picture: Nose bridge softened; cheeks and forehead added to take the bulgy look of the eyes; lips sanded down to a more realistic proportion.
I made this head probably 2 years ago, and left them on the side because I just knew I was doing something terrible, I just didn't know how to fix it. Forward 40+ months and I have learned enough things to see where the mistakes are and how to change it.

This heads will not have the "baby" look I was aiming for at that time. I guess adding enough clay they could look like that, but I want them more for a fantasy looking doll now.

So... Never give up! and Happy Winter solstice! :oD

UPDATE:
Do you want to learn to make a clay doll? I have an online class HERE