Spring is in the air

I love it when the trees start getting all covered in colors and new leaves. The plumbs are all pink, they look so silly this time of the year, but I love it.

I have some very exciting news!
Last month the art site Art And Craft Auctions was looking for a logo and guess who won?? It was great news!
They even opened a new doll area after I suggested it!
They are wonderful and have been working very hard at it. :oD

And talking about dolls, I have been working on the outfits of my polymer dolls.
In my opinion (but I am quite partial!) they look great lol
This is the little one, only 6.5 tall:


I will post a picture of the other one soon.
And don't be shy, feel free to leave me a comment!

Insert appropriate title here

I bumped into THIS wonderful blog posting.
It's regarding the same thing we've been talking about, the crazy ebay changes, just with another point of view, even better. Or should I say scarier?

Viva Ola!
I'll put my nickle in just about any other auction/sales site that will respect me, give me back the fun of listing, and will not tie my hands when the occasional mean buyer attacks.
In my art ID I have been lucky to meet so many nice repeating buyers, but in our other ID, the one where we sell all kind of odds and ends... man, I have had a couple of bidders who'd make a Tazmanian-devil faint.
OK, 'nuff of that!

~*~ ~*~
In other news, I have been working with polymer, and loving it!
I thought I was going to have a hard time making hands and feet, so I started by working on those.... but what do you know?? By the time I tried to make a face, I woke up to reality and no other material I have tried has given me so much ... frustration? LOL
I made some weird looking heads... I messed with them till it looked more like an old asian lady instead of a cute young girl (my initial goal) So I kept making one after the other.....
I realized my problem was the eyes I had baked, and the fact that I was not setting the eye ball deeper into the head. :oP
So I have cut the ball in half and I have added more to the top of the head.
What do you think?

Here I used white clay pre-baked for the eyeballs. I curled the wire because I had nothing to hang her from to bake, so I thought the wire could be her own little stand. It worked.

This is after I painted the face and eyes

For this face I used my pre-baked and pre-painted eyes

I added the eyelashes before baking. It was hard! lol

Options and more options

People like having options and life is about changes.
Yes.
The problem is when someone shoves a change you don't need/want in your face and you have to deal suddenly with unplanned options.
What am I talking about? ;o)
Exactly. ebay and their crazy changes!

So my dearest 3 readers, today I'll post about some of the options out there.
It's like fixing a date for your creations. The current date slaps you in the face when you are not looking, so even when it's nice looking, deserves to sit in the timeout chair for a good while.
The other dates are the overlooked: too short, too skinny, too quiet... but now tons of people are visiting them so let's keep an eye open. And run. lol

* Bidville
* ecrater
* iOffer
* ola
* uBid
*

Amazon and Etsy are not auction sites though they are great options.

There are more places but there's just so much reading one can do, before the eyes start to bug out.
I personally will try with ola and keep my fingers crossed.
No, I don't plan to evacuate and never come back. I have met so many wonderful people on feebay, many of them good friends. But...
People like having options and life is about changes! :oD

Illustration Friday

The theme is "choose" and this is my entry


2.5x3.5, acrylics on watercolour paper

Lots of news!

I am doing the happy dance!
My little Cordelia is the Diva Queen for February in the Art Diva's group!
She was "princess Cordelia" but I guess now she is a Queen ;o)


So all month long she will be in display, along with a cute girl painting from "The wild gipsy".

Also, I've been tagged! ...Twice!! lol
OK, Flora and Sue, I hope it is OK to answer the same 5 questions for the 2 tags?
10 things about myself would be too much for me to reveal LOL
*wink*

1-When I was a little I wanted to be a mermaid and have a twin sister.
Since it was impossible, I decided to start drawing mermaids on my grandma's wall, to the delight of some, and the embarrassment of my poor mom lol

2-I am ambidextrous. No, it's not a religion :oP

3-There's always a bunch projects going at the same time on my table.
Some of them grow legs and walk around by themselves into new inconvinient places.

4-My favorite thing to paint is eyes. Me second favorite is hands.
My least favourite? ... I have yet to find out.

5-I can roll my tongue into a taco. lol (can you??)

I'll have to come back later with my people to tag!

~*~

Right now, in Doll4Art, we are having votes for the doll challenges for the months to come. They will be a lot of fun!
And there's also a goodie-bag give away for the lucky posting in the chit-chat thread, yaay!

Claudia the Crow's story...

Click on the picture to go to her auction.


Your attention please! Do not, and I mean it…. do not eat Mrs. Skeampole’s acorn flour crumpets, for ANY reason. Don’t even sniff them.

Someone put a tricky ingredient in the dough and poor little Claudia has turn into a crow after eating just one bite! Oh my!
Poor little thing! Always so well behaved, such nice manners, always following instructions and flying to follow her teacher’s orders… (sorry, no pun intended….) and now this!
She is still however, the teacher’s pet. (oops, no pun intended)
Some kids started to call her “Crowdia”. She doesn’t seem to mind. She never likes bickering. She just wiggles her little claws and hops away with her teddy bear Paul.
Claudia’s voice was always the sweetest in the choir. Now all you can hear is her constant dissonant caw, but please don’t tell her anything. She enjoys singing quite a bit. Only now she seems to feel more comfortable singing from way up on a tree branch.
It was going to be a hard task finding her a good new home as it was, with her being such a persnickety eater… and now that she has a beak? She really eats like a bird…
~*~
Now, for the details: Little Claudia is hand made, hand painted and her hands and feet are sculpted. I made her eyes with polymer, and she has long eye lashes.
She travels along with her teddy bear Paul. Luckily he didn't eat any of the crumpets.... can you imagine a crow-bear?
hummm, perhaps I need my sketchbook... :oD

2008 resolutions

OK, How is everyone doing in their New year's resolutions? I broke almost all of mine by January the 1st around noon lol

I was kind of upset earlier today because I forgot one of my favorite days yesterday, which is the Dia de Reyes, the celebration of the King Wise Men's visit to baby Jesus.
I love the bread, the getting together and the fact that we can keep stretching the holidays a bit more (good excuse to postpone the dieting) ...if only I remember!
And ALL because one of my crazy resolutions was organizing my little creative space, which ended in this huge thing, everyone involved throwing away stuff and deep cleaning the house.... I guess that takes Spring cleaning off of my list.

Usually I get a yummy Rosca de Reyes, also known as Epiphany bread, with a little plastic baby hidden in it, so the lucky person with that slice gets to make a gathering on February the 2nd. In the past that was when my grandma traditionally picked up and put away her Nativity. Everything else was already gone except for the Nativity set.

Well, back to my resolutions: Besides from creating chaos in my house, I want to post more often, also make some tutorials to help/inspire others just as I have been helped and inspired to learning about dolls, techniques and tips.

I am working on a couple of tutorials, pictures and all, so expect more info on the next few posts! For now I'll post this on doll hair:

As you can imagine, depending on the doll style and personal preference, yarn, mohair, paperclay, wire or natural hair can be used. Each of them has a way to be added, but anything can be glued.

As far as I have learned, for the mohair you have to start (to make life easier) by leaving a spot on the dolls head for the hair, as in "hole" where it comes out of, then glued some of it to the head itdelf.

Now, if you are like me and have a gazillion doll heads with no preparation for the mohair, you can do a couple of things.

One: cut clumps of mohair, glue them flat, let them dry, then glue them like extensions.
Two: glue all around previously cut (and pre-glued together to themselves) all around the head, starting from the bottom to the top, then add a hat or something to cover the last part (If you don't like the way it looks).
Three: pick the ugliest doll head you have around, practice making a hole on top, assuming it is a paperclay head! Then stick the hair in there and press it down.

I insist on having the clumps or strands already previously glued and dried, otherwise you'll find yourself sneezing mohair, all goopy-fingered and with a bald ugly doll with a hole on top.

Oh! For people interested in playing a tag-blog game, join doll4art group and list your "blahg" there, we are getting ready to play!

And talking about bald... Here's a picture of a doll that will be listed soon: Claudia the Crow

Christmas tree and general sillyness

Here's a picture of our Christmas tree.


And here's how it looks like if you wiggle the camera and play with the lights:

And here is a FUN link of how to decorate your tree if you are still not done with it.

Click HERE and enjoy.

Good bye 2007

I was reading a site about artist's blog block and how to brake the blog block with creative ideas and bring more visitors to your site. Imagine my delight!

Just when I thought all my blog problems were solved.... the postings end abruptly on September because the writter got a block and stopped posting. lol

People! c'mon! What happened to the inspiration? I know in my case eating Christmas cookies takes all my spare time at this time of the year, but hey, I have the huge responsability to keep my 3 readers up to date. So here I am (crunchin' while typing) looking busy....

Now, for the real content of today's blogging: Ta daaaaaa:
There's a great doll event from MRSBO coming this January, on the 31th.
Hhmmm... What is MRSBO? you might ask yourself suspiciously... Well, it is a group that I have been mentioning many times by now if you were really paying attention! (excuse me, that was for my cat, who was only pretending to read here) No, they won't have any tuna either.

And what's the event about?


Well, Mr. Pringle's Society of Feeble Prestidigitators is sponsoring a fund-raiser for the little MRSBO orphan dolls. All members have attempted to conjure up a doll to be sold for charity, but there is something very odd about every one of them!

You have to search MRSBO that day to see what each artist of our group came up with!
Want to take a pick at what I will be presenting for auction?

This is Cordelia.

She heard something about The Orphanage having some dolls, and she took the long walk to go there and get herself one.

You'll have to excuse us here. Cordelia is still bald, undressed and doll-less, but we are working on those matters.

~*~

On a sad note, I want to say that I will miss Dan Fogelberg and all the music he still had in him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhjYbfK9vrk

Damiana's disappointing present

Here is little Damiana!


Also here's THE VIDEO:

And now, the story I wrote for her:

Damiana's Disappointing Present

Damiana had very high hopes for this coming Christmas.
She had been a very good girl all year. Almost all year.

Outside it had been snowing and snowing, and snowing some more. That was good. It covered all those holes in the garden, and the new temporary ugly patch on the wall of the kitchen.
The Orphanage was not one of the warmest places in town to begin with, what was another little hole in the wall? At least there was a roof over their heads.
Damiana was sure no one would remember those past unfortunate incidents…

Like the crickets in Mrs. Blatherby's bedroom. It had been Damiana’s attempt to bring the outdoors in. Plus they made fun pets too. They seemed to not like real food. They didn’t even touch the oniony liver she left for them under Mrs. Blathersby’s bed.
They mostly wanted to eat cotton fabric, so it was not an extra expense. There was plenty of cotton around the principal’s room.
And they were so cheerful singing all the time. Especially at night, hop-hop-hopping here and there.

The muddy flood in the music room had been a failed attempt at decoration. She wanted to make a water fountain by the piano, because it is so nice to hear the tinkling of crystal clear water falls and piano music notes…
It had been a lot of work, too: making all those holes in the yard to gather the water outside, then carrying it up bucket by bucket since the room was on the second floor.
Regrettably the water was not so clear at that point anymore, therefore it did not tinkle quite as expected.
But that was a different matter altogether.
Unfortunately the nuns did not agree with the tinkling, the holes in the garden, the muddy stairs, or the messy piano keys.

And that accident in the kitchen? It was just that, an accident.
What’s a girl to do when her little hands and feet are cold and there’s a lonely fire in the kitchen, all alone in there? No one was using it, and it was too tiny a flame to warm up anything anyway. So… she made it bigger.

The cook, Mrs. Milleford Skimpole, said they would take weeks and weeks to fix that big gaping hole in the wall, get rid of the stench of smoke, and it would take forever to fix all the shattered glass in the windows.
The hinges on the back door were already stained, crooked and squeaky. Everybody knew that! … OK, maybe they were not so shrill before.

The worse insult for Mrs. Skimpole was that, after she complained bitterly about her Holiday Fruit-cakes being all ruined, burnt and soggy, little Damiana told her sweetly not to be sad, because absolutely no one would tell the difference.

The kitchen did not smell so bad to Damiana, just like extra-extra extra crispy gingerbread smoky cookies.

One teacher said Damiana was going to need a lot of luck-- a lot of real good, blessed and holy-water-sprinkled-on luck, to get anyone to adopt her now, with all this on her record.
Drat!
So it was going to be boring in there, and maybe colder.

Oh, but how exciting it had been to wake up on Christmas morning! She got up fast, fast, fast and went running downstairs to open her present. She wanted to be the first one getting there and start unwrapping.
She opened it, and… what a disappointment!

A pair of socks?? An old pair of stinky socks! And not even a matching pair either! All year waiting… for this?
Well, if this is what you get after being so good all year, she was not going to behave anymore.

Humm… Where are those scissors?