SO FAR SO GOOD!

I've been absorbing myself in Transformative Dollmaking, the Joggles class I'm taking from Pamela Hastings. Among other things, our first assignment called for us to make a paper doll that reflected our happy days and the not so good ones.  I complied with a two-sided doll based on a pattern she supplied.

To the right you see me tickled pink and tripping the light fantastic above my desk.   This was my first play with paper collage, so the educational experience was doublefold.  I have so much to learn.  Never mind that my foil wings bear glue smudges and fingerprints.
Never mind that my mylar stockings are wrinkled.  Never mind that my tissue paper arms were so tattered I had to cover them with lace.  I played.  After applying my acryllic facial foundation, I put on minimal makeup with a pen.  I styled my hair with petals from an old carnation corsage.  A little stick-on bling at my neck and a big heart do it for accessorizing my dowdy, somewhat old fashioned print dress.  I am happy today.

Below is my alter ego.  Thankfully I'm an optimist and born with a sense of humor that sustains me in difficult times, so even though I can be as witchy as the next gal, my anger is typically short lived.
Most of my bad days stem from frustration, impatience, discouragement, and fleeting resentments.  My depression is genrally controlled by medication, although I do occasionally have anxiety breakthrough.  My recent grief was the first time an emotion left me debilitated.  I would never have imagined  that creating a grouch could make me laught and have so much fun.

My beloved DH cringes whenever he sees me saving "stuff".  If you're reading this, you know what I'm talking about.  There are times he vocalizes that I hoard and belong on a certain TV show.  I will allow only that caching stash is sometimes problematic. I mention this only because I got to use some unlikely keepers in this project.  Like that corsage I mentioned?  From a commercial floral class about 20 years ago. 

Also unlikely are the wings.  I'm not sure why a witch would have wings unless she's fallen from grace.  Anyway they're tarnished.  Look closely.  That's embossed toilet paper I used to blot while I sprayed various inks and starbursts and saved from an earlier project.  It absorbs beautifully and randomly in color and stays strong; it worked fine with the gel medium I used.  And you know, I'm not sure why my happy side has wings.  Maybe  they  symbolize my resuming creative flight.

My inner imp is wearing a dyed coffee filter!  Yes, yes, last week I decided to experiment with some months old cold water dye solutions.  I dyed bleached and unbleached filters and learned the bleached come out a little brighter.  This particular one is unbleached and chosen to match the catalog cutout of "The Witch is In".  Do not ask why I owned a gold bandana with primitive hearts, as I have no clue.  But I love how the heart looks pierced by pins to cause me pain.  The arms are coffee filters given a multicolor treatment with the same dyes.  The dye bleed like watercolors on the filters; I just dropped the color randomly and watched it run and marble.  I did purchase paper for the legs.  I could not resist the filigree and spider webbing to sub for fishnet stockings.  My witchiness has a sleazy side as evidenced by those tarnished wings, and I suspect her presence by my computer is to lure me to a game of scrabble or spider solitaire, anything to keep me off productive task.

ANGELIC MAKEOVER

The before angel is below. You can see I've made her halo larger, added a butterfly hair ornament, a magic wand and lots more fibery stuff including tulle and hand dyed scrim.

ABSTRACT FLYING ANGEL DOLLS

These dolls are the first of three types of angels we are making in Chaska (Mai-Liis) Peacock's online class. I worked on them at the same time, and they are for the most the same except for halos and embellishments.

Their faces are my first attempt using polymer clay for anything. I used some Sculpey III in beige. I didn't use a mold; I kneaded small balls and flattened them to round and oval shapes and used my finger to roll a concave back which I thought might better conform to the stuffed head. I did not try to sculpt this time around. I drew the faces with permanent markers and added a little blush. I wish I had taken the time to get better proportion. I'd like to try watercolor pencils or some other medium that would allow me to properly blend and create the illusion of contour on a flat surface. I'll work on more expressive faces as I continue learning to create dolls. I'll be dabbing little spots of glue around the faces to make the hair better conceal the sides of the face cabochons.

About the hair. The bright aqua is some kind of fibery yardage I bought as a remnant at Walmart. I had no idea what I'd use it for at the time; I only bought it because it looked interesting. It's sort of like a lightweight Pellon interfacing. It drapes, it crinkles, it's translucent. I came across it looking for something else, and I don't know why I even thought to use it for doll hair -- just one of those serendipitous moments when I decided I liked the way the stuff scrunched! Dare I say, it came to me out of the blue... The second angel has purple hair.

I first tried needlefelting some purple wool. It worked well, but to get a sculpted hair style I was afraid I might chew up the fabric too much. I settled instead for stitching on curly eyelash and feather yarns.

I had a wonderful time shopping at Michaels looking for potential halos. Infinite possibilities with lots of wired eyelash and bead garlands all sparkly and pretty for the holidays. Oh the ribbons!

I cannot wait to shop the after season sales! My turquoise haired angel has a halo made with

gold star garland (found in party supplies!) twisted with a multi colored glitter eyelash. Her purple haired companion has feathers for a halo. The feathers came as trim, glued and stitched to ribbon. I had first considered it as a substitute for the beaded fringe at the bottom of the doll, but the ribbon was too rigid to follow a curve even when clipped. It was next to impossible to try to sew by hand, yet I was set on having a feather halo. I ended up cutting individual feathers with parts of the ribbon (I couldn't pull the feathers out) and glued them in a way to frame the head. The meant the back of the angel's head wasn't pretty, and I couldn't stitch more yarn over it for hair. What I did was place a spoked wire "donut" from the jewelry findings section and placed a bejeweled button in the center.

I had such a good time making these angels. It was like having the best play date ever with my inner child.

TWO NEW EXCITEMENTS

I'm back, relaxed and no longer mired in catch-up. If you'll recall I put previous group activities on pause and gave myself permission to quit as long as I needed to. I did manage to get in some creative time during my stay in CA. I knit. I started a doll. I made some floral arrangements. I got to do some sightseeing, pix of which you can find on my Flickr site .

Within 24 hours of my return I had signed up for another class. And maybe a day later I enrolled in another! I know, I know, your're already admonishing me for setting myself up to fall behind again. But understand, both teachers are wonderful instructors and the contents are such that I can work when and as I wish.

I have already gathered in supplies and started on Sharon B's Joggles course, Studio Journals: A Designer's Workhorse . I need this class -- desperately! Before I had a computer I kept art and craft ideas in manila folders. The ideas were magazine clippings or notes hastily scribbled on whatever was on hand while watching TV how-to's. On my lifelong quest toward organization I filed, sub categorized, made new files and labels and soon had a complete file cabinet filled with snippets of ideas now long forgotten. My current computer (#2) has two files with pix and notes for ideas I'd like to work with some day. One I called a visual journal and the other "Concepts".

Both are so long, they're taking forever to load and just as long to scroll down to find stuff. At the same time I've tried keeping journals for each interest one for CQ, one for knitting, beading, freeform crochet, embroidery -- the list goes on ad nauseum. Of course no journal was ever handy when I needed it, and if I travelled the idea of hauling these suitcase-filling journals was absurd. Like I mentioned, this class is a must .

In theory my artistic productivity could increase if I could just corral the ideas. If I could only wrangle them into one place... well, I'm already thinking two, a big one for studio use and development and a small one for thoughts on the go. Sharon told us to just start in the new book, get something on that first page. Mine happened to be a watercolor paper, so I dug out my watercolors to do a simple decorative wash and was aghast that I'd really forgotten techniques long ago learned. Since my overall premise is ideas out of sight are soon out of mind, I thought of lightbulbs to symbolize ideas. I soon got carried away and had makings for collages, stitchings and even dolls. Working the exercises from Lesson 1, I have more ideas in the development stage. So it's already happening;

creative concepts are replacing idle thoughts of a sedentary mind.

Speaking of dolls, I'm very excited about Mai-Liis's latest offering, the Angel Project. I took away so much more from her healing dolls class, I know I won't be disappointed in this one. There's still time to sign up for this very affordable course which is conducted via a closed Yahoo Group. I will shamefully admit that if you mention my name, I will receive a perk in the form of a squishy. That of course is not as important to me as learning ways to make dolls and embuing them with a spiritual essence or intent!