I was clearing off my desk yesterday when I came across this little polyclay head—a gift from a round robin participant (thanks Sylvia!)—and wondered what I could create with it. I continued cleaning when I happened across my bag of sticks (because, really, who doesn’t keep a large bag of random sticks in their studio?) and this doll was born. My original intent was to clean up my space, when in fact I managed to pull out various supplies including every piece of fibre, thread, bead and spangle I own. A special thanks to Suzanne for some of the yarns used in this piece. She was going to send them to the tip until she learned of my obsession with hoarding craft supplies fibres.

The doll itself went together very quickly, as I simply used a half-hitch to attach the yarns to the sticks. As usual, I was not satisfied with a ‘simple’ project, so I spent the rest of the evening stitching beads and spangles to the ribbons and creating sprays of stars with wire, and I like her all the better for it. :)

I made a little hanger out of wire so that she can hang on the wall above my desk…. I’ve got a nice little blank spot desperately wanting to be filled.

She turned out as far from what I had originally planned as possible… but I guess that’s why I don’t plan my art dolls, they just evolve. I started with a polymer clay base, and used a set of Ma Vinci stamps to add texture, then I painted her and added metallic rubons and pastel before sealing the body. Her face is rubber stamped (one of Sue’s so I have no idea which company it is… all I remember was that it was unmounted), coloured with watercolour pencils, mounted on the rim of an old watch and filled with glaze. The wings are mostly wire, beads and ribbon, as is her crown. The cape is a dyed nappy liner that was gilded with metallic silver paint.

I had a lot of fun playing yesterday…. and she was the result. I was
inspired by a doll in Lisa Vollrath’s February issue of The Monthly Muse which was all about art dolls. She had this one doll that used bamboo skewers, and that’s what started this doll… the end result is drastically different, but the inspiration was there. :)

The remaining inspiration came from the fruit netting (the kind of net bag your fruit comes in when you buy it at the supermarket) and the fact that i had some yarn that matched it perfectly. I started off making the dress/body, and by the time I finished that I already knew her name. Then all I had to do was make a head. :)

I’m very proud of myself—I actually made an artdolll without wings. A definite accomplishment given how much I love by large butterfly stamp. I have a couple more dolls in the works…. one polymer clay based, one fiber, and one assemblage. I’ll get them up as soon as I get them done.

Have a creative day! :)

Sue and I spent a lovely day together in her studio. Normally we both have some sort of work that needs to be accomplished for demos or design teams… however, that day we were both free to be completely creative. :)

After looking through a few of her newly acquired books, we came across Stampington’s Summerset Workshop book, and we both thought it would be a great idea to do an art doll based on the template provided in the book (we actually didn’t not enlarge the template as according to the instructions). We both had lots of fun glueing and stitching and painting our art dolls. When I left, I knew mine wasn’t entirely competed, but I’m quite happy with her now that she is done. I’m really happy with the texture the skirt has, although it doesn’t show up that well in the photo. I guess you’ll just have to trust me on that one.

For more info and materials used on the this art doll, just click on the photo. I’ve included that info in the gallery posting. :)

Well here she is—my first art doll. I’m not sure what I’m going to call her, but I’ve deemed her finished. For my first art doll I wanted to do something fairly simple, so I did her out of paper. The face is a rubber stamp which I belongs to a friend (thanks Sue!), so I’m not sure who makes it—but I think I need one! The rest of the doll is a pattern that I drew. The upper and lower arms are movable, as well as the upper and lower legs and feet. I wish you could see how the wings glitter. They are coloured with watercolour pencils, permapaque markers and a glitter marker… and they just glisten!!

Everything else just kind of evolved from stuff I had around the studio. The skirt is made from some ribbon that was RAKed to me from my dear friend Lynette (thanks luv!!), which I embellished with some rick-rack and beads. The bra is made from scraps of leather and some shaped metal clips I’ve had forever. The hair is some ribbon yarn that I hand dyed ages ago, but the colour ended up being perfect for this doll, so I braided it and attached it under the velvet ribbon of the crown. The crown is from part of a huge stamped image of a toile tree, coloured with watercolour pencils and a bit of glitter paint. The crown was topped with some bazzill which was rubbed with Craf-T metallic rubons.

If anyone can think of a good name for her, I’d love to hear it. She was originally going to be holding a deco card that had the word muse stamped on it, but then binned the idea because it covered up too much of her. So if you can think of a name along those lines, please leave a comment! I’d really like to name her.