QUOTE

"I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way-things I had no words for." ~ Georgia O'Keeffe


Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Wishes for Christmas

Hello everybody. Sorry I have negelected my blog lately as life just got in the way and now it is almost Christmas so I thought I just could not leave you without wishing you all a

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I will get back to you in the New Year as I am away for the holiday season. Hope you all have a lovely Christmas and New Year and very peaceful and safe one too. Shall check all your blogs when I get back.


Sunday, November 21, 2010

I think she is cute

Today I was determined to finish a project. I won this free class in Connie's blog and made the doll for a friend's little daughter. I was actually going to have a different theme for her but when I started painting she started whispering to me that she wanted to be a Christmas doll. So I bowed down to her wishes and made her a Christmas themed doll. Her skirt design is all hand painted. I think it is a lovely little class and the doll turned out cute. Thank you Connie.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

And the winners are......

Well here are the two winners whom I chose using the random number selector. It picked no 13 woo hoo lucky for some and it is non other than Serena who won the little elfin!! The second number was no 20 and it is Sherry Gooloe who won the wings. Oh I am so very happy for you both Congratulations. Please send me your snail mail addresses so that I can post them off quickly to you. I hope you both will enjoy the giveaways. 
Thank you to everyone who joined in to fun.
Have a great weekend.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Crochet

I have not been posting a lot lately because my computer crashed and now it is being repaired. I do have a laptop to work with but I don't find it easy to type with. Maybe my fingers are clumsy so the words keep jumping when I am typing. Anyway until I get my computer back I will have to make do with this. I have been trying my hand at making a crochet head band for one of my nieces. I did reduce the width of the head band as it was quiet wide. However somewhere along the line I think I lost the instructions for ending the headband . It was a free pattern from one of the websites and I have lost the link as well. So I have had to improvise it not very nicely. I hope my niece will overlook this and still wear it. At least it fits my head which means it should fit hers too lol! I have been doing other things too which have not been going too well ,so I will wait until I get them into some sort of presentable state to take photos to show you.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Blog giveaway

I am having a blog give away for my blogoversary. I missed it last year so I thought I shall do something for you all this year. So here are my two give aways, a little elfin for wearing as pin or just having her on your computer or Christmas tree and a pair of wings. I will choose 2winners by putting your names in the hat on the 20th of November. All you need to do is leave a comment in the comments section.




Friday, October 29, 2010

Hmmm.. freshly baked

I don't bake often and when I do I don't bake anything fancy. This is just a plain cake but it smells wonderful. I don't know how it will taste though, which is another matter lol! I felt like baking today and well lets just say it is in celebration of my blogoversary. Gosh I have been blogging since 2005! How time flies! Now I have to go and make something special, keep tuned in.

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Books

Today I recieved  a couple of books that I was eargerly looking forward to. I am just loving what I am seeing in them so far. I bought them from a shop called  Book Depository who claim that they will deliver postage free to any part of the world. Personally I think they probably include the postage fee in the price as nothing comes free in this world, but having said that their price was not that much more than Amazon. I checked the doll book and in Amazon they are selling it a pound cheaper but if one adds postage to it it probably will work out the same. It is worth checking up on other books to see if you will get it sent postage free if you live abroad.

Saturday, October 23, 2010

The frost got them so sad

I had bought these beautiful lilies in the Hampton Court Flower show and I had asked the lady when I should plant the bulbs. She said immediately and that is what I did. They were coming up so beautifully and I was looking forward to seeing the flowers but sadly we had severe frost this week and this is how they look now so sad. I hope they will come up next year and this has not had an effect on the bulbs. It has warmed up a bit today but I think these plants have had it.
Thank you all for your commiserations regarding my doll but yes it has gone so that is that.

Thursday, October 21, 2010

The doll I miss


Recently in one of my doll club groups we had a topic going about which doll we missed the most so I thought that I would show the one which I miss a lot. You have probably seen her before. I made it for a lady who was pestering me to make a doll for her. I met her in a textile course that I was attending at that time. I usually never make a doll to sell but this lady was very persistant and said she would pay whatever I asked her for the doll. I priced her very reasonably since I don't sell dolls. When I gave the doll to her she refused to pay the money and asked to reduce the amount and started finding fault with the doll. So I said to her I will have take the doll  back if she was not satisfied. But she would not give me the doll back either and quickly put it in her bag and paid me less money and took the doll. I wish I had never sold the doll and I really regret giving this doll away.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Progress on sculpt

I made a little bit more progress on my sculpt. I am going through a huge learning curve with this sculpting as I have almost nil experience sculpting with airdry clays. I am having fun. When I upload pictures on the computer I am able see where I need to do tweeking and if I have got things fairly proportional or not. Now I am not too happy the way the right ear is positioned. I will have to go and pick Marlaine's brain again to see if there is a solution to remedy it or do I just leave it. I am so tempted to leave it as I know if I remove it I may not get it even as close to this sculpt and ruin it completely.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

I am chuffed!!


A few months ago a lady from the German Magazine Dolls Puppen contacted me and wanted to publish one of my doll pictures in the magazine. Today finally I got the issue in which it was published. I am so chuffed to be amongst some wonderful doll makers like Ankie Daanen, Akira Blount and Anna Zuava to mention a few. I must say that I am very impressed with the magazine. Although most of the dolls are porcelain dolls but there were quite a few of polymer clay dolls and cloth dolls as well. Also very nice to know that there are some very talented cloth doll makers in Europe. I would have liked to purchase this magazine but as far as I can see it is published only in German and I can't read German.


Sunday, October 03, 2010

Sculpting with Marlaine Verhelst

I am doing an online sculpting class with air dry clay, with Marlaine Verhelst . I am having a lot of fun and here is how far I have got. I have a lot of tweeking to do with this sculpt. Wanted to to get it all done today but never did get the time. Hope I will be able to work on it tomorrow and get it finished. Can't wait to finish the doll.



Saturday, October 02, 2010

Feeling neglected

Some of my dolls are cross with me, well that is nothing new but looking at these it seems they are resigned to this state of affairs for sometime.

  This one won't even look at me let alone talk to me, so she hides her face behind her hat lol!!
But they do seem to have made themselves comfortable knowing that it might take me quite a while to get them finished.

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Getting back

Just letting you all know that I am back from India. I wouldn't say it was a pleasure trip as I was dealing with mum being not well. Still haven't found the cause so it is like having a weight still sitting on top.

While all that was going on I had to take my mind off things so I started to learn some crochet. Not that you would  want to see my these little attempts but I am showing them for what they are worth. They are not great and for most of the time I don't know what I am doing lol! Still I seem to be slowly getting the hang of things. I still don't know how to go about choosing yarn for any particular project. I am completely lost when they specify certain size because when you go to the yarn shop there are hundreds of kinds and I am never sure what would be the right yarn to buy. So I come back empty handed. I have never found to have a great desire to learn crochet before but I can see one can get hooked on it ( forgive the pun).  May be just may be I will be able to do a project at some point.

Wednesday, September 08, 2010

Quick post

Just poppping in quickly to let you all know that I am away in India. Shall catch up with you all as soon as I get back.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Beautiful Prague

Last weekend I was in Prague. It is one of the beautiful cities in Europe. I loved it. Thankfully the weather held most of the time but it became rather chilly in the evening. I had a wonderful time. So here are some pictures for you to enjoy too.



Friday, August 20, 2010

Things we do for dolls!

I don't know about others but me, if I think it would be great for dolls I cannot resist to buy. I went to buy some shampoo and ended up buying these yummy eye shadow packs. They are gorgeous, beautiful and shimmery. Now I wouldn't have bought them for myself as they are a bit pricey but I thought what great colours to use on dolls and bought them I must be mad!

Yesterday I was rummaging through my cupboard when I came across some air dry clay. I didn't know I had it, as my craft cupboard has a jumble of things. Anything remotely crafty gets shoved into it. Anyway found this pack of clay and also found that at some point I must have opened it but didn't seal it back properly, so half the clay had dried. There was an end bit which was still moist and since I did not want to throw it away I decided to do a quick sculpt looking at one of my sculpted ornament which I had bought from Greece. The feet didn't turn out as graceful as the ornament. Still at least the clay got used and I got some sort of practice sculpting feet but don't know if the way I sculpted is right.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Very rusty

I bought this hanging pot made out of bamboo as I thought it looked lovely. I really didn't expect any plants to survive in it for long as the pot itself is very small. However I went ahead and planted some plants and to my surprise they survived and have flowered as well. I must admit that I have had to water them quiet frequently.

So then I decided to go and do a quick sketch in water colours since they looked so lovely. You can see how rusty I am. I really must get my paints out more often and practice.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

She is done now

Meet Ruby. She is done at last. I got a bit behind with her because life does happen at awkward times.
I forgot to make knees for her so she is rather stiff legged lol! She will just have to hang somewhere and when she gets tired she will just have to have a lie in a darkened corner. I must remember not to use Mod Podge to seal next time. Even though I used matt finish it gave the doll a bit of  a glossy finish which I did not want, so I sand papered it a bit again. I think she has bit of a squint but that makes her different isn't it lol!.

Tuesday, August 03, 2010

Work in progress

Another doll but not strickly a cloth doll. This is a DIP from Jane DesRosier's cloth and clay art doll group class. I should be really be engrossed in making my gypsy but no inspiration is coming yet, but at least I am begining to create something which is a good thing. I did forget to give her knee joints so she will just have to hang when I finish her lol!

Thursday, July 29, 2010

He is done

I finished my little sprite or elf or yule baby whatever he is but I call him Twinkle for I think he has got an impish twinkle in his eye. Don't know what mischief he is up to. Looking at the picture now I can see what mistakes I have made but I am pretty much happy with the way he turned out. I am still learning to sculpt!

Sunday, July 25, 2010

smiling!

I have been working on this little fellow and at last I have made him smile I think. His eyes didn't turn out the way I wanted it to but he is much too small a figure for me to do anymore. I have been remiss in not mentioning that this is a class doll of Katheryn Walmsley who is a wonderful artist. This is an on line class Yule Baby in DollStreet by her. The face looks very grainy in close up but I have sanded him quiet a bit and still it looks like this. I am finding it hard to sand the face as I don't want to loose the details and the face is so small. He is only about 7 1/2 inches tall. I guess he needs to be just painted now.


Thursday, July 22, 2010

Gymming!

If only I could do half of what this little guy is doing I would be that much more toned and fitter lol! So here is his body almost complete. I know I have to shape him a bit more but he is coming along fairly well considering I have almost no experience in sculpting with paperclay.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Dragging my muse

Today I dragged my muse screaming and kicking and started a sculpt. I have started it with paperclay and I really found it difficult to sculpt. Since it is my first full body sculpt I should really have done it with polymer clay which might have been easier to handle but what all the screaming and kicking going on I decided I had better start sculpting soon or my muse will escape yet again. So here is the begining of my sculpt. I think I will end up sand papering it a lot or it will just crack up, have to wait and see what happens. But I am determined that I will do this small figure somehow.

Early in the morning last week I caught this glorious sight of the sky.
and before I could adjust the camera a bit it turned like this!

Wednesday, July 07, 2010

A few pictures

I am back and slowly getting back into the groove. Seems like as though I have been away for ages. So much to catch up with so I will visit your blogs slowly. In the meantime just thought I would share with you some pictures that I took. This one below I took while sitting in a traffic jam. For once I was happy to be stuck in the traffic as I got to see the sky transform beautifully while the sun set.
A gecko sunning himself. What perfect camouflage. These geckos often change their colours to their surroundings to ward off danger. He soon disappeared before I could take a good shot of him when he heard me clicking away.
Pretty pink lilies.
Perfect for a brides bouquet