Got disappointed

Last year while I was shopping I came across these hand tissues. Usually when there is a design on the covering the tissues also have the same design on them. I thought the same was the case with these ones so I went and bought them as I had an idea what I would do with them. Unfortunately today when I wanted to opened them they were all plain inside☹️

What I had in mind was that I would cut out and paste the images on some surplus stitched heads that I have left over from my long time ago class doll's. 

I was greatly disappointed. It also would have been a kind of experiment to see how it would work out for doll's . Oh well it was not to be so I decided to draw a similar face on this head. I generally do the head last in a doll but this one I am starting the other way round. Now I have to make arms and legs. I will I think stick to the theme Frozen.

Faded rose

Elegant and beautiful even when faded.

 

Couple of weeks back they were advertising Hampton court flower show in our town centre and they were handing out a rose to everyone. I got one in yellow and gold. Left it in the vase and forgot about it. Yesterday when I looked, it had completely dried up , but I was struck by its beauty even when it had dried up.  It still looks so perfect amazing. Perhaps they had treated it with something so that it dried up without dropping petals or looking withered.

Doll for all seasons

This is the doll I made recently. I hope to make it available as a pattern. What do you think?
 She can be stitched up in any theme fabric and can be embellished to your hearts content. I hope you like her.

After a long gap

It is good to be back after a long time. On the home front things are better. But we have to give it another week to be sure that my husband's health is stabilised. So for the moment I am cautious.  At least we don't have to go to hospital often for checkups. That does free up a lot of time for me. I have been spending time in the garden and destressing. We have had some lovely weather and the garden is in full bloom. Here are some pictures I want to share.

I bought this Fushia last year from Hampton court flower show. This year it is laden with loads of delicate pink flowers

This flower pot I call it punch bowl. It is so pretty and full of different coloured flowers

 Alliums are one of my favourite flowers too. They look so lovely even when they have not bloomed and also when they have finished blooming. You can see both in this picture

You might remember this doll I made last year. I am in the process of making another so that I can write up a pattern for it. Hopefully it will be available soon. That's all for now. Will be making my rounds to all the blogs soon.

Spoke too soon

I think I spoke too soon. My husband was admitted back in hospital early this week. Unfortunately he has been suffering from a bug which is very resistant to most antibiotics. For the past 2 weeks we have been going back and forth to the hospital and eventually it all came to a head. Had to rush to the A&E Saturday night and they admitted him. He is being given intravenous antibiotics now. They will keep him in until the antibiotics course is over. He feels much better now I am hoping and praying that they can irradiate this bug from his system entirely or else it is likely to return again and again because of all the immunosuppressants he has to take.
So there is not much creativeness going on in this end at the moment. I do try and read your blogs whenever I can even though I may not comment. So please bear with me until I get over this hump.
In the meanwhile keep creating your lovely art it is such lovely eye candy for all

Things are looking up

Quick update on my hubby. He is doing well and we are so happy that all is going well. With his track record with surgeries I never thought this would go smoothly but everything has gone according to plan. Doctors are happy and we just need to cross that 6 weeks bench mark to start sighing a sigh of relief.

Although we still have to go twice a week to the hospital I am now able to find more time as my husband heals and is able to do more things on his own. 

So I decided to finish my doll. I wanted to make her into an African princess but my thought processes got interrupted with my husband's surgery so she has become a bit of a mish mash doll. Does she look African enough? I have named her Alika which I believe means beautiful but I may be wrong.

I must look it up in google.

 

 

Life happened

Some of you might be wondering what happened to my promises of keeping up with blogs and do a regular post. Well like it happens to many people life happened to me too. On Easter Day my husband was called for a kidney transplant. Although it was on the cards one is never fully prepared for these sort of things and it came as a bit of a shock. We were in Malta for the Easter Weekend and had to cut short our break and return immediately.  From then on everything happened so fast and like a dream. My husband was given a new lease of life. I truely believe that this is a miracle by God. My husband's kidney has been working only 20% since the 1st transplant and life has been quite a struggle for him. They said the 1 st kidney would last only ten years but it lasted nearly 21 years which in itself was a miracle. However for the past few years we have been living on a knife's edge expecting the kidney to give up anytime. Then the week before Easter his blood results were so bad that our doctor said he will have to put my husband on the transplant list. I was very apprehensive of going abroad with all this but we went. His name went on the list on Wednesday and he was called for the transplant on Easter Day. What a wonderful Easter  gift it has been.  He was not only called so soon but the match has been great and he is doing well so far. After waiting for 7 years for the first one this really is a miracle to get one so quickly and a perfect match at that. I will be out of action for a bit until everything settles at home. My doll has gone onto the back burner for the moment. Please know that I shall come back to visit your blogs once life settles down a bit.

Until then keep creating and enjoy your time doing all the lovely things there is to do in life.

Face painted

I never do faces with acrylics but there is a first time for everything. As I said before this was not easy to paint because the background was a dark canvas. I know many people who do some lovely faces on a dark background and admire their work. So I thought I would give it a try. I used this magazine that I got sometime ago as a reference base. I got the magazine purely for this reason as I think the photographer has captured this model's face beautifully. I know a lot of it must be enhanced as they usually do with these pictures but I still think it is beautifully done and a nice picture for reference to paint dark faces.

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This is what I did not exactly wonderful and I don't know why she has got a very stubborn expression on her face I think😀. I just could not get her to smile!

 

Colour change

she changes colour yet again. I think I will use this colour. Painting her face is going to be tricky but let's see how she turns out.

Making something new out of old

Years ago when I was teaching cloth dollmaking in India I stitched up some doll bodies for my first classes so that I could initiate ladies into the world of dollmaking. I did this because I found that most of the women who came to learn did not know how to sew. So to make things easier for me and less stressful for the students I thought would first let them learn to stuff and make the body up. Later on they did progress on to learning how to sew. Anyway while clearing up some things in India I found several of these stitched doll bodies. So I decided to give them to the ladies in my doll club and asked them to make up the doll as a challenge. I am looking forward to seeing what each one comes up with.  So I too decided to make up one . I started with the face painting first. I did not like it much so decided to do something else. Now it is all painted white and I have to put my thinking cap to see what I can do. I think I will go for a dark shade of colouring and take it from there. The doll pattern is on the blog if you want to download it. Now  because either the weave of the fabric is a bit lose or I did not stitch these bodies properly the limbs have a tendency to turn a bit to one side. Painting the doll body helped the limbs to be straight a bit.  So let's see how she turns out.

The first picture is when I painted the face but that soon got covered with white paint.😀

 

 

I still have a few bodies left so if anyone of you is interested I can send it to you. Just leave a comment in the box to say you would like one set.