Fairy Nice to Meet You

Number one on my niece's wish list to Santa this year, was a 'squishable' fairy doll that she could sleep with. Let me just say that as a child that would tear out brand name toy ads from the Sears catalogue to adhere to my own wish list (I couldn't risk any confusion..), I was impressed with her lack of materialism.

My sister couldn't find a soft fairy doll anywhere and efforts to turn up a plain rag doll to turn into a fairy were also futile. That's when I said 'geez, I could make a fairy doll.' How hard can it be? I made a rag doll with my Grandma Lilly once...

Three days later and much cursing.. (I think in hindsight I merely watched Grandma Lilly make the doll)...this is the result. I'm quite pleased with it. Ok there were some unforseen details. The cute round face I carefully embroidered underwent some cosmetic changed when the head was sewn together. The cute pouty lips ended up on her throat, and the little chin I embroidered became a necklace. The hands are a tad club-like, and as my sister noted, she has some slight edema in her left foot. For a first effort fairy doll however, I'm damn proud.

My sister designed the lovely dress. I helped by sewing closed the arm holes, which were later torn out. We also learned that while sewing elastic you have to pull the elastic taut if you want it to maintain elasticity after you attach the skirt. I think I heard Grandma Lilly laugh at us and shake her head upon this discovery.

The wings are on order from Ebay and then she will be complete. If my niece does not worship this doll and sleep with it everynight, my sister has promised to box it up and pull it out at her 30th birthday to make her feel appropriately guilty.

P.S. The cookies are done the cookies are DONE! phew....

Early Bird Craftacular!

The cats got me up at 5 this morning. I couldn't go back to sleep. Usually when this happens I read, but I just finished my book so instead I made stockings! I lost track of my childhood stocking, and the felt one I made for Shawn is falling apart. I planned to buy some fabric this afternoon to make stockings, but decided this morning to forge ahead with what I had on hand. I'm glad I did. The brown is much more folksy than red and green. I lined it with some fun print fabric I bought years ago... probably with the intention of turning it into a skirt.. It's a bit lumpy in the photo, but has since been ironed smooth. I did the design by first tracing our silhouettes onto thin tracing paper. I pinned the paper down to the fabric and walked my sewing machine foot over the design. Once I'd sewn over the image, I tore away the paper to leave just the stitches. Tedious but faster than hand embroidery. The antlers are cut from some circular patches I got at SCRAP years ago. We don't have a fireplace. I hung them by the gas heater. I don't suppose Santa will shimmy down a gas heater, but like a fireplace, it is a heat sorce, so it just made good sense.

The Christmas Card You Won't Be Receiving

I've been thinking about silhouettes lately. It started at work. I was asked to gather books for a grade school teacher who was teaching a unit on the American Colonies. I gathered some history books, as well as books with titles like 'The Blacksmith'. I also found some books with crafts from the colonial period. There was a page on the lost art of silhouette making. I recalled the familiar grade school project of outlining your face on black construction paper and gluing it down on a white background. It was so satisfying and fun to see how recognizable shapes are, even without all the details. I also really admire the work of Kara Walker, and love what she does with silhouettes. Anyhow all of this was on my mind when the topic of Christmas cards came up. We agreed we should make our own this year rather than buy them. I have a Gocco printer and all we really needed was a simple design to get started.
The photo shows what I came up with today.

I thought it showed a lot of potential. This is just the initial drawing mind you. It was to be printed in color with perhaps a wreath surrounding the deer. A little bit art nouveau, a little bit silly, but you know simple, obviously personal and kind of fun... I was ready to go. That was when my design got vetoed. Something about no way in hell my better half was going to let me send cards with his profile on a prancing deer to relatives and friends. Whatever. I still think I'm going to embroider the design on a pillow, or even make stuffed Christmas ornaments with the same motif. If you receive a store bought card from us this year, it's not because I didn't try.

All bitch, no stitch..

I've been trying to knit for a few years now. I've checked out countless books from the library and recently tried viewing knitting dvds to get the hang of it. I managed to learn to cast on and knit, but could not figure out how to purl for the life of me. It started to make me really mad. I can learn anything from a book!
Last night I gave in and signed up for a beginning knitting course here. In 2 hours I learned a much easier way to cast on, a more comfortable way to hold my needles (My diy method was to jam one needle in my stomach), how to bind off a project, and how to Purl!!! At long last. The teacher was fantastic. She encouraged us to just keep knitting. Any mistakes along the way at this point are to be considered 'decorative design elements'.
So that's my homework this week- Knit endlessly to establish a rhythm. It's not so easy for me to keep going once I make a mistake, but I look forward to having something to obsess about in the evenings when it's too cold and dreary to make it out to the shed for painting. Watch out friends and family-- custom knit scarves with ample 'decorative design elements' may be coming your way this Christmas.

Things I've been doing other than blogging

1. Went to see FEIST. Who was phenomenal.

2. Admiring this strange yet wonderful item on Etsy

3. Cleaning out the shed/studio yet again..

4. Reading this and this. Oh and this too!

6. Oh and figuring out how to insert clickable links in my posts...

I did also manage to get some small acrylic paintings up in my shop over the week and I'm up to two full pages for the holidays, which has me feeling very accomplished.

I also got my Edie prints back from the printer and was very pleased with the results. He did a fantastic job matching the color and the quality is 100 times better than what I got back from the online service. Lesson learned- go local. Even when it means visiting a dreaded gated community.

The next two days I will be in a furious wax melting mania. Cross me heart.

Fish out of Water

I went to visit a local printer today to get giclee prints made of the Beales paintings. I had tried an online printing service, but the prints came back really flat and acid green in color. No good. So I found this guy online who is a retired engineer and husband of a great watercolor artist and made an appointment with him for this afternoon. He works out of his home in a rich suburb. I sort of knew what to expect because of the address, but when I got there I found a gated community! I hadn't entered a gated community since living in Mexico City. You could say I'm uncomfortable with money. Sure, I've had wealthy friends. Eccentric son of foreign diplomat money I can deal with. Suburban office working, beige carpeted Mc Mansion type money makes me twitchy, and a gate and buzzer.. well that just doesn't register. Driving around I felt I was going to be issued a citation simply for driving a car not of this decade.. or the last for that matter. I was thankful at least that we had fixed the car window so I was able to ring the buzzer at the gate without getting out of the car. The printer was nice enough. Very polite and experienced. I like the idea of knowing who is printing my paintings and having him work from the actual painting rather than a digital file. I pick up the prints on Tuesday. Wish me luck..
After leaving the land of large lawns and suburban bavarian architecture, I headed back to my neighborhood hardware store to buy some EnviroTex Lite Resin. The cashier did a little orchestra conductor dance as he rang me up. Then I went to Starbucks to thieve some stir sticks. Yup I'm workin' class.
Why the picture? All blog posts ought to have one- and well it's a perty day.

Edies are scanned, and completely clothed

I've been using the scanner at Walgreens. I usually wait until I have 3 or 4 things to scan before I go, since it seems wasteful and silly to get a cd of just one image. Tonight I walked over with three paintings to scan and returned an hour later to get my disk. I was given three disks by a guy who said he was new. "It just started spitting out disks" he said, "I thought it was kinda wierd". errrr ok. I thought maybe he burned each image on a separate disk and took them home to investigate. Nope. I got my scans, plus 2 disks of somebody's naked pics. Artful nudes really. Tatooed ladies frolicking in the forest sort of thing. I really wanted to post one on my blog. In fact I almost regret returning them as I type. It was the right thing to do though. Should I be involved in a nude forest frolicking photos session, and my photos were to fall into the wrong hands, I would hope someone would do the same for me. Then again, it's doubtful that I would entrust them to an 18 year old boy working the Walgreens photo booth....
So no naked pics, just Big and Little Edie in all their modesty.

35 too old for colored jeans?

errrr no-- not when they're bright turquoise and 17.50 from Old Navy! I guess you'd have to be 24 to justify the $68 pair at Urban Outfitters however..
I try to stay away from Old Navy, just as I try to avoid Forever 21. Cheap clothes, made in Madagascar... but it was my birthday and there was nothing fun at the thrift store... and they're bright turquoise.
In other news:
It's a beautiful Fall day
I'm melting beeswax in the kitchen
I finished the Edies! Just have to let them dry before scanning
I started watching Bonjour Tristesse with Jean Seberg and it's taking all my strength not to run to the nearest salon and get an adorable pixie cut.

Phone for you

I finished another encaustic painting! I'm loooving playing with drawing into the wax. I've got to get some more supports built this week to keep going. I've been bracing thin birch panels with pine strips of wood to creat sort of a box that sits out from the wall. I've left the sides wood on this piece, but I may paint them white.. I could really use my table saw, since I've been using a hand saw to cut the wood and it's really slowing me down. I sort of like the less than perfect results you get with handtools however. Someday we will have enough space to store all my art supplies and tools...
Meanwhile I sold a painting on Etsy! One of my favorites "Beauty and the Bird", so it's off to the post office today and I have some $$ towards a much needed digital camera yipee!
Lots to do today.... but first off to the gym.

Sidetracked with the Beales

Yea!! I just got my new encaustic paintings posted to my Etsy store. It feels so good to finally post new things. I hadn't posted much all summer since, as usual I decided to switch gears and learn something new, when I was just geting into a rythym with oil painting. Fun for sure, but it doesn't amount to many new paintings...
But alas a pause from the encaustics to finish some long neglected Beales paintings.
I've got this small little Edie just about finished- just lacking some minor touches, but I'm really happy with it.
My intention this morning was to paint a partner canvas- same size but of big Edie. Leave it to me to get sidetracked. Instead, I started a new larger canvas of a scene with both Edies on it. I 'd really been wanting to see both Edies together and to paint larger, so I'm glad I went with it. It's drying now so I can get back to work on it tomorrow-- and also Big Edie's portrait. I swear...! Must have Edie prints done for Christmas.