He’s been faceless for ages now. It’s been a combination of limited time and fear. BJDs are purely self-indulgent for me (although my excuse for buying the first one was to see how the ball-jointing and stringing was done so I could eventually sculpt one, heh) so spending time working on them is my lowest priority. What little time I get to spend actually working in my studio is usually taken up by meeting challenge obligations, finishing up custom orders or trying to come up with new items to list in my various shops.

Bronte new, out of the box and no face up or blushing:

But, to be honest, fear was another factor. Doing a “face up” on a bjd seemed vastly different somehow to painting an art doll. Truth is that there are some differences but many of the main techniques are the same. The real key seems to be illusion, just as it is with art dolls and the motto “less is better.”

Bronte’s face up wasn’t my first on a bjd. The first one I did on another tiny I have, a Dollzone BB Judy. She came out looking extremely embarrassed (red-orange all over) although she wasn’t horrific for a first face up, she was definitely well overdone.

And just to show you what a difference a face up makes, here’s Judy before I did her face and body blushing:

Another bjd enthusiast and friend came over one weekend and we did our first face ups together. Neither of us had any experience with it so it was pretty much the blind leading the blind. And Judy, as seen above, was the result on my part. Not so great but passable.

Judy in one of my favorite poses:

There are a few local bjd collectors and we meet up occasionally. We did a “craft day” earlier this month. Everyone brought dolls (of course) and then we split off and did a variety of things–making a set, sewing, and face ups. I brought Bronte and Zophiel and worked on both heads but Zophiel’s didn’t come out right. Bronte’s, however, came out just fine although I wasn’t initially thrilled with his eyebrows. When I pulled his head out later, after coming home, I thought they might look alright if I finished them up so I did. And, voila! They looked pretty good. So, not too bad of a job for a second face up. Serious props to Natalie/Dybbuk for teaching a few of us how to do face ups at our craft day!

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Not sure how any of these are going to look when it’s all said and done but that first one is pictures of my Storkop dolls. I have plans for at least a dozen more of them.

Next, let’s look at other art dolls I’ve made:

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And now we’ll check out my dolls that are in progress (and could potentially never be finished but don’t tell anyone I said that):

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Now you may be wondering why I didn’t do a little more homework on this gallery plugin before installing it. Truth is, I’ve used this gallery plugin before (it was an older iteration so I’m still figuring out what updates have been done on it). And I liked it so I figured I would probably still like it.

Book time! This first set are books made from various fabric, decorative papers, or mixed materials (leather spines, polymer clay embellishments, etc.).

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My leather bound books, mostly handcarved, although one of them was made from a pair of vintage ladies gloves in a size XXX-Small (I’m not even sure my kids could’ve worn them).

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And, finally, I leave you with my currently most prolific category, books made with polymer clay covers (I was quite surprised when I started to adding these images in and realized there were so many).

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That’s all for the picspam/trial run of the gallery. I’m in the midst of writing up a post that shares my how-to for tea-staining and distressing paper (something I love to do for my books). Hopefully I’ll get that posted in the next couple of days.

For Jessica’s birthday today, we took them out to Aquarena Springs. It’s a research/environmental conservation center that’s part of Texas State University. It also has glass-bottom boat rides, a nice little gift shop and a small, but interesting Aquarium. We thought the girls would enjoy the glass-bottom boats and the Aquarium (which they did).

The interesting thing is that I went to Aquarena Springs when I was a teenager. My mother, sister and I went on an outing there one day and I remembered finding the glass-bottom boats exciting. What I didn’t remember well were the other attractions that made up Aquarena Springs back then. When we went, the Springs was an amusement park with the glass-bottom boats as a big attraction but they also had an underwater “theater.” The “Aqua-arena” which is where the name came from. You would go into an underwater seating area and watch little underwater shows through the glass (ladies dressed up as mermaid having tea, pigs swimming and doing tricks for their food, etc.). I suspect they probably stocked the lake with various fish and aquatic animals so that the visitors would have plenty of underwater critters to watch during the boat rides. I remember enjoying it very much but the new Aquarena Springs is quite a bit different. We did find it to be very interesting, although the details weren’t what my girls enjoyed, of course. They loved seeing the fish swimming under the boat, the blue heron resting at the edge of the bank, the glimpse of a turtle or two going by the boat, going through a little interactive museum area that shared information about the underwater springs throughout Texas, and, of course the gift shop with all it’s goodies to browse through.

They probably enjoyed the aquarium the most. It was feeding time while we were there so we got to watch a diver inside one of the tanks actually feeding tiny snakes to the fish–they would take the snakes from her hand while she fed them. The tank also had a really large catfish in it that both girls were tickled to watch swimming around.

I forgot to bring my phone with me to the Springs so I didn’t get any pics of what we did there. I did however catch a couple of the most important pictures of the day:

This takes a lot of concentration...

Oh, forget the spoon!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSICA!!

Ok, this really more of a test run to see how well I set up coordinating my flickr account with my blog. Thought I would use an “awwww” picture. My daughter Jessica (on the right) with a small bjd (Dollzone BB Judy, 27cm).

A collage of the dolls I've worked on to date.

I signed up to participate in ADO’s Traveling Doll Project. Art Dolls Only is a team that I help start on Etsy–we wanted a place for those of us who make dolls for art rather than toys or children’s dolls. The team has grown by leaps and bounds…so much, in fact, that we finally had to limit our membership because it was becoming more than we could really cope with. We wanted a team that’s close-knit where most of us know each other and we feel comfortable working together. And, even more important, we wanted a team that we could promote and advertise for easily. People with a likeminded goal of promoting our dolls, our Etsy shops, and our team.

So far, I’ve participated in a couple of challenges/projects on the team but the Traveling Doll Project is a long-term one, making it a lot more consistant on my to-do list than anything else I’ve been working on (or not working on, as the case may be). Hmm, now that I think about, I never completel my doll for the first project (the Shakespeare Challenge). I have a half-finished Hamlet (who may turn into Romeo) sitting on one of my work tables. Destined to be another blog post in the future….

All the dolls shown in the collage above are the ones that I’ve worked on so far (or are currently at home with me). Pierre, the little guy in the bottom right corner, is presently sitting on my desk waiting for me to make him some accessories for his travels. I did a blog post today on the dolls I’ve worked on over on the Traveling Doll Project Blog so you can read through that for more details: Traveling Doll Project: Dolls to Date.

What else am I not working on that I should be? Well, I’ve got a commission for Michelle of Studio at Crowhaven Farm that I need to actually get into. Michelle is on a team called the Dark Arts Guild that focuses on art of a darker nature and she wants a large art journal for herself with a skull on the cover. This will definitely be a challenge to carve the skull design well, but I’m really looking forward to getting into it. The current design idea:

This is the current design idea. The journal will have two straps with buckles.

I also need to make three miniature books. One for Pierre Heart, of course (a journal–he may have to do a bit of sketching and writing in it before he heads off to his next destination). One for a friend who traded me a bunch of eyes in exchange for a journal for her 24″ wizard. This one will be a spell book of some sort with all kinds of esoteric designs on the cover. The final book is for another friend who collects ball-jointed dolls. She made one of my bjds a lovely elvish, woodland type outfit and I told her I’d make her something in exchange. Well, her doll is musical so I’ll be making him a large music portfolio for holding sheet music. With a Celtic design on the cover. All of them leather and I better cracking on them soon.

Aerwyn wearing the outfit made for her by Nikki

UFO’s–I have entirely too many of them at this point. More than three journals that I started and haven’t finished, and around 10 (yes, that’s right, I said TEN) dolls that I’ve started and haven’t finished. I’m really going to have to prioritize and start figuring out what to get finished.

And finally…

So, if you wandered by my blog last week (any of the five of you who might actually do so) and noticed that it was unavailable, it’s back up. And will hopefully stay that way permanently now. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to speak about the situation but, for now, I’m just happy to have my site (including my blog) back up and available.

My computer was giving me problems so, while it’s still functioning alright, it crashes regularly and just generally causes problems while working with it. It has been taken apart and checked out by a professional and then reformatted. It still has problems.

Instead of waiting for it to die on me and losing everything, I took steps this time to keep from losing it all. I got an external hard drive and did a full back up of my docs and application data. I also got a new laptop, so I can slowly migrate and clean things up before my old computer keels over. So I’ve been working on switching things over and finally got around to adding some of my email addies (to find hundreds of emails waiting for me).

I’ve also been taking care of mom’s mail-order business for her while she’s “on vacation” for a month or so. She went up to Ohio to visit my sister and her family. Sis recently adopted four kids (ack!) and then went and got pregnant. She just had her baby last month (or maybe it was the month before) so mom wanted to go meet all her new grandbabies.

Needless to say, I’ve been busy here and making books and dolls hasn’t been at the top of the list. Hopefully, I’ll have something art related to post soon (once I get my photo-editing software on this new computer and can get some photos ready).

Right side of studio

I’m spoiled. I won’t deny it. I have a pretty large studio space, all things

Sculpting tables: L, polymer clay/dry sculpting; R, wet sculpting (air-dry clay)

considered. I have five 3′ x 2′ work tables (not very large but I have work space for different parts of my processes–wet sculpting, dry sculpting, finishing, bookbinding, and drawing/photo taking). These tables are pretty awesome. I ran across a woman at a local craft show who made furniture out of used wood and got her to work with me to design tables for my studio with shelves over them (for storing supplies, etc.). The price was unbelievable, too, so I won’t even go there.

I’m still working on setting some of these up, and rearranging, especially since I don’t do much polymer at all anymore–it’s changed what supplies are used for finishing and which ones are used while I’m sculpting.

Bookbinding Table

My bookbinding space is really too small. I may steal one of the sculpting tables (since I don’t do polymer clay anymore) and use it as a second bookbinding table so I can separate out the wet and dry aspects of it, as well. Plus, since I’ve gotten into leather carving, I’m starting to collect quite a few tools for that and could use more space for storing those items.

Drawing/Photo Table

I’m slowly learning to draw, playing around with quite a variety of media from colored pencils (and all the varieties of pencils you can think of–pastel, watercolor, graphite, etc.) to markers. I have a pretty good collection of artist acrylics, a few watercolors and some ideas for doing some collage work and altered books that could use all these techniques and media. As you can tell by how piled up the table is, I don’t get around to working on this stuff much.

Paper storage, cutting table, and junk pile

I have a thing for drawers. I LOVE cabinets with tons of drawers (watch me drool over apothecary and Warren cabinets). Anyway, I needed a place to store my papers for bookbinding and this was another find. A guy at a local flea market makes chests and cabinets so, again, I worked with him to design a storage cabinet for me–large drawers for paper and tons of little apothecary type drawers for little tools. Another steal, to be honest. I love finding retired people who are creating things for their enjoyment and not trying to make a huge profit on something. I added the glass knobs and antiqued copper label holders (killed my arms in the process, I might add). I use this surface for cutting and tearing paper, gluing up the spines and storing half-finished projects.

Bookshelves

Being a bookbinder, naturally I love books. I especially love how-to’s on making books and dolls. Throw in some books on calligraphy, papermaking, drawing, altered arts, collage, a few books on ancient cultures and languages, and some vintage books for altering and you’ll have my bookshelves (in my studio, don’t ask about the rest of the house). There are frequently piles of books lying around my studio, office desk, and/or nightstand so these shelves aren’t always packed.

You might be able to see the edge of fridge in the picture. Yep, my studio even has a refrigerator in it (it’s the family fridge, although I used to store polymer clay in there when I was using it). Next to the fridge is a tabletop convection oven (it’s ok but leaks heat like a sieve) and a small shelf with my ribbon and yarn.

Fabric storage

And then there’s the fabric. I used to be a self-professed fabri-phobe. Now I’m just a sewing-phobe. I love fabric. I usually go to one of the local fabric stores when they’re having a sale and buy 1/2 yard or one yard of each of those luscious fabrics that would break the bank if you bought enough to make an outfit for yourself. I’m still a novice at fabric hoarding, though, as you can tell by my measly four short shelves of fabric. The tubs were another awesome find at an estate sale–made my fabric organizing a breeze.

So that was about a 360 degree tour of my studio. I envisioned the center of the room being rather empty with possibly a slightly larger table, eventually, for having friends over, etc. But, alas, it’s filled with more storage crap because, like a true artist/crafter I hoard EVERYTHING because I “might” need it at some point.

And that’s my studio space.

Well, the first big news is that we finally got Etsy to give us a Dolls and Miniatures Category!! It’s very exciting stuff because people have been on Etsy for over three years asking for one. When I first signed up with Etsy, I was thrilled to find the site but a little disappointed that there was no specific category for my art dolls. After campaigning for several months with a core group of doll artists and miniaturists and a petition of over 700 signatures, we finally got a live category for our art!!

Here’s a link to the category: Dolls and Miniatures on Etsy.

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The Bookbinders of Etsy Street Team is holding a Halloween Challenge. I was planning to enter a book but, as usual, I picked a totally new technique to use (relief work in leather) and couldn’t get it done in time. If I manage to figure it out before the end of the week, I’ll send it in to Rhonda to add to the group. For now, here’s the link to the voting post–GO VOTE!

BEST Halloween Challenge

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Other exciting news for me personally–I finally broke down and bought a graphic tablet. I didn’t go with Wacom (waaaay out of my budget) but got a Genius tablet that had some good reviews. So far I like it a lot but there’s definitely a learning curve that I’m still on the lower end of.

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What more do I have to share? I’ve got more projects started and ideas swirling around my brain than time to get them done. I picked up several copies of dog eared magazine from an estate sale and have had too much inspiration from it. The first time I ever saw it, I hesitated to subscribe because I was interested in basic bookbinding and it’s full of various book arts techniques and discussions from altered books to zines to traditional binding and everything in between. There’s an issue on zines, miniature books, popups and sculptural books. It’s packed full of ideas and with the first issue I was hooked–using rubber bands for binding (which make little books that even I can complete in under an hour), among other simple and unusual binding ideas.

I’ve got a Pumpkin King started that is, alas, going to be finished after Halloween (my usual timing; complete the holiday-themed item following the holiday). Ah well, perhaps some Halloween-all-year-round person will be interested in him. I plan to do a post sharing his progress.

I’ve got two leather relief books I’m working on–a spider on a web and a pumpkin. Again, two items that will problem be completed after the holiday, but I’m learning/teaching myself a new technique so I refuse to be frustrated at my timing.

I’ve got two custom full leather books to make, with two more waiting in the wings. I’ve got four assemblage dolls with books, one of which is pretty far along. I’ve got an Egyptian book that was going to be made out of polymer clay but will now be made from Apoxie Sculpt. I’ve got one Medieval style book in the same boat. Both of those will fall under my Keith Smith Challenge. I’ve got a doll sculpted on a bottle that I’m in the middle of; five pixies that go in a Victorian-style birdcage; and one man standing the rain. I’ve got five stamped and carved full leather books I’m working on; one artist book about Wash’s dinosaurs (from Firefly, the TV series); and one artist book about soap (don’t ask me why–just something that came to me one day that I started on).

Yep, definitely have more ideas and projects started than I have time to work on.