My Year End Review

Victorian Belsnickel

This is my last post for the year.  I am looking back to see just what exactly I did this year.    Sometimes it feels as if I did not get anything done, but I actually accomplished quite a bit.  After checking through the  year's blog posts I am always amazed.  I get the feeling of "I did all that?"  I also get to see what I wanted to do that fell by the wayside.  Even in a whole year, there never seems to be enough time.

A lot of my time this year was spent on taking trips.  This year my husband and I made nine road trips.  Our average trip length is four days.  So at least thirty-six days this year were spent on travel.  There were also some trips that did not make it on the blog because they were related to business.  However, the trip itself does not cover the time involved.  Each trip also takes up a couple of days on either side of it for planning, shopping, packing, doing the laundry afterwards, and catching up on everything that did not get done while we were away.  So really, about seventy-two days were involved once you count in all of the effort involved in taking the trip.  That actually takes up about a fifth of the year.   I guess that is part of the reason that I felt as if I did not do a lot of crafting this year.  But spending time at our cabin is worth every minute of the effort involved.

Handmade Lamb.

Embroidered Jacket.

Our travels to the cabin were as much about hard work as they were about leisure.  This year we primarily worked on the bedroom.  We primed and painted the walls and trim.  We installed a wood slat ceiling and laminate flooring.  The front porch was rotting out and that was repaired. And of course, there is always yard cleanup, lawn mowing, and getting up leaves.  That was a lot of work in a very short period of time. 

The leisure part of our travels was that we spent time with friends and family.  We also attended the Wine and Garlic festival.  This festival was something we have attended annually for a number of years now.  We also made a trip to Pennsylvania to spend time with family members.  A good time was had by all.

Eggshell mosaic.

The crafting part of my year seems small but some of the projects were complex and took a great amount of time.  Three of my projects were entered into competitions at the State Fair of Virginia.  It was my first time to enter these competitions. My efforts were rewarded by receiving ribbons in three categories.  My first project of the year was a doll:  a Victorian Belsnickel.  That took third place the the Handmade Doll contest.  My folk art lamb took second place in the handmade toy contest.  I embroidered a denim jacket for a second place finish in the Wearable Art category.  It was really exciting to be able to show my work and have it appreciated. 

Snowflake quilt.

Owl stencil.

Aside form the long, time consuming projects I also did a few smaller, less intensive projects.  I practiced making a small mosaic using pieces of eggshell.  I created a stencil for a silhouette of an owl painting.  I also painted a small picture of an owl in acrylic paint.  Coloring groups were started this year and I made a couple of fabric colored pencil holders in order to transport my pencils.  Unfortunately, the groups did not last long.  I have a lot of colored pencils and coloring books, and very little time to work on them.  I also made the ill-fated sphere mold.  I was trying to make a mold for making spheres that I could use to make my own foam spheres.  That was quite a laugh.  I filled the mold full of foam.  The foam was under so much pressure that it forced its way out of the mold and all over the ground.  The foam leaving the mold created a siphoning action which pulled out almost all of the foam.  When I opened the mold it was empty except for a thin coating along the inside of the mold.  Well, live and learn.  Not every experiment is going to be a success.

Pencil holder.

Quilting and embroidery played a big part in my year this year.  Aside from the embroidered denim jacket, I also made a small table runner quilt with snowflake embroidery.  I completed that quilt just before Thanksgiving.  Since I completed the snowflake quilt, I have begun work on another quilt.  I will be blogging on that in the coming year.  I also joined a group of quilters that met at our local library and began quilting that once a week.  I have been invited to join their quilting guild.  I will become a member after the new year starts.  It looks like next year is going to be extra busy.

Road trip.

Aside from the quilt, I also learned how to embroider around mirror tiles.  Mirror tiles embroidered on textiles is a feature in some forms of Indian embroidery.  I was fortunate enough to have met a woman from India this year who took the time to teach me the skill.  It also opened up new horizons for me as I explored other types of Indian embroidery.  It is a very rich tradition of beautiful thread work.  I look forward to learning more about this type of embroidery.

This year I also worked on two other dolls.  For Halloween, I created a vampire doll.  It lies in a small wooden coffin.  When you open the lid, a concealed spring releases and the doll springs up and looks as if it it trying to climb out of the coffin.  It was just a fun project.  I could have spent more time on it than I did and it would have looked a lot better. 

Embroidered mirror tile.

I am still working on the second doll.  I saw an article in Art Doll magazine about how someone had used a doll as a mold to create a papier mache' doll.  I decided to give it a try while adding on some additional challenges for myself.  (See my December 2016 blog posts entitled Doll Experiment to see more on this subject.)  I am still working on that doll, and this project will carry over into January.  I have completed making the doll, and have started on painting the doll and adding its clothing.
 

There were a few projects that I had hoped to get to, but were either never started or fell off the radar along the way.  I had started the year with a plan to do more drawing to improve my drawing skills.  I made several sketches but as other projects needed to be completed by a certain date I let go of the drawing. 

I also wanted to do some wood carving.  That project never even got started.  I do plan to make another walking stick and there may be some wood carving on it.  Last year when I was in San Diego, I saw an exhibit of carved walking sticks at a Folk Art Museum.  There were many inspirational pieces there.  It may take my walking stick plans into some new directions.  I had learning wood carving on my to do list but I just ran out of time.

Well, that was my year in a nutshell.  The next post will be on Thursday, January 5th.  I will not be blogging on New Years Day.  Check back then for the next blog post.

Road Trip - Road Art - December 2016

It is the last week in December, and I have made one more road trip this year.  Although the weather was worse in many parts of the country, it was only rainy and foggy here.  The temperature varied from 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3.33 C.) to 51 degrees (10.56 C).  The air was warmer higher in the atmosphere, which is why we had rain instead of snow.  As we went up into the mountains, the temperature grew warmer the higher we went.  Usually, it is the other way around. 

This last trip of the year started like our first road trip this year.  We drove in rain and fog.  Fortunately, the rain was fairly light.  I guess some people held off from traveling until the rain cleared.  The traffic up to the mountains was not heavy, although the ride home had a lot of traffic most of the way.  Anyway, the trip afforded some great views of clouds and fog in the mountains.  The fog settles in the low places.  It is fascinating and eerie to watch as a cloud comes over the mountains and travels downwards.

I managed to snap a photo of a tourist attraction along the way.  It is situated on the road in such a way that I had a hard time trying to snap a good picture.  I asked my husband to pull in so I could get out and take some photos but he did not want to do that because there were some people in the parking lot.  Maybe one day I will be able to get some good shots of it.  The attraction is very strange.  I guess the best way to explain it is that some people have beliefs that are not in line with scientific explanations.

One such scenario is located on the roof of the entrance.  The dinosaur head is from a T-Rex and is made from fiberglass.  (I am not sure if the underlying support system is metal or stryofoam.  The dinosaur head tends to travel around.  A few years ago it sat on top of the marquis for the drive-in movie.   The human figure appears to be wearing something of a military uniform from World War II and is fighting the dinosaur with a sword.

The man that made the dinosaurs also made an attraction called Foamhenge.  It was a life size replica of Stonehenge.  The stones were in their astronomically correct position.  Foamhenge is more or less authentic to the original with one exception:  one of the blue stone slabs had a life size Merlin figure on it looking like he was surfing.  A nearby plaque stated that one theory was that Merlin levitated the blue stones into place by magic.  I guess you have to have a sense of humor about these things.  Unfortunately, the day I visited Foamhenge I did not have a camera with me.  The next time I went by the gates were locked.  Now that attraction is being moved to a new location.  It is supposed to open in Fairfax County, Virginia in 2017. 

The guy that made the attractions also made a piece of road art of Raquel Welch riding on a dinosaur.  I posted a photo of that a few years ago in one of my road art blog posts.  Somewhere along the line the female figure came off the dinosaur.  I do not know it it was ripped off during a windstorm or damaged by vandalism.  The dinosaur remains in the same spot but it is now alone.  It is hard to guess what happened.  One time the man's studio was set on fire by people that did not care for some of his ideas. 

The year draws to a close.  I will have one more post before the New Years day.  Check back on Thursday for that post.

Doll Experiment - Part 10

It is so close to the holidays that I am not getting much crafting done.  I did manage to complete sanding the doll.  Or, as much sanding as I plan on doing.  It could really use some more, but in order to get on with the project I am saying "good enough".  I spent more time sanding on areas that will show and less time on what will be covered by the doll's costume. 

I also managed to get the first coat of Gesso on the doll.  It will take at least one more coat of Gesso and maybe more to make it opaque enough that the newsprint will not show through.  The doll looks very strange with the white paint on it.  In a way it looks as if it is in some sort of larval stage.  It looks so creepy that I almost hesitate to put up a picture of it.  I am sure that I have seen this creature either in some horror movie or perhaps it was in my dreams.  I don't know.  It just sort of weirds me out.  I will actually be glad when I get on with the painting.  I doubt that this doll will be complete by the end of the year.  The painting may be completed, but the costuming most likely will not.  I do expect that I will complete it in January though.

Sunday is a holiday, so I will not be blogging then.  I will be blogging on the following Thursday.  Check back then for the next blog post.

Doll Experiment - Part 9

This experiment has been going on for a while.  Papier mache' is not a quick medium to work with.  I guess I should recap what has happened so far.  I began by using a damaged doll as a mold.  Some inexpensive plastic safety eyes were added, then painted over.  I covered the doll in papier mache' then cut the mold apart and removed the doll.  I removed the arms and legs from the papier mache' figure.  The arms were re-positioned in order to give the doll a new pose.  The legs were filled with gravel  to weight the figure in order for it to stand on its own.  All the limbs were covered with more papier mache' to make the figure whole again.  On my last blog post I showed how I used items as an armature to give the doll some curves so that it looked like an adult doll and less like a robot. 

Since I blogged last I have re-attached the thumb on the right hand of the doll.  I wanted to give the hand the appearance of grasping an object.  The thumb was removed and a new thumb was made from paper and tape.  The thumb was covered with strip type papier mache' and then reattached to the hand.  Extra papier mache' strips were added to change the shape of the hand to match what a grasping hand looks like.  As the doll progresses and the accessories are added it something will be in the dolls grasp.  A ribbon or string will pass through the opening in the hand.   I will be blogging more about that in a later blog post.

I also sanded the doll this week.  I still have a little more sanding to do on the hands and feet before I begin painting.  This week I expect to finish sanding then begin painting the doll.  I will paint on at least two (maybe more as needed) coats of Gesso before I began adding any color to the doll.  The Gesso will cover the newsprint with white opaque paint so that it will not show through the other paints.  Gesso will also fill in any small pits or cracks that were not removed during the sanding.

The first layer of paint for the eyes was done earlier in the project so that I had a good idea of where the doll was going to be looking.  I needed that for helping me develop the pose.  I plan to go back this week and do more work on the eyes to make them look more realistic.

I am still trying to get things ready for the holiday.  I doubt that I will get much more done than that in the coming week.  I will be blogging on Thursday with the update.  I will not be blogging next Sunday as that is Christmas day.

Doll Experiment - Part 8

Flat figure. Photo 1.

Please note:  the pictures are all over the place because the blog platform is giving me a lot of trouble today.  It will not allow me to place the pictures where I want them.  It is posting the photos in places where I did not want them to be and I don't have time to keep messing with the blog to get it right.

Glass gems as armature. (2)

I normally blog on Sunday, but yesterday my husband was busy with a project on the computer.  We don't have a lot of bandwidth, so I waited until today to put my blog up.   My apologies to readers who checked in yesterday.

(3)

(4)

In the last blog post I showed that I had the doll standing.  There was still more that needed to be done to the doll.  She had some hips, but front and back she was flat.  There was not any muscular definition nor any normal anatomical features such as the bust and buttocks.  That may be okay for a doll representing a young child, but it really does not look right for a doll representing an adult.  Before painting the doll I felt I needed to add those features.  If a doll does not mimic the human shape, it always looks off no matter how nicely the clothing is made.

To create the curves on the doll I had make some sort of armature to be added to the doll.  Then the armature would be covered with papier mache'.  There are any number of ways to create the armature for the breasts and buttocks.  I considered a number of ways to simulate the curves.  Among my choices were:  balled up paper covered by tape, balled up aluminum foil covered by tape, pompoms, small bits of shaped styrofoam, shaped cardboard and tape, and small glass gems.  They all would have worked, although the paper/tape or cardboard/tape combination could have lost its shape if moisture seeped through the tape.  No matter what armature I used, it would probably have required additional bits of padding to make the figure look right.  Generally, my choice comes down to what is available at the moment.  In this instance, what I had available was some glass gems left over from a previous project.  (There are more pictures below, I could not place the photo where I wanted.

(5)

The gems were actually a good size and shape for the bust of the doll.  It was a matter of getting them on the doll in the right place.  Although they look a little small in the photo, you have to remember that the papier mache' is going to add depth and that has to be accounted for when you create the armature.  For the buttocks I used two glass gems on each side: one rounded gem and one oblong gem.  The gems had to surrounded by bits of paper to pad the area to create the correct shape.

Once I had the shapes looking like I wanted, I covered the armature with a layer of strip style papier mache'.  Right now the doll has only one layer covering the armature.  I need to give the areas two more layers to make sure that everything is secure. 

It will take two or three days to add the additional layers of papier mache'.  At the moment, the doll is still balanced even though glass gems, paper, and tape have been added. 

(6)

I may not have anything to blog about on Thursday other than that I will have added the additional layers of papier mache'.  If there is no blog post Thursday, I will be posting new photos again on Sunday.  Hopefully I will have been able to start the sanding by that time.

Doll Experiment - Part 7

Doll torso

I did not post on Sunday.  With the holidays coming up I have been swamped.  Sometimes there is just too much going on to make time to blog.  I used to post twice a week every week, but that has been falling by the wayside for a while.  Sometimes I have to choose between blogging or crafting.  I generally choose crafting because if I don't craft something I have little to blog about. 

I am blogging today as I have managed to carve out some time in my studio (aka the spare bedroom).  Last blog post I showed that I was able to re-position the arms.  Today I will be blogging about the legs and weighting the doll in order to stand.  At least I have been working in that direction. 

I ended up making some extra work for myself.  If I had thought about it more I might have completed the task of the doll standing by now.  The doll that I used as a mold for the papier mache' did not stand on its own.  It used a doll stand.   Also, as I blogged in previous posts, I had changed the pose of the doll's arms, which shifted the weight on the front of the doll.  I wanted to weight the legs so the doll would be able to stand. 

Not thickness of the papier mache'.

The problem started when I made the cut on the torso.  I was thinking about weight in the legs and decided to cut the legs just where they met the torso in order to have the maximum amount of leg room for adding the weight.  If I had just decided to make the cut at the hip, I would have saved myself some work because the legs would have been one unit rather than two units. 

 Because I had to rejoin both legs it created extra work.  But that is not the only problem I created for myself.  I am getting ahead of myself here though so let me go on from weighting the legs and get back to what else went wrong. 

I weighted the legs using aquarium gravel.  Why aquarium gravel you might ask?  Well it is because I had some left over from another project in which the small bits of gravel made up part of a mosaic.  I had plenty left over.  Also, the gravel can be inexpensive compared to other items that can be used as weights.  A pound and a half of aquarium gravel  (0.68 kilograms) can from two dollars to twelve dollars a bag depending on features such as whether it is dyed or polished.  Two pounds of plastic pellets (0.91 kilograms) for stuffing toys can run sixteen dollars.  So gravel made sense in this case.

I filled the legs with gravel, covered the top of the area with tape and began the process of re-attaching the legs to the torso.  And that is when things started to go awry.  First off, the doll that was used as a mold for the papier mache' had a defect.  The porcelain legs were not attached evenly.  One leg was slightly longer than the other.  Since the original mold of the doll was cast as one piece, my doll had one leg slightly longer than the other.  That had to be addressed if I was ever going to be able to get the doll to stand on its own.  Furthermore, the tape that was added over top of the legs added to the unevenness in the legs.  The longer leg had to be shortened or the shorter leg had to be made longer.  To try to build up the short leg would mean that one foot was thicker than the other.  I decided to try to remove some of the length from the longer leg.

Maybe you can guess where this is going....  I took some length off the top of the longer leg.  I used a cutting blade with my rotary tool for this.  I did not remove enough.  I had to remove more.  I removed more and of course, it was too much.  So I ended up having to rebuild a section of the left leg.  It took a while.

After I filled the legs with gravel, their tops were taped with masking tape.  Then the legs were tapped to the torso.  Of course, there was a void in one leg where too much material had been removed.  The opening at the bottom of the torso was also taped with masking tape.  Between the two pieces of tape, a ball of aluminum foil was shaped to fit the area of the void and all that was covered with masking tape as well.   All of that was covered with multiple layers of papier mache'.  I allowed each layer to dry completely before adding a new layer.  

Each leg had to be added separately.  I tried to do both of them at once, but the legs kept shifting as I was trying to get them into position.  I finally gave up on that idea and added the legs one at a time.  As I said earlier in the post, if I had just removed the legs at the hip rather than at the base of the torso, it might have saved me some time, although I don't believe that I could have made the doll stand if I had not adjusted the length of the legs.  One foot would have looked much to thick.  Or conversely, I could have removed the shorter leg and added some length to it.  Well 20/20 hindsight is easy enough.  I wish I had considered it more before making those cuts.  However, I was in a very busy and did not think it through enough.  I will know better if I decide to try something like this again.

In the photo of the doll's leg filled with gravel, you can see the thickness of the papier mache'.  I only applied three layers to get it that thick.  Of course, when you are doing papier mache' each piece of paper  will overlap another piece so you are actually looking at double the original three layers.  

Anyway, the doll is back together at this point.  The balance is still a little off and I need to do a little work on that.  This is not the end of the papier mache' part of the process, but I will blog on what is coming next in my next post.

Doll Experiment - Part 6

The black line indicates material to be removed.

Gap created when arm pose was changed.

Now that I am back from the latest road trip, and Thanksgiving is over, I am getting back into the studio.  I have been continuing my work on a doll experiment.  I had seen an article in Art Doll magazine where an artist had created a doll in papier mache' using another doll as a mold.  I thought I would give that a try and see what I could come up with.  However, I did not want to just recreate the original doll, so I set myself some challenges to make some changes to the doll.  The challenges were to add plastic eyes, change the pose of the doll, and to make the doll stand.  This blog post will be about changing the pose by attaching the arms.  Readers can scroll back to see previous posts on how the doll got to this point.  There may be a few intervening posts on various topics.  The easiest way to read all the posts would be to select the menu for posts from the past month or two at folkartbycaroljones@blogspot.com

The eyes have an initial coat of paint on them.  They are not complete.  It is pointless to finish them until all the papier mache' has been added.  However, the painted eyes do give me an idea of where the doll is looking, which helped me consider where I wanted to place the doll's hands.  I was glad to find a doll that had a head that was oriented something other than straight forward.  So many dolls have that blank open eyed, straight forward stare.   

The original doll had a porcelain head, arms, and legs.  The arms and legs were stuck out rigidly from the body.  I wanted to change the position of the arms to give some appearance of movement and to help the doll tell a story.  A doll body by itself cannot say by so much.  By introducing action, and by using props and accessories, the doll tells a story about who she is or what she is doing. In the previous post, I had blogged about how to remove the arms and cut them in order to change the pose.  Now I have to put them back together.  It was a bit of work.

After removing the arms, I had to remove some material from each piece of the arm in order to change the pose.  When the arm was moved forward and raised, part of the shoulder extended beyond the back of the doll.  With the elbow bent, some material needed to be removed from the front of the joint in order to accommodate the bend.  The bend also created a void at the elbow which needed to be filled in.  The pictures might make more sense than my explanation on this.

I had made the original straight cuts using a small saw.  The saw did not work well on the curved cuts needed to remove the material at the joints.  I had to apply pressure with the saw and it was collapsing the taped over cuts made while I was removing the doll mold from the original doll.  I switched to using a cutting wheel with my rotary cutting tool.  I removed crescent shaped sections from the joints. I inserted some balled up foil into the arm at the elbow joints to give the area some support. Then I taped the arms back together with masking tape.  The shoulder joints were taped then reinforced with strips of folded paper and more tape to fill in the void.  The body is hollow and there was no way to keep a ball of foil in place at that joint.

On the doll's left hand, I removed the thumb.  I want to change the position of the thumb so it looks as if the hand has a grasp on something.  At this point, I have not yet added the thumb back to the hand.  I am waiting until I see how large of an opening I need in order to add an accessory before replacing the thumb.  I will blog more about that when I get to the accessories.

So the arms have been taped onto the torso.  The torso seems to be carrying the weight of the arms well.  Next I will be adding more layers of papier mache' to the doll to to cover the tape and reinforce the joints.  Each coat of papier mache' must be completely dry before adding another layer.  I expect to add at least three more layers of papier mache' before the doll is completed.

Next I will be working on attaching the legs and weighting and balancing the doll.  I do not know if I will have the rest of the papier mache' completed at that point.  If I have not yet moved onto the next part of the doll I will be blogging some more road trip photos.