First Attempt at Assembling "Junk"

Remember this post? I admit I have been a bit scared to start my first junk doll. What if it really turned out to look like a piece of junk? :)

I will say that it certainly is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I only used four pieces of the stuff Carla sent me - a paint brush, two scrabble letters and a wooden bingo number.

The face is my own creation. While I was arranging and rearranging the pieces on my work table, I noticed some crumpled cardboard with printing on it. It is actually the tag from a pair of cargo pants that I recently hemmed for hubby. I cut out a shape similar to the paint brush and glued it onto the brush.

I really am a minimalist. I thought about adding more to it, but no. This is as good as it's going to get. I plan to glue the piece to a background of painted black plywood and hang it on a wall. :)

I have a lot more "junk" so check back for more dolls.

Blue Muslin Doll

I started this doll last year. How good it feels to have it completed today. This was supposed to be my giveaway for the One World One Heart project, but I'm seriously having second thoughts. I want to keep it for myself. It looks great against our blue bedroom wall and I'm pretty sure I can have that ominous looking face in there without fear of nightmares. :)

It's made of muslin and printed cottons and mostly machine stitched. The size is approximately 18"x6". It's flat and meant to hang on a wall. (Click on the image for a larger view).

Creepy Doll WIP

It's our busiest time of year as mentioned in my previous post and poor hubby came down with a nasty case of the flu. He had to stay home and rest for three days and I had to play "Florence Nightingale". My TLC seems to have payed off as he is making a quick recovery. Now I am a bit sick and hubby is looking after me.

I was starting to panic since we were days behind with our Christmas orders and I was wondering how on earth we were going to catch up. We are so blessed because my wonderful sister and brother-in-law got up very early this morning to help us with our Christmas inventory and thanks to them, we are back on schedule.

Yesterday I spent some time at my sewing machine working on a "creepy" doll (they are so much fun). Here's a sneak preview. You get to see the finished product tomorrow.

Spooky Doll

I whipped this one up quickly for a spooky doll swap. I prefer neatness and symmetry in my work but this time I proceeded with "reckless abandon". :)

To start, I machine stitched some black netting to black broadcloth with bright red thread. The backing consists of two layers of printed cottons with wrong sides together, therefore, you see the right side of the fabric on the back and on the edges that are visible from the front. I sewed the back and front together. The seam allowance was not consistent and I really ended up with quite a mess. Then I thought, she's supposed to be a spooky doll so it's perfectly alright that she's a bit haphazard. I left all the edges raw and tossed some yarn around her neck.

I think I've really got to go a little crazy more often. I like this doll so much I don't want to part with her, but I will. I can make a few more for myself and string them up on Halloween.

The top scan shows her flat, before I added the back and polyfil. The second picture is the finished product.

Bird Woman

The Bird Woman is finished. I made a pair of very long legs and for a couple of weeks kept shifting the body up and down to find the right placement. Long legs or short legs? I opted for the shorter legs because the long legs made her look like a very big and tall drag queen and that was not the look I was trying to capture.

Headdress

Thanks Judy and Cheryl for the bird leg suggestions.

I'm still working on the body. Just for fun, I turned it upside down and positioned it as a headdress. I think it looks pretty good that way too, but she will end up being a bird.

Emergence of the Bird Woman

This is the beginning of a new project. I have the body cut out as well and when I put the two together, I thought "this looks like a bird to me". Now I have to figure out a clever way to make bird legs. :)

Sylvana, Guardian of the Dream Forest

Finally, she is finished. I photographed her outdoors using a birch tree as the back drop. I will have to figure out a good way to display her indoors.

Hubby helped me with the name. He has a great interest and knowledge about the origin and meaning of names and suggested Sylvana which means "woods" or "forest".

Leaf Doll - Almost Finished

I would hate to have to count all the stitches that have gone into this doll so far. And there are more to come.

I couldn't come up with a story/myth to go with her because I either don't have that kind of imagination or I can't be bothered to put forth the effort to think of one. Probably the latter. I do have a title for her after asking hubby for some suggestions.

Double click on the picture for a close up view.

More On The Leaf Doll

This doll is taking a bit of time to complete due to the amount of detail. The first picture is a sketch of my idea. The second is the leaf which is the body of the doll. I have made some sequined, beaded buttons which I have placed on the body for display purposes. This is not what the final layout will look like. I still have a way to go yet and wish I had more time to work on it.

I have no interest or belief in mythologies, but I thought it would be fun to create one of my own through this doll. I can do the visual but I'm not sure I am creative enough to write a good story. I'll have to give this some thought.

In Progress

I am working on several things at once right now. This is the top of a doll that is going to be very green all over. The body is all cut out and will be adorned with shades of green, including the sequined button on the bottom.

Oak Leaf Doll

Yesterday I posted the top half of this doll. Today she's all done. Her skirt is based on a loosely traced oak leaf.

New Doll

I have noticed that a lot of art dolls tend to be dark and sometimes downright ugly. Even when I try to do "dark" as shown above, it still ends up being pretty. I guess I just like pretty dolls.

This is the top half of the doll I started today. I think I will have to put her aside and continue tomorrow as the FIFA World Cup soccer game between Paraguay and the Netherlands is about to begin in a few minutes. I can't say I'm much of a soccer fan (I only follow the World Cup every four years), but I'm pulling for Paraguay. Why? Because methinks the guys on the Paraguayan team are better looking. :

EDIT-I'm a worse soccer fan than I thought. It's Uruguay, not Paraguay. LOL.

Angel Assembled

Recently I discovered artist Carla Trujillo who creates the most wonderful art doll assemblages. What a talent to be able to put together old bits and pieces and create something as wonderful as she does. I really admire that.

Then I thought about all the "junk" such an artist would have to collect and store until each object found it's proper place on a new doll. I thought about how much fun it would be to make this kind of a doll myself, but I don't have the right kind of junk. What I do have is lots of buttons, zippers and fabrics, so why not make up some body parts out of cotton and then sew them together.

Here is my first effort. I'm so pleased at how the Angel turned out.

ATC - Landscape

Somewhere I acquired a half metre of a very large pastel cotton print that I have used several times. I like to go back to it every now and again because it has such interesting possibilities. Today a small section was transformed into an ATC that looked like a landscape to me.

(This is available for trade with another fabric ATC only).

Below is what I did with the fabric last year.

Verdigris In Cloth

Verdigris: A green or bluish patina formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces exposed to the atmosphere for long periods of time.

The orange represents untarnished copper.

This was fun to work on, even though I had to put in quite a few hours. The silhouette took awhile because I'm not the skilled drawer that I once was in my youth, and I wanted to get correct (or close to) proportions. I am practicing drawing as I'd like to create some dancers in various poses.

I slightly altered the second photo so you can see the detail a little better.

Currently Working On...

Here is a preview of my current project which I hope I can complete this weekend. (Thanks to Judy Merrill-Smith for the wonderful fabrics).

Muslin Doll

It's been a while since I made a doll. It was aiming for something a little different (for me that is).

















Below is a scan. Her feet are cut off because she is too tall for my scanner bed. What I did was use torn strips of cotton as thread. I did three rows of a running stitch up the body. The middle thread continues as a scarf wrapped around her head and the outside threads exit at the shoulders and turn into hangers. Some machine stitching holds the top, middle and back layers of fabric in place. I roughly trimmed the middle and back layers separately so that some of the layers would be visible. And I love all those frayed edges and threads. I could have added more embellishment, but I guess I am a minimalist. It's too easy to go overboard. CLICK ON THE SCANNED IMAGE FOR A BETTER VIEW.






















The doll hangs on a clipped, muslin wrapped, wire coathanger. I had a green polished stone that looked like it belonged and so I added that as well. The picture below is a photo, taken at night, with a flash, against my deep red wall. It's not great but it gives you an idea of the finished piece.

Blue Heart...Wild Child

As we approach Valentine's Day, I thought I'd make some heart ornaments. The one above is in non-traditional colours.

The little doll below arrived in the mail today. Belinda of Metallic Dreams had this on her blog as a giveaway and I was the lucky winner. Isn't it adorable? Thank you, Belinda. :-)

Marina

Thanks for the comments (opinions) on yesterday's post. It seems there was a slight preference for the batik fabric. I went ahead with the bubble fabric and the mermaid before reading the comments, but no matter. I was planning on making another green faced doll using the batik anyway. And I never even thought about a witch, so I can make one of those as well.

The mermaid above is called Marina which to me seems like a perfect name for a mermaid. All the while I was stitching her, I kept thinking of the beautiful mute slave girl Marina in the 60s Supermarionation TV Series "Stingray". That Marina wasn't a mermaid, but she was an aqua creature able to "breathe" equally well under and above water. Anyone old enough to remember that show? No, eh?

The handsome Captain Troy Tempest, I am now learning, was based on the physical appearance of James Garner. I never made the connection as a kid. And Marina was based on Brigitte Bardot. Marina's theme song and some images from the show are in the clip below.