The Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale

I've been busy as heck getting ready for the Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale, which will be in Longmont, Colorado from this Wednesday until the following Tuesday. I even pulled some items from my Etsy store for it.
I modified the style of a few of my items and also added a few new styles. The Kitty Fairies, which were brand new to the FootHills Holiday Art Mart a few weeks ago are also being entered in the Guild Sale.


The mermaids and fairies have had a hair style change from previous years beaded hair and now have long flowing locks made of a beautiful art yarn.


And I've added a brand new design - a horse:


There will also be dragons, fish, dinos, moons, and of course cats!

The Boulder Handweaver's Guild Sale.

The Cloth Doll Design Process - Part 1

I'm going to start posting a bit about actually making my pins, ornaments and dolls.

Recently, I was inspired to make some kitty fairies. I make cats, I make fairies - so it's not a very big stretch to make kitty fairies. First, I need to draw up some new patterns.


The above is a first attempt, and since I did it on a receipt for a sale, I photoshopped out the recipient's address. I tend to use whatever scrap I can find laying around to save paper.



Here, the resulting first prototypes. Ugh. Sometimes I get it right the first time, but usually I need to modify the pattern. The standing cat is too tall and skinny, and I really don't like that one leg. The other one is way too long and skinny and those back legs! How did they get bent like that? The tail is too long and blunt and the legs need to taper more.


Now I have a tubbier standing kitty that reminds me more of my 20 pound tabby and I like the overall look of the flying kitty, except the back legs are too tapered. I think I'll also make a slightly slimmer standing kitty, but keep the tubby one too.


Here's the final two kitties. I think I'll keep these. Next - the wings.

Water Color Pencil Experiment

I picked up some water color pencils to try out. I did this little ACEO (2.5 x 3.5 inches) sized doodle to see how well they worked, and I'm not sure I like them. When wet, I can move the color around somewhat, but I can't predict how much. Some colors seem to just disappear when wet and others get more intense. It's impossible to get a completely smooth color. My daughter says I'm just not used to the way water colors look. I may go back to guoache.
If you have any tips on using these, please let me know.

The Fairy and her Diary

Back in 2005 I entered a challenge where the doll had to have a story to go with it. I came up with this little brown fairy for that challenge. She was actually the prototype, but since she turned out reasonably well, I entered her instead of the next generation fairy because she fit into a story my spouse Chris came up with.

After drawing up the pattern and trying out various incarnations of bodies, legs and such, this doll was my first result of all the parts going together in a satisfactory way. Usually, at this point, I don't go any further with the prototype and just go on to the final doll but I had put enough time into her I thought I'd try and get a doll out of her. Since she was done in white muslin, I decided to try dying her with procion dyes after I put her together, which is not the way I would recommend dyeing a doll if you want a consistent color throughout. So, there are some interesting markings on her legs and arms, but it seems to go with her overall earthy look.

Next, I worked on her clothes. Her bodice is made of some kind of fake-a-suede and took several iterations to get it to fit just the way I wanted. It has tiny eyelets all up the front which I found in the scrap booking section of the hobby store. Putting those on the bodice was a bit of a challenge.


Her boots are also made of imitation suede with some painted embellishments and the same tiny eyelets. I looked at a pair of ice skates to get the general idea of how to do them.


The hair is made of mohair locks, carefully dyed using jacquard acid dyes and then needle felted on.


The wings are also hand dyed.


I couldn't come up with panties that suited her, so she's pantyless under her skirt. This inspired the story, a diary entry, on how she lost her painties.

"June 22
Dear Diary,
Oh baby, what a party that was last night. Everyone, who’s anyone, was there including Oberon and what’s her name, Titania. Sure hope none of her fairy spies go around reading diaries of young fairies. And then there was that satyr that came in about half way through the evening. Oh my! What a buck! And what a sweetheart, we talked and drank and danced into the morning. And then we went back to his place. He, he, he."...

For the rest of the entry, see this pdf:
Brown Fairy's Diary

My Fairy Treasury

I made a fairy treasury on Thursday, after seeing Fairynana's fantastic fairy costume on Donna's blog. If only I was younger, slimmer and richer.