I decided to make my brother a mounted
dragon head for last Christmas. I love how
it turned out. I haven't made myself one,
but hope to soon. It is made mostly from
cotton fabric and I also used Apoxie sculpt
for the nose horn and eyes. I applied a thin
coat of Golden light molding paste for some
texture. You can't see the scales very well, but
there are about 150 individual scales on the
back, top, and side of  his neck. It took me a few
weeks just to make the scales from cloth
and sew them on one by one. I am going to try
to come up with a different way to make the scales
that isn't so time consuming.






This is the doll that I made for

my doll club Christmas exchange.



















These are little pixies that I have been making.
They are about 12" tall.

This is a tree in our yard that is outside my sewing room
window. It reminded me of the trees from the Wizard of Oz.
It just had to have a face so I put one on it.

Last year my doll club had a circus challenge. I had this doll
head in my jar of heads and used it for my doll.

 

 

 

 

These are more heads I now need to turn into dolls.
I love making heads as you can tell.

I haven't posted in a year, so I have a few new dolls to add. I don't spend much time on my computer since my husband got me my iPad. I use it most of the time in place of my computer, but I haven't figured out if or how to post to my blog on it. I hope to set up an Etsy shop someday and try to sell my dolls. I am running out of space for them in the house.
This is Kenzie, my latest doll. I used a
head from my head jar.

These are two of my newest dragon. I designed the male for my brother's Christmas dragon and made the girl dragon for myself.



 My  doll club has a doll exchange at our Christmas party and this is the doll I made for this past Christmas. We sign up and fill out a questionnaire. Then we are given the questionnaire of the person we are to make the doll for. She likes bones, skeletons and the colors black and white so this is the doll I made for her. I am very pleased with the end result. I already have my exchange name for this year and I have been thinking of what doll to make for her.
                                                      

This is Rosebud. I found this hot pink yarn at Hobby Lobby and made a wig cap out of it. Then I had to make a doll to use it on. So I used another head from my head jar and Rosebud was born.        

Judy Skeel taught an afternoon class at our doll club last summer She showed us how to make wings and a layered tulle skirt. This is the doll that I used them on. Another head from my head jar made into a doll.                                  

I went to AFICC this spring and this is the doll that I made in Christine Shively-Benjamin's "Rainbow of Chaos" class.  I also took a class from Dawn Shiller, "Eggcentric" and I love how he turned out. He makes me smile everytime I look at him. He is made from Sculpy and has a crack in his head, so I gave him hair to cover it up. 

Here are two clock dolls that I made. I hope to make a pattern for the orange clock doll in the future.

This is the tree that I made for the DollStreet Wizard of Oz display for AFICC

 

This is morning feeding time at our house. 5 of our 6 cats eat canned food every morning. Mickey doesn't like canned food so he skips breakfast.

 

Here is my son, Randy with a fish he caught.

And lastly, here are 2 pictures of my daughter Tammy at St. Patrick and Christmas time that will hopefully leave you with a smile.

 

a new dragon is born

I make my brother a dragon every year for Christmas. I have always used a pattern from other designers, which is definitely not a bad thing. I have wanted to come up with a dragon of my own design, but

designing a doll is much different than designing a dragon, and I thought it would be to difficult. But last fall I decided to give it a try. I must admit it was as difficult as I thought it would be, but after 3 months of designing and redesigning it finally came together and I am so happy with the end results. I looked at a lot of dragon pictures on

the internet to come up with the body, head, wings and legs that I wanted for this dragon. I made the body first and then the legs. I made 3 different legs before I got the shape and size right. I made multiple heads too. I made most of the dragon from white Egyptian cotton fabric. The nostrils, brows and claws are made from Apoxy Sculpt and the eyes and horns are made from light weight sculpey. After all the pieces were attached, I painted the dragon and added a piece of a feathered boa at the end of the tail. The finished dragon is 10" tall and about 10" long so it is not very large.

The purple one is the first one I made and it was the one I gave to my brother.

After Christmas I made the blue one for myself. I hope to make a few more dragon. Hopefully I will be able to sell a few.

I have been busy making

dolls, but I haven't posted 

anything since spring.

This is a doll that I made for my doll club's Christmas exchange which we did a couple weeks ago. It was very hard for me to give her up, I really bonded with her :) She is a gothic steampunk queen.

 I made a bunch of heads this spring while working on my challenge doll for AFIC. I have been turning the finished heads into dolls since I have no more room in my head jar for them.

To the left is Jellybean. Below is another doll I made from one of the heads.

Here is another doll

In October my doll club had their yearly retreat. This is my finished doll. We used paper clay. It was such a fun project and everyone's turned out wonderful and there were so many different ideas.

Yesterday was my 60th birthday and my very talented brother surprised me with a wonderful pendent necklace that he made special for me. The dark stone is black pearl and there is a small diamond in the small copper heart. Isn't it fabulous? I have linked his website to the blog if you want to see more of his wonderful work,  KEAyersDesigns.com.

I finished my Ostrich Showgirl, a class by Natalie Hamade.

I am really happy with how she turned out. It has been a while since I have made a doll from someone else's pattern and it was a very nice change. I may go through my pattern stash and try another one.The hair on this doll was made with a molding compound and was very different from anything I have worked with before and I will be using it again in my dollmaking.                       

AFIC class doll

Here are a couple pictures of the doll I made at
AFIC (Artistic Figures In Cloth) which was held here in Columbus, OH the last weekend in April.
Cyndy Sieving does a fantastic job of organizing this event. The next one will be in the spring of 2013.
I took 3 days of classes with Natalie Hamade and
had so much fun and learned a lot. If you ever get a chance to take one of her classes, don't hesitate.
I have been designing and making my own dolls
for a few years. I want to take some time and
make some dolls from other designers. My first
project is going to be Natalie's "Ostrich Showgirl".
She is a hoot and will be fun to make and enjoy.
In class we learned how to make these wonderful eyelashes. We started out with a white body and
painted it. We dyed Tibetian skins for the hair,
and made embellishments from Tyvec. I made the beads and the flower in her hair from Tyvec. We
used a soddering iron on the clothing. And then there was the face drawing. I am really happy with how my face turned out. Natalie was a wonderful teacher.