Practising Doll Faces and Completing Doll Body

Doing a bit more work on my angels project. Today I practised drawing doll faces according to the instructions of Patti Medaris Culea (links provided by Judy). Not as difficult as I thought, and working from right to left, I think I am gradually improving!

I used some coloured crayons and some pens. I worked on a strip of unbleached calico ironed onto a piece of freezer paper to give it a bit more stability.

I also completed the body of the large cloth angel.

I had awful trouble stuffing this – the polyester stuffing which I have had for many years is really not very good quality and it came out all lumpy, so I had to pull most of the stuffing out of the body and tease it out again and restart the process. This filling seems to do better with narrower pieces like arms and legs than it does with larger volumes, which work better if I don’t attempt to put too much stuffing in. I’m on the look out for something of better quality but so far my online researches haven’t come up with anything definite – if there’s anybody out there (UK) who can recommend a decent polyester filling I’d be grateful.

I also spent a bit of time in my ARTHaven this morning, tidying up, and putting all my Dylusions sprays, paints and Ranger mini-blending tools together into one box, after painting a dab of paint on the top of each handle so they are readily identifiable.

The effects of my third chemo treatment are definitely not as severe as those of the second. The reduced dose has definitely helped.

Another Needle Felted Angel

I have made another angel body from needle felting over an armature, this time made from my mammoth new pipe cleaners.

These pipe cleaners are enormous – very long and extra thick and fluffy! Almost large enough to sweep the chimney with. The colours are somewhat lurid but as they will mostly be needle felted or wrapped, I’m not too bothered about that.

Here is the armature for the angel that I made – this one is quite a bit larger than the previous one.

This armature was made from two giant pipe cleaners, one for the head and arms, and the other for the body and legs. I looped the ends of the legs a couple of times to form the feet, and the arms are double thickness with a loop at the ends to form the hands.

I began the needle felting by loosely felting a ball to form the inner part of the head.

Here it is, stuffed into the head loop of the armature.

It was then a simple matter to begin wrapping the whole head with wool roving, needle felting as I went.

Here is the head, almost complete.

As it was quite a bit larger than the first one, I decided to attempt to sculpt a face on this head. I began by adding more roving to the front of the face to build it up.

This is the head in profile so far.

I sculpted the face by building up the nose, forehead and chin, and pushing in the eye sockets and mouth, and the area under the nose, with more aggressive needle felting. Not too bad for a first attempt!

Here is the finished head in profile, showing the ear – I made the ears from two small fragments of wool roving, shaping them as I needle felted them to the sides of the head. The face is a little flat – a bit like an Easter Island statue!

The next step was to needle felt the body. I made it a little bit too long so the proportions aren’t quite right, but once the angel is clothed, this won’t matter. I built up the chest and stomach/bottom areas with extra wool roving.

The final step was to cover the limbs with needle felting. I covered the hands and feet well with roving before beginning to wrap the arms and legs.

Not too bad, I think! With his rather long body and short, slightly bandy legs, he looks a bit like a drunken sailor. At least there was no angel abuse this time, unless you count being stabbed all over repeatedly with a barbed needle!

I’ve been pooped all week. At least the worst of the side effects of the chemo have worn off now, but my energy levels remain extremely low and I’ve done little else but flop about on the recliner since my last treatment. The next one is a week today and I really need to start feeling better so I can actually achieve something before the next one is upon me and I’m back to square one again!

Gifts from Lovely Friends

I have received some wonderful gifts from friends who are all wishing me well for my forthcoming hospital stay – so thoughtful and caring!

One friend gave me the pretty little bag, filled with all sorts of thoughtful goodies and girlie things to make me happy and comfortable in hospital. There’s a puzzle book and a pen in the shape of a purple teddy, and lots of little bottles of nice things to keep me fresh and fragrant. A pot of sparkly red nail varnish and tissues and wipes, all in a nice small size to take up very little room – there’s never very much space to put things in hospital.

Sitting on top of all these goodies in the bag was a dear little bear with the softest fur. He is called Horace. He will accompany me to hospital, along with my special little platypus Humphrey, who was a gift from my hubby during my last major surgery twenty years ago, and Nursie Bear, who belongs to my hubby, and has accompanied many people to hospital over the years, to take care of them and nurse them back to health again. Her favourite phrase is, “Nursie Knows Best!” She does have that look about her, doesn’t she. You don’t mess with Nursie. Will there be room in the bed for me, I wonder?

Two other friends have given me little angels to keep me safe! The one on the left is a little pin with a stone in my favourite dark red colour, which I am going to pin on the lapel of my dressing gown, and the one on the right is a tiny glass jar with an angel charm, with slips of paper for wishes for your guardian angel! I know that the Lord will keep me safe, and surround me with His angels during this difficult time, and these little gifts are a reminder of that.

Aren’t people kind and thoughtful? I shall take these gifts in with me and think of all my lovely caring friends when I use them and look at them.

I am overwhelmed also by the huge number of good wishes and love sent from friends around the world, on blogs, forums and emails, and by the ever-growing collection of beautiful cards, all of which will be kept safely as a reminder of the love that surrounds me.

As I face the coming ordeal, I am cheered and comforted by the love and thoughtfulness of my many friends. You know who you are. May God bless you all.

Finally, my Big Black Blob that Nita so kindly drew on my tummy to indicate the position of the stoma, has been fading badly, so I’ve been going over it with my own permanent black marker so that they don’t have to go through the whole process of siting it again. I thought I would have some fun with it.

(Don’t worry, I’m not going to show you a photo of the stoma itself lol!! That would probably be TMI for most of you…) What with this and my multi-coloured hair, I think Mr. Pullan is going to have a fit!!

Altered Pizza Box

Edited – now with video.

A mixed media project. I am giving away one of my flower painted Ikea mirrors as a house-warming present, and recently discovered that it fits exactly inside a 10-inch pizza box. I thought the box needed a bit of decoration to make it a slightly more acceptable wrapping, and I ended up making a full mixed media project out of it!

I got a bit carried away and forgot to take any photos during the making, but I did video the whole process.

I started by covering the whole of the outside of the box with gesso, and then had a rummage in my Tim Holtz papers – they’ve all got a bit muddled up and I’m not sure which stack they come from – either Crowded Attic or Lost and Found, but it doesn’t really matter – they’re all nice and vintage. I found some nice faces and tore them out and distressed the edges with my distressing tool, and stuck them down onto the box with PVA adhesive.

I also stuck down some ripped up corrugated cardboard with some of the surface paper torn away, which gives a gorgeous texture. Once the PVA was dry, I painted these pieces with gesso, and then began painting the whole surface with acrylics.

I chose a blue and green palette, and did some dry brushing with white acrylic, and once I’d got the effect I wanted, I added some iridescent gel medium which gives a gorgeous shimmery surface, and then some pearlised acrylic ink, concentrating on the textured corrugated parts. The whole thing was extremely shimmery by this time.

I created some text, “Home is where the heart is” by cutting out some words and letters from scrap printed paper in my stash, and stuck these down onto a further piece of scrap paper with regular matt gel medium, which I also used to stick the pieces down onto the surface. Before this I coloured them with Victorian Velvet Distress Ink.

Once they were laid down, I took an old credit card and added some crimson acrylic paint with the edge of the card dipped in the paint, creating frames around the words and around the face pictures. I then added some more lines using my white marker pen.

To form a border, I used more of the crimson acrylic paint, and also some dark blue, and once the border design was laid down, I went round the edges and embellished the border with the white marker pen, and finally added some shadows with a mixture of Payne’s Grey and white acrylic paint.

The final touch was to add some Treasure Gold gilding wax to the raised texture. A really shiny, shimmery effect!

Once the outside was dry, I painted the whole of the inside roughly with gesso. This will be fine once there is tissue paper inside the box, wrapping the mirror.

Here is the finished box, propped up with the edges of the lid showing. I painted these with a mixture of green acrylics.

The box closed:

The sides of the lid go inside the box, and I painted the sides of the base with rich blue acrylic paint.

Now for some details. This is the bottom left corner. You can see one of the pictures I laid down, and also some of the corrugated cardboard. I love the effect of the top surface layer of paper being partially ripped away.

One of the face pictures. They are pretty subtle with the iridescent gel medium, and they also reflect the light so it’s a bit difficult to see them in the photos.

Finally a detailed shot of the text.

I think you can see how shiny and shimmery the surface is in this photo.

A fun project to do, and I completed it in an afternoon. One day I would like to paint and embellish the rest of my pizza boxes, which are used to store various materials in my ARTHaven.

Zentangles–Journal Pages and Art Work “La Bella”

(Post edited for copyright reasons.)

I’ve been drawing again! I’ve finally got round to uploading my most recent journal pages – sketches and “step-outs” (step-by-step instructions) for various patterns I’ve found online which I like. It’s easier to draw these in my journal than trying to find them online when I am doing a drawing.

After a lot of struggles, I’ve decided that scanning the images works a lot better than photographing them. I’ve also decided not to do any more art work in my journal because the pages are cream-coloured and wrinkle slightly at the spine, which makes photographing or scanning them difficult – it’s almost impossible to get rid of the wrinkles and shading on the paper – so the journal is now being used exclusively for reference purposes, collecting step-outs and doing various sketches.

Here are my most recent pages, mostly concentrating on fills, but with a few borders thrown in, or fills that can be adapted to borders. I am gradually working my way through the Tangle Patterns site and sketching the ones I particularly like, and there are always more being added, which I get emails about, because I’ve signed up to their mailing list.

This first picture is a series of miscellaneous sketches, none of which need step-outs because it’s obvious how to do them.

I have searched high and low for the step-out for the pattern “Y-not” and have been reliably informed that it does not exist online. I don’t really want to buy a book as I’ve got plenty of inspiration on the Internet. I wish somebody would upload this one as it’s gorgeous – it looks quite a simple pattern of interlocking “Y” shapes, but I can’t seem to get it started and need a deconstruction of it.

Note: The following images were deleted for copyright reasons.

…a good example of just what a difference a bit of shading makes – it leaps off the page in 3-D! On the subject of shading, up until recently, I’ve been smudging my soft pencil shading with my finger (frowned upon!) and my hubby bought me some paper stumps the other day, and these simple little tools have revolutionised my drawing! With a fine tip, you can control the shading so much more, and even use a “dirty” stump to create very subtle shading without the addition of extra pencil on the drawing.

I must say I do like patterns with a bit of dimension to them, as they give real depth to a drawing.

And now the moment you’ve all been waiting for (well, I live in hope!) – my latest Zentangle Art piece. I wanted to do a face and add masses of adornments in the form of a head-dress, jewellery and hair, and this is the result. I have called her “La Bella” – “The Beauty.” Enjoy!