Sometimes life is just too strange and powerful

Last Sunday my ex mom in law called me (she is 93) and just wanted to chat and tell me she loved me.  There was such sweetness and sadness in the phone call that it felt like she was saying goodbye.  I thought, I must get to her house on Saturday.  Yesterday my son called me to say that he heard from his Auntie that Fanny was on life support in the hospital.  There were no clues from her normal health issues (growing old) that this was going to happen.

I spent the day yesterday at her bedside wishing I had made more time to visit.  Isn't that always the way?  So we all pray that she can start to breath on her own and we get to see again the little devlish glint in her eyes.  I know I need to recognize that she has lived a long and full life, but I selfishly don't want her out of my life.

Selected as a Froud Website Wahoo

I just got word that my blog has been accepted as September 2009 Froudian Artist of the Month. What a tremendous honor and such fun. Now I need to figure out how to link it to my website.

I'm so excited

I just found out that my grey doll will be featured in "Soft Dolls and Animals" magazine. She will be in the November issue. What a kick. I went to a cloth doll convention in Ohio this spring and the sponsor of the convention sent in 25 pictures of dolls to the magazine. I was one of the lucky ones that was picked. Wahoo! This is a first for me to actually be published. Can hardly wait to see it.

Bought a new computer

Here I am playing around with my new computer, realizing that all my wonderful links are now on my old computer and I will have to log into it to get all the info. Love getting new toys, but hate having to figure this all out. Bought a lovely HP Firebird VoodooDNA gaming system, because I love gaming so much and the visual graphics are so intense on this machine.

AFIC and back to reality

I had such fun, meeting new people and learning new techniques. I was completely flabbergasted when several people wanted to buy my doll 'a study in grey'. It was so flattering that my peers found my work interesting. It is a little sad to look around the room and not see the grey doll sitting in her corner, but I know she has a new home with Peggy. After talking to a lot of people, I so want to go to NIADA this year. Got to try and save some money and see if I can make it happen.

On another note, my friend Daisy is in the new Art Doll magazine. I was so excited to see her published. I guess I'm going to have to get her autograph when she comes over. Please check it out under the Gypsy Challenge.

Nanny Gilly finally has her little girl

I was so anxious about making the baby/little girl that was going to be in Nanny's arms, but sculpting small is not something I was confident I could do. I started thinking I would just do a small baby with closed eyes - I figured I could manage that. But all of a sudden this little face started to emerge and I was in love with her. Then I got little hands and feet to look OK. It was a miracle. Here I was procrastinating for about 2 weeks because I was positive that the child sculpt would not make me happy.

So now that I have two new people to live with and all my other little dolls seemed happy to have the company. I can now relax that this figure is completed and now I have to start sewing on my Cloth doll homework for the Cloth Doll Convention in Ohio. Only two weeks left to get it all done. Better sew everynight.

I'm busy but not had much to say here

Quiet time for me, but I have been productive. My son had an emergency appendectomy and it threw me off a little. You would think when they are almost 31, that they don't need you, but in emergency nothing works but having mom available to help out. It happened the night of doll club and I anxiously called the vice president to make sure she could fill in for me. I will be glad when I'm no longer the club president. It is a long drive at night and I don't get home until around 11p.m. I have to turn around and get up again at 4:45 so it wears me out. It is also a cloth doll club, and since I have started sculpting, I'm not as interested in cloth dolls. I still love them, but I can get so much more expression in the sculpted doll. I'm going to a cloth doll convention in April, so I'm hoping it will ping me again with cloth doll interests.

I've been working on 2 of my dolls and neither one is completed, but will add the pictures of their progress. One is a dark fallen fairy and one will be a nanny gnome. I need to make little baby for her to hold and one to sit on her back. That will be a challenge because I have a hard time making little things.

Fabulous, incredible class

I had a fall on your face blast at Wendy Froud's advanced class in Reno. First of all she is so gracious and generous with her ideas and techniques and her son, Toby, is funny and talented. And second, I met the greatest group of people at the class. Some I knew from the first class I took from her and some I just met. The creative energy in the classroom made me float around all week afterwards. I wish I could bottle up that creative energy and put it in a glass jar and when I'm feeling not inspired or tired and discouraged, I could unscrew the lid and be bathed and renewed in it.

Thank goodness i have memories of it and hopefully, fingers crossed, I will get to meet again with all those lovely folks and laugh and play.

Back to Sculpting

Well I can hardly believe that it has almost been a year since I took Wendy Froud's first class. It opened up a completely different way of thinking. I would have done so much more this last year, except for one thing and one thing only. World of Warcraft. So on the same weekend that I got introduced to sculpting with fimo, I also got introduced with WoW. Who would have thought that I would have become so hooked on that game. I thought it was a teenage boy game, but here I am 56 years old and playing that stupid game every night.

But, Wendy Froud is back and teaching in Reno at the end of February. I'm taking an advanced course from her, so we bring already sculpted head, hands and feet and then build the doll with a more advanced body and paint techniques. So long story short I have been sculpting the last two weekends. Miracle of miracles, I have two doll heads that don't look like aliens from outer space.

I received Wendy's 2nd DVD on creating older characters and so began my new adventure. I did start to paint the 2nd head, shame shame on me. But she so wanted to come alive and I also used taxidermy eyes instead of sculpting them. I like it. So now I have an old woman head and a old man's head.

Next to this post are the little pictures.