My Round Robin Doll

As I mentioned in my last post, my doll club had a Round Robin this year that we finished last week at the May meeting. Her arms were pinned on and her leg was half sewn on in the group photo of the dolls that I took at the meeting. Well, she is finished now and I just love this doll, she was dressed to perfection from head to toe. I wouldn't have thought to dress a doll this way but I'm so lucky to be in a club with so many creative and talented women. Paloma dressed her legs in darling sandals that have ribbons that criss-cross up her legs and have a cute little flower at the top. She also put lace panties on. Then Carolyn dressed her arms with cute little sleeves, a pretty beaded bracelet and a ring on her left hand and a thumb ring on the right hand. Now, the funny part is that Carolyn always wears a thumb ring. She also put a tatoo on her upper right arm of a cupcake (I love cupcakes!) that has Ed written on the "frosting" and a heart above the cupcake. It is so cute! But for some reason my camera just couldn't take a good picture of it so it is a bit blurry. Then Evelyn dressed my doll. She made a darling denim skirt with 2 pockets on the back that have embroidery on them then for the top she made these little yo-yos and sewed them on the front and back and put ric-rac trim on. Then she made the cutest headband with 2 colors of ric-rac.

Thanks everyone who worked on her, I just LOVE her and will cherish her always!

Time For Dolls Meeting

Yesterday was my doll club's May meeting and we finished presenting our round robin dolls and assembled them. They came out fantastic!! I am so happy with all the talent that is in our doll club, it is so inspiring. Everyone comes up with new and creative ideas, it is so much fun.

The first picture is all of the dolls together. Most of them weren't finished being assembled, that is why they are sitting in baskets and leaning up against things. I think Carolyn was the only one to completely finish assembling her doll, but then again she is a superstar!

This picture is of Deborah's doll. She had such great fabrics and everyone who worked on her did a fantastic job. I love the doll that Deborah used, she is so pretty!

This is Evelyn's doll. I worked on her arms making black lace gloves and a red sleeve. With some jewelry of course. Sue added the hair which are white feathers - it looks fantastic. How creative!








This is Pam's doll, she is just beautiful. I don't know who did the arms and legs but I do know that Paloma did the costuming. The front torso is all beaded and then she made strips of tulle, ribbon and fabrics for the skirt, very pretty!

These are Carolyn's (on the left) and Paloma's (on the right). I did the costuming on Carolyn's. I made her skirt of different colored tulle and gathered them about 2" from the bottom and tied them with floss and added a bell. Pam had originally made harem style pants so that gave me the idea to make the skirt that way. Paloma's doll is so pretty, I worked on her legs making shoes and doing some bead work.

This is Sue's doll. She is so tiny! She doesn't have her hair yet, can't wait to see her finished. Sue had beautiful fabrics to work with, but they are really hard to see in this picture.

And, this is my doll. Paloma did the legs and sandals, Carolyn did the sleeves and a tatoo, and Evelyn did the costuming. I absolutely love, love, love this doll!! Her arms are only pinned on in this picture so when she is finished I will have better pictures of her. The bodice is all little yo-yos, so cute!

It was another great meeting with so much creativity flying around and a lot of good conversation and fun.

Santos Maria Cage Skirt Doll

I finished my cage skirt doll and I really love her. She is such a beautiful design from Leslie Molen. The first picture I have is the original skirts of the doll. I wasn't very happy with mine because I used an embroidered fabric for the overskirt and you could not see very much of the overskirt so I decided to make another one and make the back longer. The second picture shows what I did. The original size of the overskirt is great if I was using lace or netting, something like that but where I had this beautiful embroidered fabric I really wanted that to show more. I am really pleased with the way it turned out.

Here is a picture of the finished doll, from the front and the back.

Then is a picture of the heart and base trim. I actually got the trim at Treasures of the Gypsy when I was at AFIC. It is so perfect. Then I went online at about.com and found instructions to do the picot beaded edging. The instructions were great. I love that website, there is a lot of stuff on there.

I still need to finish my Taulbee doll, so that is to follow.

Last Day at AFIC

Sunday was our last day of classes at AFIC. I chose to take the "Taulbee" class with Susan Barmore (Frowning Frances). I can't believe I only took 3 pictures in this class and none of them were or Susan or the class! With this doll we jumped right in and worked, worked, worked.
The first picture is Susan's doll, I'm not exactly sure what he is suppose to be, some sort of gremlin I guess but he is so cute!

The second picture from left to right is my doll, Susan's doll and Pam's doll. Pam's and mine were still a work in progress. I have to paint his wings and attach them then make the skull and attach it to his staff. He is really cute in his own way. When my puppy Molly saw him, oh my goodness, she barked and barked. She didn't know what that was, it was so funny.
And the last picture is a picture of Barbara Schoenoff's doll, in progress. He was coming out wonderful of course. It was a lot of fun to have Barbara in the class as a student, she is so sweet and funny. It was great to see her again.

After class we went to our rooms and started to organize eveything for our trip home in the morning. Then, at 6pm we started our Mystery Dinner Theater. I always wanted to go to one of those. It was very interesting. It was a lot of fun, the story was funny and the actors, well, they were over the top. This type of event is great because the actors interact with the audience and you never know what is going to be said, it was very entertaining.
All in all it was a fabulous weekend and hope to be back in 2 years.

Leslie's class

My first 2 days of classes were Leslie Molen's Santos Maria Cage Skirt Doll. What a beautiful doll. I had first seen this doll last year at the 2010 Gala at Punderson, OH. Leslie was teaching classes there and had brought this doll for display. I knew right then and there I had to learn how to make this doll and just waited for the day that Cyndy was accepting sign-ups for AFIC.

This is a picture of Leslie's doll, it is so beautiful. First Leslie sculpted the face and then made a mold for it, the clay face was then covered with knit fabric. The eyes were painted and the face was lightly colored with chalks.

The class had filled almost immediately and I was lucky enough to get into it. I knew a lot of the people who were in the class which was really nice. I sat in the front row (the empty spot) and Michelle, Kathy and Pam also sat there. Pam of course is my good friend. We met in my first doll class. We sat next to each other and found we had some things in common then took some more classes together and started going to doll events together and now run our doll club together. I met Michelle and Kathy when they came to my doll club's teaching workshop. I also met them again at Gala 2010. I don't know them very well but they are so nice and hope to get more opportunities to take classes with them and get to know them better. The second row had Judy Brown who I have know since the beginning of my doll making since she was my first teacher. She is such a sweet lady, I really like her a lot. Next to her is Margie Bauer another very nice lady who belongs to The Doll Gatherers. That was the first doll club that I belonged to and boy, I ran into a lot of people from the Doll Gatherers that weekend, it was great! Next to Margie were 2 ladies that belong to a doll club - The Glad Rags that is located in Canton - I think . Anyway, they were very nice ladies and got to talk to them a little bit. The last row was Dorice who is a very good friend of Leslie's and came from California, very nice lady and next to her is Kim Braun who I first met in Leslie's class at John C Campbell Folk School last September. She is just the sweetest! Love her southern drawl.

Here is a picture of Pam, Kim and myself!

Then the 2 other ladies in class were Velda who I have met at MM&M a couple of years ago but unfortunately don't know very well and then last was a lady that I didn't get a chance to talk to very much. But all in all it was a great class of women.

So, we started our day by building the cage for the skirt. It is made out of wood and we all hammered nails to add the slats. I'm not sure the other classes next to us appreciated the noise but it didn't take too long. You can see here a picture of my cage skirt after it was painted and my head after that was painted and both were drying.


This is a picture of all the cage skirts and heads sitting on the table and drying. It was very exciting!

We had made the body parts at home and the skirts and corsette, then assembled everything in class. Here is a picture of my doll. She isn't finished yet, I have to sew the back of her corsette, tack her mantle to her head, glue the torso to the cage skirt and bead around the hanging heart. Then she'll be done. I love this doll she is really beautiful.

This is a picture of Pam's doll, she wasn't finished at this point either. I LOVE the color scheme that Pam used, she is absolutely gorgeous!

And here are 3 more dolls, I'm not sure who they belong to but I really wish I had gotten pictures of all the dolls

And, her is a picture of Pam, Leslie and me. I love taking Leslie's classes, she is soooooo much fun and is so willing to share all her knowledge. She is a fantastic teacher.

AFIC - continued

As I mentioned in my last post, the Hats and Heels banquet was the first (Thursday) evening of AFIC. Here is a closer picture of Cyndy dressed as the Queen of Hearts. Her makeup and outfit were wonderful and really added to the fun of the evening.

After dinner was over the "Queen" decreed that there would be a challenge amongst the tables. There was one teacher at each table and she became the CEO and she decided who would be the buyer, the runner, the sewers, etc. We were given a large bendi doll and the buyer, who was Pam, had to go out and "buy" with special play monies the materials that we needed to make our dolls. Leslie Molen was our CEO and she decided that we would make a teddy bear out of our doll. It was crazy with 2 or 3 people working on the little bear at one time. We only had a certain amount of time to finish the doll. We had made a little dolly for our bear to hold and then at the last few minutes we had another challenge to make a tiny bendi doll to go with our doll. So we had made the large bendi into a teddy and a small doll of fabric for the teddy then had to make another doll out of a small bendi. It was crazy! But so much fun.

This is a picture of our teddy and friends on display after the banquet and for the rest of the event. The dolls that were made were donated to a children's charity. There are pictures of a few more of the dolls. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at taking all the pictures that I wanted to take. I was busy making dolls, socializing and shopping!

AFIC 2011

I attended my first AFIC as a student this year. Two years ago I went down to Columbus to see the doll exhibit and right there knew I had to come back as a student. The event was fantastic, Cydny Seiving did a phenominal job at organizing and putting on this event. I took a 2-day class with the wonderful Leslie Molen and a 1-day class with Susan Barmore (Frowning Frances).
Pam and I drove to Columbus on Thursday afternoon and on Thursday night was the hats and heels banquet. I didn't make a hat to wear but some of the hats that were made were fantastic! Unfortunately I didn't get pictures of some of the more creative hats. But I did take pictures of people that I knew there. The first picture is Cyndy Seiving dressed as the Queen of Hearts. She was hysterical all weekend with her outfits, so creative. Next is the beautiful and funny, funny wonderful woman Leslie Molen. Next picture from left to right is Judy Brown, Kim Braun and Margie Bauer. Kim was at John C Campbell last September when I was there taking Leslie's bunny class. She is such a sweet lady and I LOVE her southern accent. Judy was my first doll teacher, I have great memories of all the doll making classes I took from her, she is such a special person. And Margie I know from a former doll club, I don't know her that well personally but she is such a nice person. And, the last picture is Janet Anzlovar, she is just the sweetest lady. I first met her at the first MM&M that I went to and we became friends there. Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend a lot of time with her this event as we were in different classes and it gets pretty hectic after class and there is so much going on all the time.

This was such a huge event and so much fun. I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked but it is hard to do that when you are working so hard to finish your dolls!

Next post Leslie's class!