Lady Pod and Sweetpea

Linda Misa, a very talented doll artist from Australia, is in the process of moving this week actually. Anyway, she decided to sell some of her dolls at extremely reasonable prices so I decided I had to have one. I bought Lady Pod and Sweetpea. I have had the pattern for a couple of years but other dollmaking got in the way and so I never did make her, but when I saw that Linda was selling hers I was so excited. She has arrived, in great shape I might add considering her long trip.

When I finish redecorating my house I will have to find the perfect spot to display her. Right now she sits on my sewing table so I can see her every time I sew. Of course right now that is not as often as I want it to be since I'm painting walls and moving furniture and changing rooms and TRYING to get workers to show up and repair a few things! Anyway here are some pictures of my beautiful new doll that I bought.

Nesting Robin

Well Spring has certainly arrived in my back yard. I have a pretty small back yard, just a few very large spruce trees where the birds love to nest, they are almost like apartment buildings for birds. Some birds like to own the whole building (tree) like the cardinals, they like their privacy.

It seems that the trees were full this year so this little Robin had to find accomodations elsewhere. She is nesting on the downspout along the fireplace and right next to the sliding doors to the deck. Most of the time when I open the door, usually to let my sweet little Lucy out -

isn't she adorable?

Sorry, I digress, anyway back to the Robin, usually when I open the slider she flies away - not very far of course - then comes back to the nest when we go inside. There have been a couple of occasions where she didn't leave the nest, maybe her hatching time is near, so I took the opportunity to snap a few photos.

Then yesterday when I was leaving home I noticed across the street where there are 2 ponds that 2 geese where standing by the road and they had a whole bunch of adorable little babies. The babies where so tiny and fluffy yellow so cute! I love watching the Canada Geese and their babies because they stay with their parents for a long time and it's great to watch them grow up. Ahhh, nature at its best.

New Doll

I had the pleasure of testing a doll for Colleen Babcock. Her newest doll is named Fathoms and she is a dark mermaid from the deep depths of the ocean, very dark and mysterious but classy. You can see pictures of Colleen's doll and get links as to where to purchase this doll pattern as an e-pattern or a CD on Colleen's blog http://www.themagicbean.typepad.com/.

As you can tell from my version of the doll she's not quite as "classy" looking as Colleen's, I just could not get her hairdo right so she's more of a goth-punk-rocker type of mermaid. I have to be honest here and say that I may not have bought the pattern based on the picture of her, but I am so glad I had the opportunity to make her. I learned so many things about doll making from this pattern, there were great techniques and ways of doing things that I never thought of, she was a really fun and wonderful doll to make.

Speaking of Colleen, I am so happy to say that she is coming to my doll club, Time For Dolls, the end of June to teach a 2 day workshop of her doll Finders Keepers. Everyone in the club is so excited!! We have a few other people joining us, a few ladies from another doll club in the area and 2 ladies are driving here from out of state. It is going to be a great weekend, fun doll making and fun people. I'll post pictures of course.

Next month I'll be attending Gala 2010 here in Ohio being sponsored by my other doll club The Doll Gatherers. I'll be taking a class with Adele Sciortino called the Witch Doctor Wears Prada. I've been gathering some great fabrics, I got a few from the Sewing Expo that was at the I-X Center in Cleveland last month. This doll is going to be so much fun, I've made the wire armature as part of my pre-work and it was so different than any armature that I have done, it was very cool. I am looking forward to learning so much from Adele. Again, I'll post pictures.

It was a rainy day today, not too bad though and now its about 4pm and the rain has passed, still cloudy but it is OH it's always cloudy! The weather people say it is going to be a fairly nice weekend, we'll see. NO RULES on Sunday, we are going to put our art journals together. We made 2 pages for each person including ourselves and covers. Pam has a machine that binds them together. We are also bringing doll blank parts from November's Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine and we'll pick parts and embellish them. It's nice with this group that a lot of times with the projects that we do, we end up with work from each other.

Till next time....