Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you all have a lovely day!
Kitties in dresses
These are our first photos of the original folk art cat dolls that Max Bailey and I have done together, wearing their dresses, and posed on the background we picked out. “Loretta and Lulu”, the Siamese mom and her pocket kitten are on the far left. “Chelsea” the Maine Coon Cat, with her birthday cake, is in the middle. “Heidi and Helga” are on the right. Helga is Heidi’s goose.
Emily the ginger tabby cat, and Beatrice the lop rabbit haven’t got their outfits on yet. That’s little Beulah the lop rabbit in Beatrice’s lap.
Heidi was our first cat doll we did together. Then came Loretta and Lulu. Chelsea was the third addition. We’ll be taking more photos before these go up for adoption over in our online doll gallery. They’ll be on the page for jointed dolls eventually, but not until they are all ready. I’ll be sure to post here on this blog, and on the Ruffing’s blog when they are ready for adoption. First, I have some photos of Max’s art doll figurines to edit. I’ll try to get those done as soon as I can.
I believe we are going to create a tuxedo cat doll next, but there is a lot to finish up before we get to her…him? We’ll see. I think we will have to try some mister kitties soon.
I took an extended weekend last weekend and did some fun things, including some first-time-ever things. One of those was taking a ballroom dancing lesson for the first time ever! I love watching Dancing with the Stars, but I have no clue when it comes to doing any of that sort of thing. So, that was a treat. We tried the the rumba and the waltz. I can’t tell you how many tries it took to get me to walk in a circle correctly. I’m still not sure it wasn’t an accident when I finally got it right!
I went to the airport for the first time ever. I have never been on a plane. I still haven’t been! I did watch the planes take off however, and, I admit, I shuddered just watching them lift off the ground. I also got the tour of what you do at the airport, before you get on or off the plane, things I’ve only seen on TV and in the movies. Then I goofed and missed seeing the plane I meant to wave at as it took off.
I also got to see The Soloist, which I really liked a lot. I worked on my Wolverine imitation, but failed to convince anyone to take me to see that:
“Ka-chang! Ka-chang!” (Elizabeth doing “Wolverine fingers”…a sort of distant relative to jazz hands only meaner-looking, and with blades.)
“No!”
“Why not?”
“Because you are going to keep doing THAT!”
So, no Wolverine for me.
In the middle of the week, I finished getting a ton of fillings done. Yuck. I thought I was taking good care of my teeth, but they rebelled and got little cavities in them. My tongue is still numb and prickly. I hope that goes away soon.
After we get some errands taken care of, I will be back to sewing and photo editing.
I hope you all have a lovely weekend. It is getting very warm here in North Carolina.
I’ll have some new doll dresses to show you soon, hopefully.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these.
Been busy busy
Everyone has just been lining up, waiting to be photographed over here.
But, first there were doll stands that needed to be painted,
supplies that needed to be organized,
and a dresser, in which the dolls are now napping, that needed to be assembled.
What a lot of hardware! I’m glad it was so neatly laid out.
This ratcheting screwdriver with interchangeable bits helped me a lot. It’s a WorkForce 21-Piece Ratcheting Screwdriver Set that originally came from Home Depot some time back. Too bad I didn’t notice the ratcheting feature until I was putting together the last drawer. You don’t have to let go of the handle to keep turning it, which is pretty cool. Like I said before, you never know what handy things you will find in our closets.
More lovely azaleas came into bloom. I ran out to photograph them.
The ducks waddled over, all curious about the whole idea of my photographing azaleas, or maybe they just thought I had snacks.
Nope, sorry ducks, just azaleas.
Emily and Edwin make their first appearance
Meet Emily, Max Bailey‘s and my latest one-of-a-kind, original, folk art ginger tabby cat doll.
Emily’s elephant friend is named Edwin. Emily is hand sculpted from paperclay on 100% cotton cloth, and is button jointed at her shoulders. Edwin is made of wood. Both are hand painted in acrylic paints and varnished with matte varnish.
As the story seems to go of late, Emily is still waiting for the rest of her outfit to be sewn. Edwin is just waiting for his wheels to start rolling. He’s very patient, which is good, because they don’t actually roll. Fortunately, he has a string to help pull him along.
We managed to re-photograph Max’s three new kitty figurines this afternoon. After some photo editing, color-correcting, cropping, etc, we’ll get to work on their web pages over on the Ruffing’s site. The figurines will eventually appear on the art doll figurines page, and Emily and Edwin will find their way over to the jointed cloth and paperclay dolls page of our online doll gallery…after Emily gets some clothes on.
I got this fun book in the mail, Stray Sock Sewing by an artist named Daniel. I’m crazy about it. It’s full of the cutest original sock creatures I think I’ve seen. There are plenty of sewing tips, and even instructions for making a few of your own. I’m getting so many ideas. I drew out some sketches when I got up this morning. I had a bunch of designs I had drawn, while waiting for my mom at the dentist’s, a few months ago, but I wasn’t entirely sure how best to construct them. So, this is great. Definitely enough information for me to spring off in my own directions. The eight creatures he shows you how to make would make super gifts too. So adorable. Love it.
The book is published by North Light Books, which has put out very nice art instruction books for years. I have quite a few painting and drawing books from them as well. I just read that the book club they’ve had for as long as I can remember is closing, but it sounds like they will still be offering their books through some special offers, in addition to still offering them through retailers. I got my copy of Stray Sock Sewing through Crafter’s Choice Book Club. They have some good deals sometimes, but I have trouble remembering to tell them not to send that monthly selection, even with an email reminder. I’m happy with the books I’ve gotten from them though, and I was glad to find they had this one.
