RUSTY ORNIE

I was too impatient for mother nature to do her thing with rusting my altered porcelain doll, so I hurried up the process myself. According to directions, you only needed to do a few application, but I landed up doing ten to twelve. You're also to wait 24 hrs between application and I waited a few hours. I still liked the results I came up with. I'm debating on whether to add a sealer or not?

Johnny Appleseed Festival 2007

Johnny Appleseed Festival this past weekend and it was a lot of work and fun. I had never done this festival before and it went well. You couldn't ask for better weather. The place was packed with people. They average between 200,000-400,000 people in that weekend alone. Our day officially didn't start until 10:00 am, however, people were at the park as early as 7:30am.
My neighbor sold ceramics and he had a line of people waiting for him to open up.
I had a lot of postive reactions to my dolls and buyers. Feedback was great and very welcomed.
This is a photo of me and my sister Barb. She is such a great sister!!! She flew in from San Francisco to help me run my booth. Festivals are new to her and she seemed to really enjoy herself. She is a ceramicist and brought some bowls to display with my dolls and they were fantastic. We've been batting around some ideas to do some collabrative pieces.

Applique Beaded Shawl

I finally finished my Indian doll with the applique beaded shawl. It is my first applique beading and it took some time. I guess practice makes perfect. I love the whole process of beading but I wish I had more time to devote to it. The leather I used to bead on is imitation brain tan leather and is a lot lighter in color than the real thing. Plus it cost half the price. I purchased a hide of real brain tan over a year ago and I just now used it for the first time. When your paying over $100 for a hide, you want to make sure before you cut it!!!! Real brain tan leather is processed by hand and the actual brains of the animal is used. I don't know all that is involved but I do know that it is very labor intensive to do and that's the reason for the prices. When you bead or sew with real brain tan, the needle just slides right in like a butter knife into warm stick of butter. It's pretty amazing stuff to work with!!

Collage paper dolls

I borrowed a book from a friend titled Secrets of Rusty Things by Michael deMeng. He does some really exciting and amazing things with junk! I'm not halfway through the book and I am very inspired. I had been working with some collage paper dolls and decided to push it a little further with embellishments. The books is a nice treat to get the creative juices flowing.

Paper Doll Challenge with the Printmaking Club

We had a paper doll challenge for our print club and all that was a must was that the doll had to have some type of print incorporated into it. I had been working with some mixed media paper dolls earlier and so I continued my experimenting with the paper doll using alot more hardware, wire and beads. Of course there are pieces of my collagraph prints in there as well.

Native Dress

This dress is made from a very stiff thick leather. I originally wanted to make it out of bark, and I was only successful in covering myself with sap. Not that I really minded the smell of pine tree!
To work with bark you need to let it soak and then it becomes very soft and pliable. But once it dries it pretty much does it's own thing no matter how hard you think you have it bound together well enough.
The fringes are made from raffia and the whole piece is sewn with imitation sinew.

Ornie - Uncanny

This is the edited version from the ornie pictured below. I did away with the leg warmers and the face needed detail and I hope I've accomplished that.


My fascination with altered dolls continues! I covered the doll in aluminum tape and then glued on purple micro glass beads randomly. Then followed with inking and scratching the doll. Combination of black and silver wire used to create the legs and arms.
She is topped off with a pleated aluminum mesh skirt! The colors were not thought out and turned to be a little dark. I may go back and work over the eyes. I just couldn't seem to pull them off very well.

Contemporary Native American Indian Dolls

Just a few samples of dolls I have created for a show coming up in few weeks. Each one created is one of a kind. This style of doll is a far cry from the ones I have been creating. Creating the art dolls really challenge me to explore and go beyond my comfort zone. The learning process with the Indian dolls is very slow at evolving and can become stagnant from time to time.
I work on both types of dolls at the same time because when I become frustrated or bored with one style, I move on over to the other for a nice change of pace.