No doll work this weekend

Well, this weekend I was in southern Utah picking up my Mom, who had been down there for the past two months. So needless to say I have not worked on dolls this weekend. It's good that Mom is back, and it seems like she had a great time while she was down there. She stayed busy with classes and concerts, it's all great for her.
I email the pictures and questions that are going to be in the Doll magazine. It will be good to have something published about my dolls. It's been quite a while since I have had any mention about me or even any pictures of my dolls published in a magazine. I'll let you know what magazine and when it's out. Now I just need to stay busy and get more work done so I can get even more publicity right!!! Man that is easier said then done. If only I had infinite time, money and a maid service. Life would be so easy then. But enough of the wishful thinking, that never gets your goals accomplished, it only waists time. Well I'll keep you posted on the progression of the BJD and other doll that I'm working on.
Oh by the way. The WRC (Winter Racing Circuit) that I entered. It's a series of 5 races (5K, 10K, 10 miler, 1/2 marathon and 30K) So far I've run the first three races and I'm in 3rd place in my age group. Not to bad for an old lady, I'll see how I do in the rest of the races to see how I place. I'll keep you posted.

Update on BJD

As you can see I have worked on the BJD a bit more. I added her neck and worked on one of her legs. It doesn't show in the picture but I did alot of sanding and refining. I think I will leave the torso alone for a while, but I'm sure I will have to do some more work on it when I make the ball joints. I'm not going to add any more details to the torso until I finished fitting the ball joints.

Finished a mini baby

Well the new mini baby is off to my sister’s house to be dressed. My sister Denise has been dressing my dolls for a few years now. She is a very creative seamstress, and since I’m not good at sewing and I also don’t particularly enjoy that aspect of doll making, I’m very happy to let her do it.
I’m still not very happy with the way this baby turned out. I think once Denise dresses her I might like her a bit more, but I’m sure I will be sending her off to a new home soon.
I was thinking the other day why it was that I liked the other baby head and not this one. I’ve come to the conclusion that with the first baby head I was sculpting with a reference photo, and with the second one I wasn’t. So this proves to me that I need to always have a good reference photo to work from. It’s not that I’m trying to achieve a portrait sculpt from the photo, but more that I have a real face to look at and reference from.
So I will post pictures of this new baby when she is dressed, and hope that someone will want to have her for their own.

Getting Older Stinks!

Well it has finally happened. I am becoming my Mother. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Mother very much. But as a kid I never understood why she was not a good sleeper. I remember many times hearing her move around the house in the wee hours of the night and early morning. She would say to me many times when I was small and as I was growing up that she had trouble sleeping. As a kid I always thought that was weird. Sleeping comes so natural, lay down and close your eyes. Seems simple right? Even as an adult I never understood not being able to have a good nights sleep. That is until about 2 months ago. I don’t know what has changed, but I don’t think I have had a good nights sleep in at least that long. I usually wake-up somewhere between 2-4 every night and can’t go back to sleep and to make matters worse, I need to have some caffeine to get me going now. I still keep it to one diet soda a day, but man this is killing me. If things don’t change pretty soon I think I will have a visit to my doctor. So wish me sweet dreams and hope that soon I will be having a sound and complete nights of sleep.

Mini Babies

Here is a new mini baby head that I'm working on. I used masterpiece eyes, they are a greeny color. I like them but I will have to use something to make them shiny. She will needs some more painting and hair, but I think I like her.
This is a second mini baby head that I'm working on. I don't like this one as well. Maybe when I painter her and add hair I will like her better.
Here is some new legs for the mini baby.

The Eyes have it - Or maybe not

So I don't know if many of you check out OOAK dolls on eBay, but some artist make their own eyes for their dolls. I was experimenting this weekend to see if I could make some for my dolls. Now with that said the artists on eBay make very small eyes, around 2mm and I don't work at that small of a scale so maybe part of the trouble that I had was because I was making bigger eyes. Either way here are some pictures and explanation of how I tried to make eyes. I think I will try again... I'm sure I can figure this out.
Here I have made the eyeball with a tool that I bought a long time ago from Pat Moultin. I have used Fimo translucent clay. It has a better white color then the other translucent polymer clays.
This is a picture of all the eyes that I copied from the Internet. It is time consuming to size them to the size you need, and photo shop out any white from the flash when they took pictures of the eyes.
OK... now I have cut out the irises of the eyes and centered them on the Fimo circles. Then I put a small amount of Fimo liquid deko gel on top of the paper iris. Bake it according to the instruction on the Deko gel bottle.
Well as you can see it was not a success. Hmmm I think the oven was too hot, or maybe I need to add a bit of white fimo to the translucent so that it doesn't yellow.
Bad picture, but I tried one more time. I added a bit of white and also turned down the oven a few degrees. These are 10mm eyes and I think they look OK. I still need to experiment a bit with this, I'm not totally happy with them just yet. One last detail to get the Fimo Deko Gel to be completely clear... you need to take a heat gun and blast the eyes for just a few seconds, and they get wonderfully clear like glass eyes.
So there you have it... my first attempt and making doll eyes. I'll keep you posted on my progress.

Cooked Body

Here are some pictures after she was cured. I'm sure I will need to sand and resculpt some areas, She needs more smoothing and refining, but it's a pretty good start for my first attempt at a BJD.

A New Body

Well I added clay to the torso of the ball joint doll. It's a pretty good start but I'm sure I will need to do plenty of sanding and resculpting before she will be finished. Here are some pictures of her right before I put her in the oven.

Waiting for the weekend

I’m hoping to work on my BJD this weekend. I have started adding clay to the torso, and so far I think it is working out OK. I also want to try to experiment with making some eyes. I’ll take pictures and we’ll see if it turns out.
I’m so excited to see if I can get this BJD to work, I would love to eventually have them cast in resin and have a company. I would do very limited editions, probably no more then 10-15 of each. If I got popular I might do bigger editions. I think it would be great also to have maybe 5 in the edition that I would paint, costume and sell as one-of-a kind. I guess they would be considered OOAK even though they are molded. The terminology is very confusing to me. I would get my sisters to make costumes for the OOAK ones, my sisters are all wonderful seamstresses. I can sew, but I never got very good at it. Anyway I will take pictures when I’m able to work on my dolls and lets all hope I can find some time.

Moab Utah

The Moab 1/2 marathon is now one of my top 5 runs! It was absolutely breath taking. I had a wonderful run! I didn't set any records but I finished strong and felt great the entire time. I didn't take any pictures while I was running but the girls and I went into Arches National Park later that day. Here are some pictures from Arches.

Running in Moab

I won't get much doll work in this weekend. I'm heading to Moab Utah tomorrow to run the Moab 1/2 marathon on Saturday. It should be fun!! I'm going with a few friends. I will try and take some pictures and post them when I return. Moab is a great city, it's been a while since I have been able to visit, but from what I remember it is beautiful. Some of Utah's most beautiful scenery is there. If we are not dead after the marathon we are going to try to go into arches national park, like I said it should be fun!

Time for dolls

This weekend I was able to work on the new mini baby doll that I have started. I got one leg done and started working on the other one. The proportion of the new armatures that I'm using are better then the last, but they are a bit too thick at the bottom ankle part. I will probably grind the other set down. I'm also going to experiment with making armatures from foil. It will help with the cost of the dolls and I will be able to control the thickness so I won't have all the issues with them being to thick because I will make them they way I want.

I'm excited to start working on the BJD (ball joint doll). I have the armature finished.
















Here are some pictures of how the armature turned out. All that I have read about OOAK (one-of-a-kind) ball joint dolls, is that they are usually made from paper clay. I don't particularly like to work with paper clay so I had to figure out a way to sculpt the doll in polymer clay. After much thought, I came up with making the armature from brass tubes. Then you can string the doll without having to drill hole. I'm crossing my fingers in hopes that it works the way I think it will.
I have the clay and eyes that I ordered. Now I just need to get busy and do it.