Caramela is all ready for the Holidays!

Here she is.  She is all dolled up and ready for Christmas Eve!!
Her wings are made of paper and wire and the rest of her is paper mache and paper clay over a wood and foam armature.
I hope you like her.  I do
You can check her out in my Etsy shop.

http://www.etsy.dotworks99.com/

WIP sugar plum fairy Caramela update

Caramela has a face!  She's got lovely violet eyes.  She says they are just like Liz Taylor's but she's a little full of herself (she is pretty cute though)

Her wardrobe is coming together too.  The lapel and blouse are plummy sort of purples, with polka dots.  I am still debating on the skirt color and...... what will the jacket look like?

Here she is with her raspberry wool hair and wings. The wings I put on temporarily. I am figuring out her hairstyle and wanted to see where the wings and hair would need to fit together.  The wings will be jazzed up a bit and , once the jacket is painted, rammed into her back with some wire and glue.  It's okay, it doesn't hurt her, she's very thick skinned  heehee

Caramela The Sugar Plum Fairy W.I.P.

I discovered a Sugar Plum Fairy today. 
Already she's told me her name is Caramela (of course that was not until she had a face and a mouth...) Her wings are in production and already she has decided on raspberry wool hair, maybe with a bit of sparkle.  I think she will be deliciously sweet.
She is very plump and I wouldn't want her any other way.  She is after all a Sugar Plum fairy.  How can you be a fairy in charge of sugar plums and not be?
She told me she has 2 sisters who may be arriving soon.  I reminded her that there are only so many hours in a day and I do need to sleep sometime, but we'll see. Stay tuned......

http://www.etsy.com/listing/83940670/halloween-thanksgving-wall-hanging

Here's my latest creation.  I've been working with paper clay alot lately and missed polymer, so here is a wall hanging made completely of polymer clay on a wood frame.  Aside from the patina of burnt umber, all of the colors are made from the clay itself.  This one was fun and now I am ready for my next paper clay project....Keep an eye out for The Sugar Plum Fairy coming soon.

Vintage Halloween Card Swap sculpture is complete!

Well, he's all done.  And I have to say I am very proud of how he turned out.  As always what was in my head originally and what eventually came out in clay and paint were 2 different things.  This is not to say I didn't have some idea of what he would look like; he just showed himself to me as we went along.  And finally he said "Okay, enough.  Put down the brush, I am done"
I hope you like him too.

 

Almost finished with my creepy Halloween Kewpie

He does look a bit like a Kewpie doll, doesn't he?  The original card definitely reminds me of a Kewpie....anyway.
Here are the latest pictures.  He's got hemp hair and a paper clay hat.  His hands are almost complete, just some cuffs and he'll be dressed up and ready for painting. 
(Not to completely get off the track but everytime I take a picture at my work table I am distracted by those darn yellow curtains!  My table is in front of a big glass door that looks out into our backyard.  Well right now it looks out to the tomato plants that take up most of the view but I like it.  Lots of green!Not "I need to wear sunglasses because it's so bright"  yellow!  OK I am done.  thanks for listening, now back to the task at hand....)
I also made two very funny skull balloons for him to hold.  Those are pictured below.  I hope to be completed by tomorrow.

Vintage Halloween card inspired swap update

Update on Vintage Halloween card swap:  My little Jack O Lantern person is a bit cuter than I would like (weird thing to say?) but I have plans for him....hoohooohahahah!!
His head is polymer clay, his body, paper clay over paper mache.  His body will light up and he's going to , very soon, be holding a bunch of creepy balloons.  I'll keep you posted.
Have a great day, and thanks for checking in.

Started making a jack o lantern, ended up making a fish

So I had these big plans this weekend.  We were going to be stuck inside, thanks to Irene, so I would have plenty of time to craft, right? Time to work on the Vintage Halloween card Swap.   I had my hollow form for the jack o lantern already dry.  Itching to get started on my weekend of crafting bliss I cut out the mouth, then on to the nose and....crack!  It didn't look anything like a jack o lantern anymore....sigh.  I sulked for a bit with this broken sphere in my hand and then realized that it did look very much like the mouth of a hungry fish, wide open ready to gobble down some unsuspecting smaller fish. 
With a little reluctance ( focus Dorothy!!)I put that aside, still needing a new jack o lantern I took out the papier mache.  This time I took the time to clearly define the features while it was still on the form. I did learn something new!  And while that was drying I could work on the fish!  My craft weekend was not lost after all.
 Well plans changed..... we were told that at 4 pm on Saturday, all the homes in our neighborhood were being evacuated, this time it was mandatory.  Our town does not flood, even though we are 1/2 mile from the water we are up on a hill.  What does happen is the main road to get out floods in both directions.  We would be trapped.  We decided to stay anyway (we are such rebels!or stupid, depends on your perspective))figuring if something happened at home we would be there to take care of it or deal with it.  And, it's a good thing we did.  Sometime overnight  the sump pump in the crawlspace decided it had enough and stopped working. 
At about 6:30 Sunday morning John and I started emptying the crawlspace of about 8" of water.  I had a bucket and he rigged up the wet/dry vac and pump.  We took turns throughout the day sitting in the crawlspace manually turning on the vacuum, turning on the pump, waiting for the water to fill the sump enough to start the process all over again.  We even started timing the fill ups to see if it was taking longer, see if the water would ever stop! 
After 2 attempt to get to our local hardware store he finally was able to pick up a new sump pump and we were freed from the dungeon..er...um.. I mean, we were out of the crawlspace.  All things considered it could have been much worse, and was for many other people, so we consider ourselves very lucky.

I did manage to work a little on my jack o lantern and Lester, the little fish that made a wrong turn....

Progress on Vintage Halloween Swap

Just a quick post, lots to do today.  I have the hollow body of the jack o lantern ready to go.  Cutting out face and applying paperclay today. 

We are on the east coast and with the weather headed our way I figure I'll have plenty of time this weekend to work on this.....

Stretching my Creative wings

 I've decided I need to be braver, bolder.  I wrote down a quote on an index card and carry it around with me.  "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."  I take it out every once in awhile to remind myself to be bold and to be aware of the magic in everyday.  Sometimes it even works, haha!
I am getting more involved in doing what is that I love to do, being creative, making art, getting my hands dirty, loosing myself for hours in a blob of clay and being utterly satisfied.
I'd like to share my experiences with you.  Listen if you'd like, don't if you are not interested, that's OK too.  Maybe we can help each other along the way.


My most recent bold move (my bold may not be your bold, I am working on it) is to sign up for a great swap with other amazing artists at www.creatingthehive.com. 
http://creatingthehive.com/blog-post/139789/second-anual-vintage-halloween-card-creative-challenge
We each picked a public domain vintage Halloween card as inspiration for a 3 dimensional art object, which we will swap with another artist.  I was  so excited to get started. I have the hollow form made already!  (He's going to light up...ssshhh)  Below is the card I am using for inspiration.

I thought it was really cute and had some really cute ideas about the really cute face and the really cute jack o lantern and it was all going to be really cute,  when my oldest son said "that's kind of creepy".  I hadn't seen it before! He is kind of Creepy in a Twilght Zone, "I'm Talky Tina and you'd better be nice to me" sort of  way.
I'll post pics as I go......