CIFI 2010 dessert dolls

It's been a long time since my last post.
Not that I didn't have much to say, I just didn't have anything to show.

I've been working on my CIFI 2010 dolls and they had to be kept secret.

So now I am back from the States and I can finally write about my dolls.

I made 2 challenge dolls the theme was desserts and I've been having sugary sweet and above all pink nightmares about this theme.

So in the end I decided to go for one true dessert doll and for one variation on the theme. This meant that one doll had to be an orignal and one had to be made from an excisting pattern. 

So I started with "Fruity Sorbet" I used Arley Berryhill's fabulous La femme pattern for the top half of the dessert. Now this was a worry....knowing that Arley would be at CIFI, he would see straight away how I butchered his pattern.

Every bit of fruit, icecream, biscuit and whatever else you see is sewn. The glass is sewn by hand from a double layer of table plastic.

But although I put a lot of time and effort into making this doll, it never really became "my doll". It's not really the kind of doll I normally make and I didn't feel like it was "mine" because I used someone else design.

Boy was I in for a surprise!

Fruity Sorbet won a blue ribbon, a perfect score, judges choice and best in show.

I really could not believe it! And to top it all of Arley said he was impressed with the work, so what more could a girl ask for?

My second CIFI doll was my little Thai street vendor.

We met this lady on our holiday to Thailand, she was selling sticky black rice with mango wrapped in banana leaves.

This lady is the kind of doll I love to make. It's all about the expression. And aged hands and feet are so much more fun to make, they tell a story all by them self!

I must admit she looked a little demure in between all those fabulous dessert dolls. But never the less she won a blue ribbon!

Time to experiment

As you might have gathered from my previous posts I can be a rather strange person. One of my quirks is that I buy some of the weirder and more wonderful materials and then won't try them out, "because it would be a shame to waste them". And since these materials will never amount to anything without some serious experimentation, they end up in my "one-day-I-will"-cupboard.Being in dolly limbo after all the big challenges, I needed something fun and uncomplicated to play with.....so I decided that it was about time I lost some of my weird quirks......and here is experiment no.1.

Oh.....can't tell you about experiment no.1 before telling you about another quirk....I never keep any of the patterns I make or ideas that I come up with.

Once they are made that's it......over the years I've bought a pile of folders with all the right intentions, but they always got filled up with stuff, but never with my stuff. So experiment no. 1 was intended to kill 2 quirks in one go...make a folder cover and use some previously unused strange materials.....

Well here it is........

No doubts who this folder belongs to!

The border is made from lutradur, first painted in a shimmery gray and then painted with some copper enamel I had laying about. After that I ironed on some Angelina fibers (he that's two experiments in one!)

The interesting proporties of lutradur show when it's heated. So where it that blasted heatgun.......hmm.....

after 2 hours searching and much frustration I was so fed up that I picked up the whole piece and held it over the stove. This created an interesting effect called......fire!

Hmmm....maybe a bit more distance from the flames.....(he, it is an experiment!)

So instead of my nice square piece of lutradur, that should show some delicate lacing effects I ended up with this....frame???

So I had a frame now....but what to put in it?

I wanted to try a fabric portrait for a while, but as I could envision the repercussions if I would mess up, I decided the safest way to go was to use my own portrait....and there you have it....a folder that I never have to write my name on, an experiment with lutradur and angelina fibers and an experiment in fabric portraits! No I just have to write it all down and put it in the folder.

Something a little different......autumn leaves

I really had to come up with an idea for a long overdue present.
Jean Bernard who's not only a fabulous artist, a great teacher, but also a very nice person, sent me a box of the most scrumptious fabrics a few months ago and I still hadn't thought of anything I could sent her, seeing as she is not a doll collector.....
But after getting both the Hoffman challenge doll and the Treasures of the gypsy doll out of the way I ran out of excuses and had to put my thinking cap on.
If there is anything Jean is good at it is to pry people out of their boxes, so it couldn't be anything box standard. Then I thought of the face molds I won in the silent auction at CIFI '08, Jean donated a whole pack of her face molds and instructional cd's. And ideas started to flow..... and here is the result....a pin.....

There are tiny beads, pewter arm charms, a California jasper cabochon, copper leaf, some kind of weird bandage-like fabric, unspoon silk, glitters, paints and glue.
And yeah, there is some stitching there too!

What can I say........I just really hope she likes it!