Mariah

 This is Mariah and this is a very special night for her. She is dressed and ready to go to her first high school dance. Her date bought her a beautiful wrist corsage that matches her dress perfectly.

Dad says that curfew is at 10:00, "No Exceptions!"  Mariah will be 14 years old in a few weeks so mom says that she can wear a little lipstick and mascara, just for tonight because it's a special occasion.

Alice Blue

Well, work, illness and family commitments had to come first this year and I didn't get to finish the A to Z challenge. I will try again next year. I'm glad to report that my family is doing much better, I finally kicked the spring cold/allergy syndrome and work has leveled off a bit. I work on my art and my dolls every chance I get, even when things aren't going so well.

This is Alice Blue. She is one of the good things that came out of the cold I was trying to get rid of, so at least something positive came out of it.

Alice has been chasing this little rabbit for days now. Her mother tells her she must be more lady-like but her father loves her adventurous spirit.

Alice has great courage and an amazing imagination. She wants to grow up to be a writer some day.

She's wearing her favorite "Alice Blue" dress and a blue hair ribbon. She also has her little white rabbit tied with a blue ribbon so that he won't get away.

A Finished Project: Christmas Cards

I didn't finish all of my Halloween projects but I decided that I'm not late for this year, just early for next year. I packed up all of the orange, black, green and purple, the fabric and all of the patterns I made and put them neatly away in a box for next year.I got an offer last week to put some of my work in a shop at the Brick House Gallery in Sacramento. I am very excited and very honored. I will give you more details when I find out more. I decided that I need to be working on Christmas projects since Halloween completely slipped through my fingers. Last year I designed and created some old fashioned ornaments and some Christmas stockings that did very well. I sold out of the stockings and wished I had made more. The one thing I didn't get to do last year was to create some Christmas cards so that has been my focus for the last couple of weeks.
I love this effect of these Christmas ornaments kind of floating on a black background. It was an idea I had last year but I never got a chance to draw them. Here are the first two designs, I have two more with ornaments almost done and about six more designs that I am determined to finish this year.
I used Prisma pens, Sharpies, Tombow watercolor pens and gel ink.
These are the finished cards. I can't wait to finish the rest and share them with you. Anyone in the Sacramento area can purchase my work at The Market Place in Rancho Cordova and soon at The Brick House Gallery.

Finished Project

It's been a really busy week. I finally finished re-designing and changing my booth at The Market Place and I'm very happy with the new look. It now has a boutique look rather than a mini gallery. With this new concept I'm able to feature and sell a wider variety of my crafts as well as my art and of course, my dolls. I'll share pictures with you later this week.





My finished project this week is one of the items that I will be selling. I needed to put together something really quick that went along with my new concept but looked beautiful and would appeal to my customers. I created this really simple design for a summer purse and chose three bold fabrics to create them in and big whimsical buttons to compliment them. I also made some soft exotic printed scarves that go well with the purses.

This one is an earthy batik print in shades of latte and chocolate brown. The scarf is a sheer Asian print in turquoise and taupe.

This print reminds me of a pretty French watercolor painting.

This is my favorite one. It is a bold graphic floral print in red, yellow and black and the scarf is a red and black Indian sari pattern. All of the purses are plushy quilted cotton, lined with a coordinating cotton print, have an inside pocket and are completely washable. They are 'The Perfect Little Summer Bag' to carry your sunglasses, cell phone, keys, a bottle of water and all of your summer essentials. I will also be featuring them on Etsy. I made them and I want this purse myself.

Thank God It's Tuesday!

Another week ends, another week begins. I didn't have a chance to take pictures for this post. Last week was moving week for my retail space. It took about 2-1/2 days to break down my booth, move it and set it up again. Like housecleaning it gave me a chance to 'purge' and eliminate some of the things I've been trying to sell for almost a year. Some of my artwork is a little edgy and now that my dolls are the 'stars' of my space I made the decision to re-design my 'image' and give it a softer, friendlier look.

This coming weekend, The Market Place in Rancho Cordova California where I work is hosting an Arts and Crafts Faire in our parking lot and The Second Saturday Art Walk inside of our store. I'm working on some new pieces of my own to get ready to display and sell. The key word for me this week is "focus, focus, focus". I have five new items finished already, they were in earlier reveals on this blog site and my goal is to finish five to seven more pieces by Friday. I promise to share them here with you, lots of pictures coming soon plus pictures of my booth. It's almost 9:15 am here, so I'm off and running.

TGIT Thank God It's Tuesday!

I'm so glad it's Tuesday again which is the first day of my 'weekend'. Above is a picture of my three projects for this week. I'm still enjoying experimenting with textile art and fabric painting. I dyed and stenciled the piece above and I never like to waste fabric even experiments, so my challenge is to turn my sample into a finished item.

My second project for this week is to finish one of the dolls I started months ago. She's the blond with the big smile. Her name is Samantha and she was inspired by the character in 'Sex in the City'. My doll faces have become so much better over the last few months and she looks a little more comical to me now but I'm going to finish her anyway. I started the other three characters too, so I plan to finish them also.

My third project is my "little old grey haired lady". I've been wanting to do a "little old lady" for a long time. I'm inspired by another doll artist in one of my doll groups who did some 'grammy' dolls. Usually, my dolls don't tell me what their names are until I paint their faces. Yesterday my "little old lady" fell off my work table and when I bent over to pick her up she was very annoyed with me for letting her fall and she told me her name was Mildred. I can't wait to see what Mildred will look like by the end of the week.

I didn't get my first male doll Keannu finished by my deadline yesterday. I had some technical difficulties when I was making pants for him. I realized that when I made the pattern for his body I didn't give him enough 'bum' so his pants cave in in the back. I know this sounds strange but I just can't live with 'bumless' boy doll he just looks odd. Anyway, after I finish this post, I will give Keannu a 'bum' implant to help his pants fit better. They actually had to do that for Ralph Macchio on Dancing With The Stars last week because he didn't have enough bum of his own to do the Samba =)

Work has been so-o-o-o slo-o-o-ow this week. I work at the The Market Place in Rancho Cordova, California on the weekends. We have a great art gallery with paintings and sculptures by local Sacramento artists and we also have antiques and collectibles, custom jewelry and a book section with books by local authors. We have fountains and indoor waterfalls, so we have the relaxing sound of water all around us. It is such a creative and inspirational place to work but the economy here has still not recovered from the recession and our artists, authors and business owners are struggling.

I'm an artist and crafts person but I'm also a business manager and the term "starving artist" is very "romantic" but it doesn't pay the rent. I have friends in the art community who like myself, got ambushed when the job market dropped and had to go on unemployment. Finding a job was next to impossible especially here, we had the highest rate of unemployment in the country, so a lot of us turned to our creative backgrounds to supplement unemployment and part time incomes. Thank God for the spirit of creative people. We've added beauty to the world making it less cold while managing to survive.

For some, the recession became a blessing in disguise because out of necessity, we found out how to become independent of the corporate world, how to live with less and be happy, how to value our ingenuity and how to use our own time for our own business success. I think this discovery has changed a large segment of our population and our economy forever.