TGIT Thank God It's Tuesday!

Another week is over. I can't believe that half the year is almost gone. This has been one of the most unusual years for weather in California that I've ever been through. It's June 27th, a week away from the 4th of July and it's cold and raining. They are expecting snow fall in the mountains today too. The ski resorts are having a great year, they will be open this year for 4th of July snow skiing.
This time a week ago it was 101 degrees outside and we were all trying to get out of the heat. We had tornado warnings an thunder storms all spring up until three weeks ago. One of my favorite things to do is to watch the sky and the changing weather patterns. These are some of the pictures I took this morning before it started to rain.

I had the opportunity to talk to an astronomy/geology specialist in Starbuck's several weeks ago. She explained that our unusual weather patterns are affecting the whole country as well as the planet in general. She said that this is a permanent change because our planet is now tilted. I know that I must have looked at her in disbelief because I had not heard that before. Later, my son Googled "tilted planet" and found articles on two of the more devastating earthquakes we've had in the last several months in Japan and Chile. The whole Japanese Continent shifted 8 feet in different direction after the earthquake which literally tilted the axis of the earth.

My son jokingly said that maybe now we are getting Washington state's weather. That's something to think about.

TGIT Thank God It's Tuesday

I'm so glad to be posting again. Last week I had computer problems again. I'm so in need of something new. I'm working on it.

This week I'm back to being a doll maker. I am going to try staggering my craft project types instead of trying to do multiple project types in a week. Sometimes my creative spirit is all over the place. I get so many ideas at the same time and I want to start them immediately. I've decided to treat myself as though I am a team. I have 10 minute morning meetings with myself where I do project planning for the day and for the week. I take notes and everything. I'm going to try to "curb my enthusiasm" and focus on completing projects. New ideas will be written in my craft journal in detail and will be started with other similar and compatible projects in their designated week.

Let's see if I get more accomplished with this plan.

This week my "plan" is to finish some of my poor naked, bald headed dolls that I started weeks and weeks ago. The two 'ladies' above are Charlotte and Samantha. They are so excited to finally be designed, styled and dressed. I'm kind of excited too, I'm looking forward to getting the girls ready for the world.

Finished Project: My First Male Doll

Well, he's finally finished, my first male doll. It was a little harder than I thought'

There are different details you have to pay attention to in order to give a doll a 'masculine' look. He did tell me his name is not Keannu but Jeff. He looks a little like my son's best friend's little brother.

The challenge for me was designing clothes for him that weren't feminine and and giving him hair and facial details that were masculine. Girl dolls are a lot easier.

I will definitely do more male dolls. I have a request from a friend to do a doll of here son.

Finished Project

I've been having computer issues again so I haven't been able update my blog but I'm up again.

This is one of this week's finished projects. I'm still working on products to sell in my booth. this is the fourth purse I've done from the same design. I love the bold print in black and shades of blue, green and turquoise. I accented it with sequins in the same colors.

The Wiz

I had a relaxing finish to a hectic week. I decided to allow myself to go into 'veg-out mode'. No crafts, no art, no home based business this evening

As I was changing the channels on my TV I found a movie I haven't seen in years, "The Wiz". I remembered watching it many years ago with my sons when they were kids.

Tonight, it was the perfect fantasy escape movie. It was so good for my creative spirit to see the great costumes and hear the music. The most special thing was to see the beautiful Miss Lena Horne, who played Glinda the Good Witch sing "Believe In Yourself". It was a much needed inspirational message.

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.

Finished Project

Just wanted to share my latest completed project in textile art. This was an experiment in batiking but instead of using traditional wax or gutta resist I used Elmer's Washable Gel School Glue. It was a little tricky at first. I think the first bottle of gel glue that I used was old and it made it hard to squeeze it out of the bottle.

On this pillow I used a sun stencil and applied the glue by dabbing it in the stencil opening on the white fabric. I dried it with a hair dryer and then measured off the center frame with a ruler and air soluble ink. I free-handed the border with red fabric paint and dried it with the hair dryer. I set the dye by ironing it with a dry iron and then painted over the red border with gel glue. I again dried the glue with the hair dryer and then painted the whole pillow cover with a sponge brush and black fabric paint. I dried it again with the hair dryer until just dry enough to pick up. I ironed it again with a hot dry iron and then put it into the dryer for 30 minutes to 'cure'.

I hand washed the piece in mild soap and warm water to remove the excess dye and the glue. It took a little soaking and scrubbing to get all of the glue out and rinsed it well. The fabric was firmer but still soft. I Ironed the wet fabric to dry it. I was anxious to see the finished piece.

This pillow pattern I kept a little more simple. All of the white areas were just covered with gel glue and left to dry. I painted all of the orange areas first. I randomly painted orange blotches in the border. when the orange dye was dry, I covered the orange blotches in the border with gel glue and let it dry. The last step was to paint the remaining areas with red dye and let it dry also. I heat set the dye with the iron again and then repeated the finishing steps above.

TGIT Thank God It's Tuesday!

Well, another week has gone by and another weekend for me begins. Work is still slow but my employer's business is still hanging in there. We sponsored an outdoor arts and crafts fair this past Saturday for the Salvation Army to raise money for the tornado victims in the South. We had a lot of great crafters but the foot traffic was slow. We were competing with unseasonably cold temperatures for us in May. We had some rain and we are usually in the 80's this time of year but we never got above 68. We were also competing with the Jazz Festival downtown and the Sacramento County Fair.

I committed to finishing three projects last week and wasn't able to complete them. Going out of town to see my granddaughter's preschool graduation and having a horrible toothache slowed me down considerably. I did finish my textile art piece as shown in my last post. I got my male doll almost completely done. He now has hair, shoes, jeans, a T-shirt and one arm. I attempted hands with fingers this time, so, the second arm has slowed me down a little but he's almost done and ready to be photographed.




My 'three' projects for this week are still the two dolls from last week, smiling Samantha and my little old lady Mildred. I am determined to finished my old doll projects before I start any new ones. My textile art piece for this week is also shown here. I used a batiking type technique to paint this kind of eerie face. It was kind of fun because I used Elmer's washable school glue as a resist instead of wax or other traditional resists. I got an interesting effect. I will turn it into a finished project this week.

The only thing that will slow me down this week is that I have to change my booth at the retail space where my artwork is located. I'm not looking forward to taking everything apart and putting it back together again. I've been using my outdoor tent as the framework for my booth. I'm hoping to come up with a better idea so that I don't have to use the tent. I haven't been able to do outdoor shows because I don't have a second tent so this is a good opportunity to make the change.

A Finished Project

One of the challenges I gave myself last week was to turn the sample fabric I dyed with textile paint into a finished piece. I had dyed a 10" x 30" strip of fabric in an ombre effect in mineral blue and tobacco brown. The colors bled into each other so that the colors softened each other. I stenciled some inspirational words on both ends and then added hand knotted fringe in a color that matched the blue.

Anyway, my experimental, sample fabric is now a pretty cotton scarf. I can't wait to try another textile art project this week.

Maya's Proudest Day

This is Maya's day and I want to share a little of it with you.

I hope that you all won't mind if I am a little self indulgent with this post. I am a grandmother of four absolutely beautiful grandchildren and yesterday was my 4-year-old granddaughter Maya's graduation from preschool. Those of you who are still young and don't have children of your own yet may say 'what's the big deal?' If you think of any accomplishment either past or recent that you are proud of, something that you worked really hard to achieve, understand that it is the same for a 4-year-old.

I have been so blessed to be a part of my granddaughter and my grandson Jaden her brother's lives. I only wish that I could see my other two Paul and Reylena more often. This is my blog and I get to post the proudest day of my Maya's life. This is their 'Good-bye Song'.

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.

Meg, Mistress of Potions

Anyone who has been following this blog will remember a piece of fabric I dyed a couple of weeks ago with diluted fabric paint. The fabric became a deeper flesh tone color although it doesn't show as well in these photos.

I had no plan for what the final design for her would be because she started out as an experiment in dying fabric. Once the body was completely assembled I chose a photograph to use to design her face.

Once her face was painted her personality came out and she began to tell me who she was. I used a wild, fiery red-orange yarn with gold treads in it for her hair and earthy fabrics for her costume and shawl.


She suddenly became a Celtic mistress of potions. I think I was inspired by the show Merlin that aired on the 'Syfy' channel this past season.

I gave her a headband made out of stone beads and a bag of potions around her neck.

She is also wearing suede boots with corded ties.

Of course, she told me that her name is Meg and she is now the newest member of "Gloria's Girls".

I completed the second item that I committed to this week. Now, I'm ready to finish my male doll.

Extreme Close Ups

I needed a break from sewing so I decided to take a ten minute field trip around the house and take some close up photography. I love my little camera, nothing fancy but it gives me some creative options.



The challenge I gave myself was to see how many simple compositions I could set up with things from around the house and shoot in ten minutes. I wanted my set ups to be colorful with good light, line and detail.

I also need to stimulate my creative energy to plan my next three projects for next week. If I don't think about it now I won't know what I want to complete next week. I'm still on a social networking diet. I am limiting how much time I spend on the Internet so that I can get more accomplished. This is the first week I'm on my networking diet and I have gotten more done. My goal is to complete a minimum of three creative projects a week.

I love the color contrast in these photos and how the light works in them. O.K., the creative wheels are turning. It's almost 11:00 here, back to work for another half hour and then straight to bed.

El Cielo de Colores

I am so proud of myself. I stayed on track this week and have all of the projects I committed to almost completed. This is the quilted fabric art piece that I started last week. I named it El Cielo de Colores, the sky of colors or the colorful sky.

I really enjoyed working on this. It's been a while since I've done a quilted art piece. I used fabric paint, fabric pastels and fabric paint pens. I also used some very tribal cotton prints to create the applique image.

I bordered it first in white cotton to make it look matted and then created a six inch border in a cotton batik to simulate a picture frame. I am very happy and honored to be able to share my projects here with you.

My next post will be my fabric paint dyed doll. When I painted her face she told me who she was and what she should look like. She's almost done.