Target Practice

Okay, call me a redneck dorkfish, but I love my guns.  I shoot a Rossi .38 Special, a Taurus 709 "Slim" .9mm, a Taurus PT92 .9mm, a teeny little Taurus .22, and a Browning marksman .22 for really accurate long range fun.  The hubs has a couple of Glock .9mms, a Ruger .45, and a really cool old Taurus .357 magnum revolver that we shoot .38's out of.  Accurate as hell.

We had a short series of private lessons last year.  At the end of the lesson, our show-boat instructor (a bear of a guy) put a bowling pin up and challenged us to his traditional "end of the lesson" shoot. We went back 65 yards, and he said to me, "Don't expect to be real accurate with that little gun.  Just ain't got what it takes."  He then used Phil's glock, and shot the bowling pin off the piling on the second try.  I got my little Taurus Slim, got into a firing position that he criticized, and then shot the pin off on the FIRST try.  At 65 yards.  Priceless.

Taurus 709 "Slim"

The concentration required for target practice is as consuming as finding a creative "zone" and we come home worn out and mellow.  And poorer by several boxes of ammunition!  Then we spend an hour cleaning everything.  Good times.  Not for everybody, maybe, but that's part of what makes he and I such good friends, despite the fact that we're so different from one another in so many other way.  So...target practice today with my husband.  Followed by a lazy afternoon of reading in a quiet house.

Hope your New Year is full things you love to do.

Lessons from a busy year...

Today's "work" involves waiting.  For
contractor bids
insurance quotes,
an appraisal report,
title search,
a survey.

I do all the realty since the Hubs holds down the W-2 job.  Six months ago I didn't even know what was in our joint bank accounts! Learning is what this year has been about for me.  I have learned...

about doll making,
art fairs,
taking care of my health,
real estate and finance,
vegetable gardening (or growing lush weed crops).

Seems like I spent the year trying to drink water from a fire hose. My dreams for the coming year are about learning to

a.  put my Virgo nature to work & handle paperwork on time.
b.  make time to move--aerobically or anaerobically--daily.
c.  announce my job: homemaker, investor, and artist.  No more, "Aw, no.  I don't work."
d. count my blessings every day.

One lovely French Lady I know from ADO commented yesterday that when she sees 2011, she keeps reading it as dO11.  How cool is that?  Maybe this is the year I find my voice with doll making.  If we're going to dream, let's dream big.

What are your dreams for this year?

Painting boxes.

I have several papermache boxes, collected over the last year, and lately I've had this urge to turn them into something.  Two so far are destined to be sewing notion boxes, w/ little pin keeps on top and a tiny doll.  The other two I've worked up in coordinating colors--aqua, dark tan, and cream...thinking of some kind of "doll" by stacking them.

My house is not geared toward the "shabby chic" decorating style--the hubs doesn't put his foot down on anything house-wise, but he nurtures the quiet hope that I will continue to keep it mostly gender-neutral.  ;~)  Nevertheless, I absolutely melt in the presence of old cabbage roses, pink ribbon, and rustic white paint.  So I think I'll make the notion-boxes doll to fill that particular craving.  Maybe someone else will be able to enjoy the results.

Hope your Wodin's Day is creative, interesting and full of love given and received.

Hold Me Closer Tiny Dancer...

I keep hearing that Elton John song, for some reason.  :~)

This Leah.  She came about because a friend of mine from Florida saw the last doll and challenged me to make a "ragged heart girl".  I told her I just might make several, but here is the first one.  I spent the weekend making her, and finished this morning.  Not all of my job is fun...some of the housework and administrivia is tedious.  But THIS part of my job?  Wouldn't trade it for all the 401Ks on Wall Street.

(Click = zoom.)

Coming up for Spring...

Dreaming Bunny Pin Keep

I've got to take some new photos before I list this one...the background should be a rich olive green, and the trim around the top of the box is peach...colors in these photos are weird, and I don't know enough to fix them!  As bad as the colors are, you can still zoom in by clicking the picture.

 

The watering can/pin-cushion is so strongly attached to the lid that the handle works as...well, a handle.  :~)  The doll head & body is about the size of my thumb, maybe smaller.  Nothing says Spring like a pregnant bunny, right? 

I'd love some feedback: is this too flowery/feminine/old fashioned/etc?  I have a thing about containers...and figured it'd be fun to combine a doll w/ a sewing box but not in the way I've seen it done.

Still waiting...

I realize that this is the week when lots of people forget where they work, and to expect administrivia to be accomplished is...silly.  But when They say the deal must close on a certain date, and then THEY drag their feet with the return of signed contracts so WE can't attend to our end of things, it's hard to take.  New Year's Resolution: never buy another property from Wells Fargo again.  It's not worth the insult and frustration.

And now we return you to your regularly scheduled program.

One World One Heart 2011

Okay, I FINALLY understand what this thing is about, and have signed up to participate.  (Not so difficult, I'm just new to the give-away thing.)  A little blog-surfing on each of seventeen days, a lot of new friends, and some fascinating arts and artists to explore.

The gist of it is that we bloggers sign up for OWOH, visit each others blogs, and--by leaving comments after we've "looked around a bit"--become eligible for each others' giveaway.  I like that she's made it simple and tried to cut out the push-your-own-agenda conditions that so many people apply to their giveaways--none of the "follow me" or "tweet my blog" stuff.  You leave a comment/blog/contact info, I add you to the drawing.  Simple as that.

I've never done a giveaway, and it seems I'm about to start with a whopper!  Also it seems I'm going to be in on the last year of this one...and that's both sad and auspicious as a beginning/ending.  Nevertheless, I'm working on the piece I want to have as my Door Prize...and since who knows who might end up with it, the only thing I know to do is make something I'd enjoy winning.  Yeah, I know...like Dennis the Menace giving Mom a toy firetruck for her birthday, but what else do I give an unknown recipient?

I'm stoked about meeting all those new friends and artists.  And, yes, I'm stoked about my own door prize surprise.   

If you blog (actively and regularly) and want to join in the fun, click on the picture in the sidebar--The Whimsical Bohemian will explain all the whys & wherefores to it. It's not all that hard to understand, but I let the husband have the brain cell for the entire month of December. 

One World, One Heart.  What could be better than that?

I finished Jack!

The most recent ADO challenge was Jack Frost.  Of course, I take things very literally, so I had to see just how Jack Frost I could make him.  He ended up being more of a Jack Sparrow meets Mad Hatter version, but I like him.  I had never done a batting-wrapped wire frame for a doll, so the learning curve was steeper than with the gourd dolls, but every little bit of learning counts, right?  I also learned that if you're making clothes for a static-frame doll, you better leave some seams open so you can sew them once they're ON the doll.  Let's hear it for the ol' learning curve.  :~)  He's listed on Etsy now...and will be on Artfire soon.

Anyway, here he his.  I hope you like him.

 

Your Suggestions are WELCOME!

I post every Friday on the Art Dolls Only Blog, a feature called Tips and Tricks Friday.  Today's tip seemed to apply not just to art doll makers, but to anyone--writers, artists, performers, anyone who depends on creativity to make their work...well, work.  Today's tip is about getting "unstuck" when you suffer a block in your creativity.  So I decided to re-post it here, and see what all my creative friends have to suggest...

Do you ever find yourself spending your creative time--your precious, jealously guarded, hard-earned studio hours--polishing the underside of the coffee table or re-alphabetizing your appliance warranty booklets?  I do, once in a while.

Paralyzed creativity.  What do you do to relieve this?  

When the problem is in my head--rather than my day-planner--my answer is to move.  Not like with a U-Haul to another zip code...I mean I have to get off my uncreative (and usually self-pitying) tookus and move.  It has to be the kind of movement that requires no concentration.  Just one foot in front of another.  Repeat.  Could be an exercise machine at the gym, but it's best to get outdoors, even if it's cold and windy.  My inner child whines a little if this is the case, but after a block or two I warm up.

The ideas don't come flooding in right away.  I don't stop and yell "EUREKA!" at the neighbor's dog, but somehow, in the course of a nice long walk, whatever's been clogging up the works gets unclogged.  I get home, and may go straight to the studio, or may plop down on the couch with a sketch book.  Either way, the blood's going in my brain, I don't feel guilty about a creativity-enhancing snack, and I've shifted my perspective without really knowing how.  I just know it works for me.

What do you do to get un-stuck?

Bent Whims Studio: Reflections from the Seat of an Old Tractor

I found this while I was adding blogs to our reading list.  It reads like the sum total of all the things my ancestors would tell me if they could.  And we are all the poor hound dog puppy at the end...

Bent Whims Studio: Reflections from the Seat of an Old Tractor

Good memories

This pic doesn't have anything to do with dolls, unless one counts my son and his wife as living dolls, and I do.  :~)  It was taken in 2003 (I think) and my son had just graduated Basic Training.  We were on a San Antonio  Riverwalk boat, and Josh and Montana were at the bow.  He proposed to her, and she said yes.  They are very sweet and still very much in love, and they are waaaaay too far away from me now, stationed in England.

I love you kids!

Spinning in Circles...

All those trendy signs that say

Um, yeah.  I am trying hard to remember this today because the real estate adventure we've been on has taken a sharp left turn.  Comps?  What comps?  We don' need no stinking comps!  Well, yeah we do, and if we don't find a way to get the appraisal we need, (in a world where Appraisers are underpaid and therefore refuse to be overworked) we'll lose out on the house we've invested so much time and money in already.

So, this is me, Keeping Calm and Carrying On.  More phone calls today, more paperwork, more research.  I'm not seeing much in the way of art dolls this week, but...it's all good.  Eventually, right?

Zodiac Notebooks on Artfire

He made these this summer and I'm just NOW listing them.  We took them to the Kerrville show and have sold the one for Capricorn, but the other eleven are still around.  I use mine (a custom jobbie with my Virgo symbol on it) whenever I go to a meeting, and on our trips to look at real estate...fits in a tote easily and the notebook is one of those "Fat Lil' Notebook" spirals you can get just about anywhere.

They make a great gift, especially for your favorite office-supply junkie...

I got my doll!

This is the first time I've participated in Zan Asha's Doll Swap... and it was fun.

I've posted pictures of Sonny the Studio Elf, the doll I made for my swap-partner, Kim.  Making him was mostly why this was so fun.  Making a doll specifically for someone is a blast, because the energy is directed and channeled somehow.

 

So Sonny went off to his new home with Kim, and this is the doll she made for me:

Hasn't he got great colors?  I named him Jim-Bob, because he looks like the sleepy-faced brother on the Waltons.  He now has a home on the Elf Shelf, and will remind me every year of this Doll Swap adventure.

A Reindeer for your favorite Science Weenie.

I had so much fun making this guy.  Bought the papermache deer at a thrift shop, did his eyes and nose with paperclay, and then covered him in a vintage--at least 1950's, maybe earlier--physics text.  As I went through the pieces of torn page, I kept running across little phrases that made me wonder...maybe physics and the mysterious flight of reindeer are not mutually exclusive?  Nice to think so, anyway.

Whadda ya think?

Got Birds?

I made these birds allllll summer.  Sitting on the couch with the hubs in the evening, I was either snipping and turning, stuffing, or sewing closed w/ a ribbon.  Now they're listed on Etsy in sets of three.  (Don't forget--a 10% discount with the coupon code 2010Yuletide.)

Calico Bird Ornaments

Two sales, one coupon code...

Has to do with a leaky memory, maybe.  Dunno.  But on our two stores, the Hermits' Garden on Artfire, and the JDConwell Etsy store, I put up a coupon for discounts until December 18.  The Hermits are offering free shipping on every item, and JDConwell (love the third person much?) is offering 10% on any item.  Mostly I was just playing around with coupon codes, having decided I should at least see what they're about.

Pretty fun, really...and easy.  Almost too easy.  Yeah, so why use the same code?  I just liked the code, actually, and it seemed to work.  SOooooo, to that end, if you use coupon code 2010Yuletide in either store, you'll save a little do-re-mi.  And that's always a good thing.

This little guy found a new home for the holidays, he and his birdy buddy.

The Spam Monster...

Every morning I have a routine...check the emails, check the store sites, check blogs, ADO, facebook, twitter, and then re-check emails.  We have several email accounts, each with a different purpose.  One thing I always have to check is the Spam Filter.  You know, to make sure I don't dump something that got snagged there by mistake.  In my head, it's like checking a sort of cyber-sewer filter, slimy and gross, with the stink of bottom-feeders.

The funny (no, not funny really) thing is, I always feel that simply OPENING the spam folder is enough to let some of them through.  Like they see me reading the subject lines of the emails...like I've made eye contact with the monster and it sees me looking.  Ick.

Now, I realize this is not the case.  Even I'm not technologically ignorant enough to think the emails can see me touching the filter to empty it.  But it still creeps me out.  Just sayin'.

Tomorrow's ADO blog...

I'm working up tomorrow's blog post for the new ADO blog feature, Tips and Tricks Friday.

Tomorrow's topic: glue.

It's hard to stay calm with the promise of that much glamor and excitement, I know, but please try. 

 

 (Edited to note: it turned out to be quite a lesson! Twenty doll artists weighed in on their favorites, how they use them.)

Time to start a new doll...

The next ADO challenge is Jack Frost...I haven't decided to enter or not.  But after finishing three dolls in a row, I have nothing to work on, and my work room is calling to me.  Sooooo time to start another one (or three).  This morning I watched an episode of Craft Lab (love this show) and the guy was using good old fashioned clay.  Maybe the new dolls should be ceramic?  I haven't gotten to work out there in ages, and the weather's cooling off so it'll be really cozy out there w/ just a little space heater.

Now if I can only free up some time from all the real estate and holiday chores, not to mention the regular household ones, you might find me out in the Pottery House.  :~)

This is Jo.

She's a challenge doll, created to answer the Inspired by the Masters ADO challenge.  I chose James Whistlers' "Symphony in White No. 1"--which he had originally called The White Girl--as my inspirational masterpiece.

The painting was completed in 1862, but not well received, finally gaining entry into the Salon des Refusés, an exhibition held in Paris in 1863 to show work that had been refused by the selection committee of the official Salon. "Symphony" was in good company, however: Manet, Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro, were among other major artists represented at the exhibition. Despite its original aura of ridicule, the Salon des Refusés was a starting point for artists who began to ignore Napoleon's blessings to organize their own exhibitions, establishing 1863 as the accepted beginning of modern painting.

The model was Joanna Hiffernan, Whistler's mistress.  Given an era in which an unmarried mistress modeling for her lover in the nude was considered little better than a prostitute, Jo called herself Mrs. Abbott to better help him sell his paintings.  The vacant expression and stiff pose of the girl in the painting, resplendent in gauzy white wedding lace, fostered quite a number of interesting--and erroneous--interpretations of the painting.  Mr. Whistler had conducted an exercise in color and tone, an example of Art for Art's Sake.

Reading about her, the reactions to the painting, and the history of her modeling for other artists, I couldn't help but find inspiration in Jo for a doll.  Grateful that the ADO challenge guidelines allowed for interpretations rather than slavish copies, I let Jo develop as she saw fit, and the result seems to mock everything about the era--the art world, the hypocrisy of societal mores, even her own place in Whistler's life.    
  
In response to the irony of Jo's story, I began with a beer bottle weighted with Plaster of Paris.  Paper clay over foil and wire armatures made up the head, upper torso, hands and arms.  I covered the body and head with blank newsprint, adding commentary snippets from a racy romance novel.  (My favorite is the word 'family': Jo helped to raise Whistler's illegitimate son by another woman.)  Washes of color--all the different tones of "white"--cover the decoupage of papers, antiqued overall.  The arms are dressed in the satin, lace and ribbon of a bride...what I felt to be Jo's tongue in cheek response the 'bride after her wedding night' interpretation of the painting.


When I finished, and said so, Phil was shocked.  "You're not going to give her any hair?"  Joanna Hiffernan was famous for her Irish beauty and wavy auburn tresses.  But I liked the in-your-face attitude of this Jo as she was, with her private smile and bright green feather. 

Giving Thanks...

What are you thankful for?  A friend of mine up in Henrietta TX, (wave Hi Donna!) has been running a month-long Facebook theme of what she's thankful for.  As lives go, there have been much better and much worse lives than hers, but hers sure as hell ain't been easy...which is why her determination to count her blessings inspires me so.  Even if you have to get down to the fundamental or the ridiculous--thankful to not have lobsters eating my eyeballs this morning--there is always, I repeat, ALWAYS something to be thankful for.

This year, we'll probably go to Luby's or some place for dinner, because
a. The Phillip doesn't really care about thanksgiving food of any kind, and would rather go hiking...and
b. It's just the two of us, as usual, down here in South Texas, with our family spread out all over the world.  Literally.

But that doesn't mean I am immune to the sparkly contagion of the holiday spirit that has been floating around.  (Said spirit to be the subject of a later post.)  The leaves on the oaks out front are finally changing color, and the weatherman promised a freeze in the hill country to ring in Black Friday for San Antonio shoppers.  I'm grateful that they fixed the broken water main out front yesterday and that our roof keeps the rain out.  Grateful to feel healthy, grateful that my family, however scattered, is also healthy.  I'm grateful that my husband makes me laugh every single day, and that my dog loves his foster cat.  There are so many things I'm thankful for, it would make for really boring reading.  But I do have a point.  (Really?  Yes.)

I am grateful for Donna's insistence that we LOOK at the blessings in our lives, and not just trot them out by rote, taking them for granted, numbly following a What Are You Thankful For routine because the calendar shows the fourth Thursday in November.  Thanks Donna...you are an inspiration and a great lady.

Now...having said that...what are YOU thankful for today?

New doll series...

I've begun a series of dolls I dreamed of last summer...going to call them Garden Girls.  Not tres originale, but it suits them.  Ivy is the first...newly listed. 

Ivy on Etsy

Finished my first doll challenge.

So the challenge on Art Dolls Only--at least the recent mini-challenge--was to make a doll with a medium we've never used before.  I've played with so many materials over the years, not necessarily with dolls, but other arts.  The one art medium I've wanted to try to make a doll of?  Junk.  Yeah, just whatever my little dumpster-diver mind can scrounge up around here.

(The husband is frugal and practical, but he does cringe sometimes at what I drag home.)

She has a mixer beater wrapped in a ribbon skirt as a beginning, some copper wire and 30-06 shells for arms, wall mirror brackets for hands, shelf-bracket plugs for feet (w/ a little paperclay and glitter.)  Her face is sculpted paperclay with upholstery tack eyes and a ball-chain mouth on an orange juice tin-lid, with curly red wire hair.  Her upper body is paperclay illustrated with a decoupage of the one who broke her heart.  Couldn't resist pointy acorn cap boobies...

I began this doll with the idea to make a "Kitchen Angel" but somehow she morphed into a Single Career Girl of the fifties, smiling with determined cheerfulness because that's what Nice Girls do.  Her smile doesn't get anywhere with the old matrons of the place, however.  They see her hour-glass figure and judge her shiny glitter...and whisper, "It's not my place to say, but that one...she's been known to stir up trouble."

I enjoyed the chance to stretch a little, try something I've always wanted to try, and experience the absolute joy of experimentation.  Thank you Art Dolls Only for the challenge!

Really?

I tried to go back to the "Classic" blogger templates.  Riiiiight.  You can, of course, but you can't do anything TO them once you select one.  So what good are they?  You can't use them to make the blog window wider, which is what I'd tried to go back for in the first place.  So, a plain old template, but narrow, boring, and un-customizable.  Why don't they just get rid of that option, if they won't let you do anything with it?

Getting more and more frustrated with Google Blogger.

For the now, I like the winter scene, because down here, this is as much snow as I'll ever see. 

Introducing: Sonny the Studio Elf.

He's young, as Elf Years go--he's only 324 yrs old--still, there is that unfortunate comb-over thing.

He's a little stuck in his ways and fashion sense, and resolutely refuses to alphabetize anything, but otherwise, he's glad to join you as a companion through thick (paint) and thin.  He's got wire joints and will sit with his feet over a shelf, but his arms are not as pose-able as his feet, because he holds a nicely broken-in paintbrush (okay, it's one that someone let harden w/ sealer in it).  Sonny has a dry but wealthy sense of humor.  Don't believe everything he says...

Okay, Google Blogger, FIX THIS.

So far over the last week and a half, it seems every other time I try to "Follow" another blog, I get a message that apologizes for not being able to complete my request and to "Please try again another time."

Not cool.  Not cool at all.  Google Blogger folks, are you listening?

I'm an ADO member now!

Geek-dweeb-doofus-nerd-dorkfish warning: Squeeeeee!

Okay.  I got to join Art Dolls Only.  Now, I realize this was not the most difficult and elite membership to join, and they are nice enough to extend the invitation to a total of 125 members, and they have recently revamped the membership to freshen things up a bit.  But Squeeeeee! anyway.  I think these people are some of the most talented, imaginative and inspiring artists in the world, and I'm honored to get to pal around with them as an ADO member.

As the hubs and I are currently in the process of buying and (soon) rehabing a rent house, my time is eaten up with lenders, contractors, inspectors, etc.  But I'm stoked about the prospect of adding new artist links and blogs here for you to explore, and having so much inspiration for artwork to investigate...


The best part?  Challenges.  Constant challenges to fire up the imagination, keep us involved and creative.  The first challenge I've joined is "Medium Mayhem".  The goal: make a doll using a medium I've not worked with before.  One thing I've been itching to try is Assemblage Art, (going to have to buy that danged Dada book) and that is where I'm going with this one.

But for now, I have to get off this computer, go get my shower, and head out to our future-rent-house and walk around with general contractors.  Exciting, in its way, but not near as fun as making dolls!
Hope your Thorsday is a blast.
Jan

The Fall Garden

I spent the summer tending to pretty much anything BUT the garden, but with the cooler temperatures and a little bit of Fall rain (or is that rainfall?) things have managed without me.  In the last month I've picked probably 10 lbs of peppers--bell, Anaheim, and yellow banana peppers.  They're great to eat fresh and the first two are perfect for chopping up and freezing for quick cooking.

Besides the unexpected bounty of peppers, some of the landscaping has seen fit to bless us with a flower show.  So I thought I'd pass along the blessing.

 

Pink and Red Turk's Cap, just off the back deck.

The actual "caps".  Hummingbirds love these.

Turk's Cap fruit.  Edible, but not tasty except in tea.

Care for a cuppa?

I was too late to catch the moonflowers before they started closing up for the morning.  They bloom at night...

...and have taken over the end of the house.  

"Yellow Bells" Esperanza...against a 6' fence.  It's usually full of very busy, very happy bumble bees.

No, the tree isn't blooming: it's dead.  But the Coral Vine I planted at the base of it has climbed and done a nice job of decorating, don't you think?  

One of my all-time favorites...Asters.  Bees love these too, and so do the butterflies.

Cardinal Creeper...creeping up the carport.

Cardinal creeper up close: more hummingbird food.

This is "Old Man's Beard" clematis, a Texas Native... 

The flowers are insignificant, but the seed heads make up for it.

So...that's the tour.  I love living in a place where we can grow stuff all year long!