Sari Scrap Flower Child Fairy

Every artist has their default zone, the supplies and techniques they turn to when they don't know what to work on or where to start. Sometimes artists have the need to putter with supplies as therapy and make art that feels comfortable and familiar and makes them happy. Sometimes we want to stretch, to try something new, different or even scary. But sometimes we just want to putter and be in the happy, familiar place. And both the new places and the familiar ones are good and necessary.

For some people the default zone is journaling, for others it is splattering paint, or drawing, or collage. For me, the happy, puttery place is making paper dolls.

My worktable, covered with paints, ink, scissors and bags of doll parts.

Sometimes my puttering is not even doll making, it just finding scraps of leftover projects and cutting arms, legs and torsos. Sometimes it is cutting interesting faces or clothing from a fashion magazine that may later become doll parts. I often use a doll body template that is available from Retro Cafe Arts, an online craft supplier. I also collect images of vintage paper dolls from sources such as The Graphics Fairy.

I keep a bin of doll components, and within that bin, baggies of faces, wings, shoes, hats, tops, bottoms, legs, arms and unfinished dolls. When I feel the need to regroup and relax, it is very meditative to pull out the parts and give birth to a new doll.

On top, a baggie full of some favorite paper doll components, and below, the start of a doll.

As I rifle through the baggies of parts, I select the ones that--in that moment--really strike me. Next, I move them around and audition the parts until the doll begins to speak to me. 

The head, from a fashion magazine, was too small, the skirt too short, and shoes too big.

This head was a vintage photo reprint with strips of Jane Davenport washi tape.

This face looked good, but was unfinished.

I liked the arrangement above the best, but the face was incomplete. Her eyes, nose and mouth are strips of Jane Davenport's washi tape that were placed on watercolor paper. I sketched in the rest of her head and hair with a pencil, added a neck and shoulders, then used Derwent watercolor pencils to complete the face.

I thought about leaving the green background, but decided a square head would look weird, so I cut away the greenish background, leaving only the hair and shoulders.

Strips of Jane Davenport washi tape formed the center of the face.

I cut a half-circular slit in the neck so the torso could be inserted, then secured it with a mini brad.

A piece of orange silk sari scrap fabric made a wonderful skirt. I gathered it at the waist, pulled the strings until it was the right size, and tied it in the back. A little dab of gel medium was added to keep it in place.

Once the skirt was stitched on, I discovered a couple of tiny holes in the orange silk, so I added a magenta sequin and clear gem, hand-stitching them carefully to cover the holes.

A hole in the silk skirt was challenging to fix.

A sequin and a bead covered up the holes and matched the mood of the fabric.

Arms, legs and wings were auditioned, chosen, and attached with mini brads and the doll was nearly complete. The torso and legs I selected are made from florentine paper, available on Gwen's website. I used some cardstock underneath the paper for added strength. The arms have a combination of commercial scrapbook paper and fabric covered with recycled teabags.

The finishing touch was special accent chain that was part of a shipment of Turkmen Jewelry Parts. It made a perfect belt, and was hand-stitched in place.

Detail shot of the fairy doll on my worktable.

The wings were made from a butterfly stamp on watercolor paper, and little peach floral brads attaching the wings to the arm add charm and whimsy. Layers of Baked Texture Embossing Powder were added on top of the stamped butterfly image. Dots of gold fabric paint were placed on the wing edge for contrast.

With her pink hair, wings, and fluttering sari skirt, she is a magical fairy, evoking spirit of a1960s flower child--perhaps my own inner child!

If you want to purchase any of Gwen's fabulous supplies, now's the time! There is a sale going on; just use this coupon when you check out.

"You Can't Always Be Pretty" Paper Doll

Paper doll with Dina Wakley stamp head

The head of this doll had been sitting around in my doll part box for months...maybe years. Of the set of four Dina Wakley heads that I purchased at the Ink Pad, it was the one that I used the least. There were two problems: the expression looked really sad, and when I stamped it onto yellow cardstock, the face image came out sketchy and uneven. Last night I challenged myself to use up some items that had been hanging around the doll box and make a new piece out of them.

The dress/body had been cut from a stamping experiment that was unsuccessful. It was blurry, and the splashed on paint didn't work with the purple ink and light green cardstock. I dressed it up a little with some punched out flowers, and attached them with mini brads. The legs are from a 1960s "go-go girl" paper doll, and I added a curlicue stamp to the bottom of the legs to give a look of boots. The arms are from a Victorian child paper doll, and are a little too short and fat to go with the long thin legs, but since people often have their limbs out of proportion, it seemed okay.

The "fix" for the face was easy, and I should have thought of it ages ago--I simply went over the sketchy parts and darkened it with a marker. The arms got a partial stencil to simulate a "sleeve" of tattoos. The doll seems to say, "I am not beautiful, I am unique and interesting." She looks like an urban hipster intellectual who shops in thrift stores and spends her money--instead of on clothes--on books...and probably art supplies. She is the anti-fashion doll, and is a reminder that it is okay to be serious and that you don't always have to be perky and smiling.


1960s Tie Dye Power

While experimenting with watercolors, Derwent blocks and Dylusion spray inks one afternoon, I used some white paper towels underneath my artwork to soak up excess color. When I saw the color stained paper towels afterward, I immediately thought they looked like 1960s tie-dye.
So, once it dried, I flattened out the “trash” and, using matte medium, glued it to a blank white page in my journal. I wasn’t quite sure where to go from there, so it sat in my journal, just looking pretty for a week or so.
 

While I was rummaging through my art supplies (looking for something else entirely), I spotted the Jane Davenport "coy" stencil and thought I’d give it a try on the tie-dye background. I used a black Sharpie marker since I thought I might add more color later, and I didn’t want the outline to run or smear.

The black face outline looked pretty good, but the head was just floating, which was kind of disconcerting, so I sketched in hair, ears and a neck with a pencil, then outlined it with the black marker. I gave her big hair—subconsciously thinking about the flower children and the 1960s big afro hairstyles popular at the time.

Flower power and tie-dye got me thinking about protests and social movements, and using the voting process to affect change. With that in mind, I added newsprint to the neck, cheekbone and hair. To me, newsprint represents information and knowledge.

To get the newsprint to fit just right on her neck, I traced the neck shape with tissue paper, and then cut both the tissue and newsprint at the same time to get a good fit. The newsprint section was randomly chosen, mostly for its spacing—the message in it was not intended to make any particular point. I adhered the newsprint to the neck with matte medium. I also added a few strips of newsprint to indicate a cheekbone and streaks in her hair.

The final touches were a tiny hint of soft pink chalk ink color on the lips, and the addition of some inspirational words in the hair and on the neck, which were printed on Avery peel and stick clear mailing labels.

The stencil is the one I used on my November 7, 2014 for my Artistcellar post called Lemonhead Art. Isn't it amazing how the same stencil has such a completely different effect when used with different materials and colors?