Art Doll: Nest Eggs

During the Easter weekend, I have been doing some" catch up" work, completing some orders and finishing a little art doll I started a week ago as well as eating a chocolate Easter egg or two and going out to dinner and movies with friends - perfect weekend! Here is my little Forest Friend, rescuing a nest of eggs at Easter... and here are the basic steps:
1. Have a good friend to inspire, motivate and help...

Bobbi (Lambo Art) explaining anatomy and armature

2. Make an armature from wire and check the proportions against an anatomy chart.

Wire armature, secured with insulation tape.

3. Flesh out the armature by covering with lots of aluminium foil.

Armature covered with foil

4. Make foil bases/ armatures for head, hands and feet

Foil armatures

5. Cover and sculpt with polymer clay. I used Sculpey" Living Doll" and I made two pairs of hands because the first lot looked like lobster claws! Cure in an oven at 130 degrees C for 30 -40 minutes.

Sculpted pieces ready for the oven.

6. Colour the pieces. I used acrylic paints, powdered pastels and chalks and wax rubs. I also sanded the face a little to smooth out a few wrinkles I didn't want - I did leave a few.

Head : first colouring.

7. Put the body together. The hands and feet and head fit onto the wire armature. I also added and stitched a thin layer of batting to the foil armature, and then another stretch layer of underwear ( like a skin) - I used a sock.

Work in progress ; layer of batting, and"underwear".

8. Now that the doll's personality is beginning to make itself clear, add some clothing. I intended this doll to be a Russian woman like a babushka, but he wanted to be a little forest friend, a bird lover and protector. All the clothes are recycled from old bits and pieces, discarded jumpers and scraps of fabric.

Clothes from re-purposed jumpers and fabric scraps.

9. Make accessories. In this case, this forest friend has rescued a birds' nest , so I made a nest from painted and textured wire and some birds' eggs from polymer clay (a mixture of translucent, turquoise, and pearl white Premo Sculpey) .

Nest and eggs

10, Straighten out the wire limbs and pose the doll to stand up on its own.

Whatever your beliefs are, I hope your Easter weekend was filled with peace, love, laughter and creativity.

Christmas Countdown 15 : Christmas Tree #11 - Disposable

Plastic cups https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/christmas-stem-ideas-kids/ Advent Blog : Day 11 - Disposable We are all so much more conscious about ridding our landfills and oceans of plastic waste. For Christmas, here is a way to use up some of those disposable items which seem to multiply at holiday parties and celebrations, or perhaps you have just been saving them up for a creative use.... Who would have thought coffee pods would make such stylish Christmas trees ? ... Add caption If you don't have one of those machines, then perhaps you have coffee on the run - Starbucks or Nescafe ? from https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/369858188126737920/ Nescafe cups https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/72761350208620530/ The disposable cups don' t have to be brand names to work well as materials for Christmas trees. Taking an engineering approach to plastic cup trees seems to be the answer for a more ornate result. from https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin

Countdown to Christmas 20 - Fruitcake song!

There are many songs about fruit cakes - not all of them referring to the Christmas cake we know and love.It is really surprising to learn via Google that there are 89 listed songs with references to Christmas cake or fruit cake - not all of them complimentary. Probably one of the most famous folk songs about Christmas cake is Miss Fogarty's Christmas Cake (a favourite sung by The Irish Rovers). This first recorded comical Christmas song was written by C Frank Horn in 1883 in Pennsylania, as a variation of an Irish folk song, 'Miss Mulligan's Christmas Cake' . The chorus might give you the hint that Miss Fogarty's cake was not for the faint hearted or those who suffered from a weak stomach. Chorus : There were plums and prunes and cherries, There were citrons and raisins and cinnamon, too There was nutmeg, cloves and berries And a crust that was nailed on with glue There were caraway seeds in abundance Such that work up

Fish and Sticks : Art Dolls

This week I've been working on fish and sticks .... The sticks are the message stick art dolls which were very popular, attracting some attention and a few orders at the Wise Women exhibition. Each of the message stick dolls are from the Wise Women series, each with her own personality and message of wisdom, handwritten on a handmade timber tag. I gather the sticks during my walks around my neighbourhood and the tags are made from special bits of timber, some collected by me or my husband or from off cuts gifted to us from another doll making friend whose husband makes bagpipes. These dolls start off very simply with a wrap around a stick, in the general shape of a body. 'Naked" message stick dolls - strips of wadding wrapped around found sticks. Then I usually wrap other layers of fabric, wool, and/or fibres, over which I do some simple embroidery. I sculpt or mould small face masks for these dolls. I really like using "sari ribbon" as wrapping str

Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Search This Blog