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Beaded Birthstone Art Dolls
Ruby Regina - beaded art doll
Years ago, I loved beading and bead embroidery.... then for no particular reason, I stopped beading. I maintained my membership with the Beaded Art Doll group on Facebook, and this year, I decided to participate in one of the Round Robin events - Birthstone. As there were only two Australians doing the challenge, we decided just to swap dolls, rather than send them on and have four or five people working on the dolls in other countries ( postage is expensive!) My swap partner, Marj, worked on my doll, Ruby Regina. As you can see the dolls are sent naked and are returned fully beaded
Ruby Regina - before beading
Ruby Regina - close up
I beaded Marj's Topaz Traveller.... This was a bigger doll, and the mass of pale topaz looked rather pale and insignificant. Marj had already given her red lipstick, so I thought she needed to "out there" a little more....and so the addition of copper seemed to be appropriate.
Topaz Traveller - before beading
Topaz Traveller - in progress
Topaz Traveller - close up
In transit
Topaz Traveller - beaded art doll
Below is a video link to some bead embroidery basics, if you would like to create your own beaded art doll or try some bead embroidery. Not only is it lovely to work with beautiful beads, it is very calming and meditative!
Wrapped wire and fabric bilby sculpture : Wilma Simmons 2016 Over the years I have been fascinated with the plight of the bilby and it has inspired quite a few of my cloth creations... With long pinkish-coloured ears and silky, blue-grey fur, the Bilby has become Australia’s version of the Easter Bunny. Unlike the rabbit, bilby numbers are falling rapidly. There were originally two species but the Greater Bilby is now commonly referred to simply as ‘the Bilby’ as the Lesser Bilby (Macrotis leucura) is thought to have become extinct in the early 1950s... Bilbies are nocturnal, emerging after dark to forage for food. Using their long snouts, they dig out bulbs, tubers, spiders, termites, witchetty grubs and fungi. They use their tongues to lick up grass seeds. Bilbies have poor sight and rely on good hearing and a keen sense of smell. To minimise threats from predators they’ll mostly stay within 250m of their burrows, but sometimes roam further afield depending on the food...
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 w...
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...
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