Skip to main content

Art Dolls Only "A Dark Christmas"



This weekend I participated in the inaugural Art Dolls Only online show and sale "A Dark Christmas". 

The dolls I submitted show a diversity of doll making techniques. 

Party Girl  - Empress Wu Designs 

Party Girl ...  This is Lulu's story - she is in a dilemma . The office Christmas party this year has a theme " A Dark Christmas" - what should she wear? She loves pants suits to show off her long legs, but how can she make a pants suit more glamourous and fit the theme?  Perhaps a version of the little black dress?  Maybe  a few sparkles? And with new hair dye - yes! She is happy with this - looking festive and sophisticated! 


Party Girl

Party Girl is a cloth art doll , with jointed arms and legs and hand beaded accessories. Her face and hands are needle sculpted. and hand coloured with pen and pencil.  
Size : length 51cm (20inches): width 12cm (5inches)

Party Girl

Quite a different approach was taken with Dark Angel ... 

Dark Angel - Empress Wu Designs 

Dark Angel is a creation inspired by statues  I have seen in old churches  in England and in Europe - many  of these statues have  either been damaged or  show signs of their medieval beginnings. I also  like the challenge of working with found objects, and letting the shape determine the outcome, so this dark angel just seemed to create itself from a piece of driftwood found on Stockton Beach, NSW, Australia.  For the Art Dolls Only theme, "A Dark Christmas", this angel is a little melancholy but still serene with aged green-blue tones. This art doll is a hanging doll.

From the past to the future.... Home for Christmas is an art doll with a definite futuristic look. 
Home for Christmas  - Empress Wu Designs 

After many dark holiday seasons, searching for the home galaxy, the Intergalactic Traveller , now on the right course, looks forward to being home for Christmas.

Home for Christmas  - Empress Wu Designs 

Intergalactic Traveller is a sculpted art doll, with leather and felt clothing.Size , including stand: length 33cm ( 13 inches) , width 10cm ( 4 inches)


The fourth doll in my section of the show as a bit of a mistake.... I started off with the wings, intending this doll to depict "A Dark Christmas" but somehow turned out pink, so here is her  confused story. 
Confused Fairy - Empress Wu Designs

She so wanted to be a a Christmas sugar plum fairy, but she was confused  about this seasonal theme and became a sugar 'gum" fairy. Her holiday outfit features a eucalypt flower print bodice, but she was successful in keeping everything else 'pink". It might have been a dark Christmas except for this! 


Confused fairy - Empress Wu Designs

Confused Fairy is a cloth doll with a simple 'pancake' face, hand coloured with pen and pencil. She has a dyed mohair hairstyle and a pair of digitally printed vilene wings with a touch of sparkle magic.
Size: length 34cm ( 13 inches) width - wingspan- 15cm ( 6 inches)

Please check out all the artists in this show ... 

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

In the Pink

  At Tag Tuesday . Pinky O' Hagan is hosting a tag challenge which  asks for 'a bit of pink".... not so difficult if you like pink.  I don't use a lot of pink in my work, so it was quite a bit of a challenge when I thought only of pink - my thoughts went to pink roses, pink hearts, pink confectionery !!!  Then I referred to this week's colour prompts, #coloricombo by artists Este MacLeod.... pink with sap green, dark tea, and sea green. I'm not sure I got the colours in this palette exactly, but here is my tag, a stylised landscape  -  The collaged background of the tag has torn pieces of watercolour art rejects, painted magazine pages and a little bit of gift paper. The tree silhouette is decorated with paper  dots, cut with a hole puncher. 
6 comments
Read more

The Sea - for Tag Tuesday

For the current challenge "The Sea"  at Tag Tuesday, I made a couple of  painted/ hand drawn tags . These were created from a piece of watercolour paper which had been sprayed with acrylic paint - blue, yellow and quinacridone gold. I then sketched over the top  , trying to follow some pattern created by the splatter and then add some felt tip pen lines  watercolour pencil to highlight the shapes. The tags represent the fantasies of the hidden city of Atlantis and a mermaid.  With this theme in mind, I also add a free motion stitched  tag I made  earlier this year for 29 Faces - 
8 comments
Read more

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 w...
3 comments
Read more