Empress Wu Designs with Wilma

Message Stick Art Doll - stick, polymer clay, hand dyed & stencilled fabric with embroidery  My    message stick art dolls    have evolved over the last couple of years.  Why have I called these art dolls “Message Sticks” ?    I wanted to recreate a doll which was based on traditional techniques, so I have used ideas from a few different cultures. Many traditional dolls were made from wood - often wrapped with fibres.   In Egypt, several types of paddle dolls have been discovered in tombs in Egypt. The dolls are made of wood, flat, and constructed in a shape has led the form to be called a 'paddle doll'. The dolls seemingly follow a convention for the female figure, emphasizing the hips and hair. The wooden figures are usually painted with a geometric pattern of lines and dots. These patterns may reproduce tattos or ritual scaring in female Egyptian culture of the period or represent clothing or jewellery.  A fine exampl...

Everything has beauty but not everyone can see it. .. Confucius

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...

One of the textile things I love doing is making fabric out of scraps... I think this is often called pizza fabric because all sorts of bits and pieces are thrown down onto a base. This was one of the activities at last Sunday's Crafternoon Tea. For those not familiar with a 'crafternoon tea', it is a lazy Summer Sunday afternoon  when a few like minded people get together and "create" and indulge in a scrumptious afternoon tea.  Prior to the Fabric Fun day, we've had a felting afternoon, and a clay play day , with another clay play day planned for next month. Last Sunday, we had demonstrations of felt embellishment with angelina fibres, glitter and organza and paper collaged fabric as well as some experimenting with the embellishing machine and making the "pizza" fabric with free form machine embroidery. The days are lots of fun as well as being inspirational, so when Autumn and Winter arrive, we will change to Souper Skills Sundays - learning new c...

Recently I have been working on quite a few dolls for various swaps and blog challenges, but especially the samples for the Creative Retreat 2011   where I will be offering a workshop "It's A Wrap" - wrapped armatures made from discarded and found objects. Candy Flossie ( pictured above) is the result of wrapping a polystyrene ball and timber armature with a sample piece of wet felting , some fabric, recycled paper ribbon from a present, adding a polymer clay face, and swirly beads, toothpicks and some bright pink paint. This doll started from a bargain box reject snowman like this one below. I didn't like them at all and had no intention of "fixing" them , but somehow gave into the temptation and bought two.  Honestly, who could resist this for $1? I am unapologetic about the alterations to the first one -  off went the hat, scarf, buttons and shoes and voila- snowman to fairy floss girl!  Candy Flossie is now ready for the Blog Party at P...