Victorian Art Doll Witch

This Year's Witch

Every year I create another art doll witch to add to my growing collection. Here is this year's version - she's a little Victorian-style, not a traditional witch.

 

Nina Owens Victorian-style Art Doll Witch



Close up - Victorian Art Doll Witch by Nina Owens

 I'm still exploring dolls using birdcages. This is an antique cage a friend gave me. True to Victorian-nature, her cage is filled with bottles of potions and elixirs. I played around with pan pastels for coloring her face. It was a new medium for me and I really enjoyed using it for her face.

Here there be Witches

Every year I make a witch. I started a birdcage witch this year, but she turned into the Goth Ghost doll shown on a previous blog entry, so I had to start another one. I'm really into making the birdcage dolls right now, even though this time of year it's hard to find the cages. I wound up going nontraditional for her hat, recovering a premade bought top hat with velvet. The bats in her cage are actually Halloween Recollections embelllishments from Michaels. The bat in her hand (which is hard to see in the photos due to the black on black) is made from wire covered with velvet since I couldn't find one ready-made that worked.

In progress

Adding hair



Hat



In grouping

More witches

Still Loving Halloween
I was gone the week before Halloween on the Michaels Crafting Cruise, but I still had a chance to create Halloween-inspired art this year. We did have a Halloween Glitter Ball one night on the cruise, so I had to create a piece of jewelry to wear. The spider is a great Bead Landing pin that I found at Michaels this year. I picked up several of them. I found some great spider web "coasters" when I was in St. Paul this summer, and appliqued them to a plain shirt. I added one of those spider pins to the shirt as well - perfect! I decorated a witch's hat with flowers, ribbon and tulle but didn't have a chance to wear it this year - maybe next....

The necklace is bead embroidery with dagger bead flowers that I made. The "web" is made from piece from the Bead Landing Metal Mania collection that I patinaed so they wouldn't be so shiny.

Wow, how time has flown, it seems like just yesterday it was Halloween and now Christmas is just around the corner. How does that happen? Every year I think time accelerates between October 31 and December 25. Well, since I just slept a time or two since it was Halloween, maybe I should start there. I signed up to take an online class with Pattee over at Odd Dolls on the ning network on creating a witch's face back in October. The original class concept ws to put the witch's face on a small canvas, but I decided to put my face into a book - Book of Spells & Potions, complete with a niche for the potion bottles and miniature spell book.

Pattee is a fabulous teacher, her videos are just like taking a class from her in person and she not only goes into great detail, covers every single step, but also gives you other option ideas. I highly recommend taking an online class from her - in fact I've just completed another class with her, a little whimsical pod creature and she even gave us a bonus extra of a holiday pod ornament! I haven't had a chance yet to sculpt either of those, but I promise as soon as I do, they will go up here.