My friend and fellow artist, Lisa Renner and I are attending the Enchanted Doll Artist Conference in Albuquerque this July. While this is the first time either of us have attended, there are several ways to participate in the festivities. One way is to create a doll to be used as a centerpiece for the banquet tables. The theme of this year's conference is the Other Side of the Mirror. The banquet table dolls are supposed to follow the theme and be no taller than 15 inches, so attendees can still visit across the table during the banquet. I have several of these lidded glass domes on pedestals. I knew I wanted to use one of those for my doll. I thought of doing a fairy, pressed up against the glass (the other side) or a doll inside gazing at herself in a mirror. Then it came to me - why not do the dome as a crystal ball, seeing into the other side of the mirror? I could do a fortune teller's head in the ball - voila! The perfect idea. I created the doll's head out of a mixture of Super Sculpey, Prosculpt and Cernit. Her details are painted with Genesis heat set paints. She has jump ring earrings, feather boa hair and a scarf with celestial images. Seed bead necklaces and some tarot card complete her ensemble. Hand-dyed fabrics represent the "smoke" at the bottom of the crystal ball. The pedestal and lid are painted and enhanced with Primary Elements.

I tried to get an image of the completed piece without the glare, but I couldn't eliminate it - just the nature of taking images through glass.

I did a little doll for myself to hang on my purse. The base of this doll is courtesy of my friend Candance. She bought a bunch of them years ago (apparently they had fruit bodies) and has been redoing them as fairies to sell. She gave me a couple and they have sat in my studio, naked and uncomplete for over a year. Going to the conference finally inspired me to work on the doll. She had a head & face, hair and the wrapped wire body with ball hands and feet. I tore off the hair and created a polymer clay jester's hat, collar and shoes with turned up cuffs. I added pieces of a feather for "hair" and hand-dyed ribbon with Primary Elements to fashion a costume for her. With her wire body, she is posable and will sit on the purse with her arm and leg wrapped around the handle.

I did similar dolls with the jester theme (only I had to make the whole doll as I didn't have any more premade bases) for the pin doll swap for the conference.

The Thing That Goes Bump in the Night

On one of my online doll groups, we did a swap with the theme a fantasy wall-doll. The doll should have a flat back and be able to be hung on the wall. We could do any fantasy or imaginary doll. I choose to do "The Thing That Goes Bump in the Night". The face and hands are air-dry clay, the body aluminum foil wrapped with Rigid Wrap. It is clothed in gauze. I used a feather boa for the hair. When I used spray sealer to seal the body, one of those happy accidents occurred - the spray caused the feather boa to fly upwards and away from the face, looking appropriate for the "Thing". I added a chain with various items to rattle and go bump. I hope the recipient enjoys the doll.

Several years ago in our neighborhood there was an estate sale that was touted as an artist's home, full of touches of the artist. I was very interested to see the artist's home and what they had done. Imagine my surprise when there were only plain neutral walls, floors and carpet. There was no evidence of an artist is that dwelling. In fact, there wasn't anything in the offerings of the estate sale that gave any indication of it being the home of an artist or collector.

The same cannot be said when someone enters my home. Not only does art that I have created exist in every room of the house, but also of my fellow friend artists. My walls also reflect art and not just with pictures and painting hung on them. I've actually painted the majority of the walls/rooms.




My bedroom grape vines were the direct result of a commission I had to paint grapevine on the walls of a guest room in a home in North Dallas years ago. I loved the look so much, I decided to recreate it for my walls. In my version, I sponged the walls to look like stone, stenciled a cinder block design and then free-handed the grapevines on the walls. My bedroom was featured in several magazines right after I painted it (which was approximately 15 years ago - my how time flies!).

Shortly after I did the bedroom, I also redid the kitchen/breakfast room area (which actually is used as a computer room). I painted this room to look like it was created from stone. There are two doors, side-by-side, one leading to the utility room & one to our den. I decided to paint a trompe l'oeil mouse in his mouse hole. I had to lay flat on my stomach to paint the mouse.

When it was completed, the original doors looked out of place, so those were painted to look like heavy castle doors. My son thought we had the "coolest kitchen in town.

This is our guest bedroom after the make-over. This room was originally Josh's room. When he was about 14 or so, he had me paint the walls dark teal with metallic silver trim and ceiling. I got berber carpet in a turquoise/gray/off white tweed. Needless to say, the wear & tear a teenager (and when he came back home to live a couple of times), had this room looking bad. It looked more like a cave than a room. We finally got around to redoing this room after talking about it for several years. We had painters come in and remove the popcorn ceiling (it was the rage when we had this house built in the middle 80s) and paint the walls and texture the ceilings. We removed the nasty carpet and Bennie laid tile. New roman wooden blinds, bedspread and throw rug complete the makeover. I even covered all the switchplates and outlets to match.

The new bedspread has cafe au lait and aqua stripes. I added a throw rug in beige beside the bed. The huge stereo speakers Josh left behind are great for bedside tables.


Notice the floor - Bennie laid the tile. Sofa table with TV. Pyramid box from Tricia for my birthday. It opens and holds an art doll.

The dresser holds the turquoise art doll Lisa made for my birthday and the dolls with a secret art doll and book from our second art doll round robin.








I covered the old lightswitch plates with polymer clay. I learned the technique at clay carnival from Kim Cavender.




Outlet plate covered with polymer clay.









Now the room looks inviting, fresh, updated and ready for company.

I saw the idea for doing a floor with paper bags on one of the do-it-yourself email newsletters that I receive. My husband has never been happy with the floor that I redid years ago in our hall bathroom so I decided to recycle all the paper grocery bags that I had onto my floor.

I tore lots of bags and used them with the printed side down. I diluted plain white glue with water to apply the pieces directly to the cleaned floor, making sure to cover the whole floor, overlapping the pieces as I lay them on the floor. Once the floor was completely dried, I antiqued it with antique glaze, wood stain, diluted acrylic paints and dry brushed metallic colors randomly. So far, so good - it looked great and everyone who saw it was impressed and had no clue that it was paper bags.

When I applied the polyurethane I thought disaster had struck! The paper bubbled. I was horrified. After applying a couple more coats, I used a razerblade to slit the worst of the bubbles and applied more glue. More polyurethane was applied. I needed to patch a couple of places and while speed drying the area with a heat gun, I made a discovery - the area where I heated laid down flat. I tried it on some of the other raised areas and they laid down as well. I used the heat gun and did more of the bubbles. The painters were coming to paint the back bedroom so I had to let the floor cure before they came (the polyurethane takes 3 days to cure to walk on it with shoes & I didn't think it would be right to ask them to remove their shoes). After the painters completed the job, I went back to finish the bathroom. I cleaned the floor and decided I would add some embossing powders for more interest (using the heat gun had given me the idea) I used some wet polyurethane to get the powders to stick into place and then melted them with the heat gun. Three more coats of polyurethane and my floor was finished. The only expense I had was the $29.99 gallon of polyurethane. You'd never guess the floor began as Tom Thumb grocery sacks!

I participated in a beaded doll swap earlier this year. This was the doll I created for my partner. I choose the fabric from my stash, a gorgeous piece with autumn colors. I've been wanting to bead it, so I sewed a "goddess" style doll and beaded her when I was attending the Texas Beaders Retreat. The face is hand molded polymer clay.

I've always been fastinated by faces, especially ones with character. No faces seem to have more character than the American Indian. Throughout the years I've done various famous Indians in different mediums. The first one was permanent pen on fabric. My favorite is the one I painted on a wooden box for my husband - I entered that one in the State Fair of Texas and got best of show. The other one is painted on a jacket that I did before a painting convention.

Snow! Yes, it snowed in Texas this year though not until March 5th. These were the largest flakes and the heaviest snow I've seen in over five years. This is the view from my back door. It had only been snowing about 30 minutes at this point. It continued to snow for another 2 - 3 hours. Of course, this being Texas, it was gone by the following afternoon except for the north side of the houses and any snowmen that were built. I think it was around 70 two days later. Got to love our weather.

I'm participating in a Poem RR with a group of friends. The cover is pictured on the left. The theme of my book is The Moon and Stars. One reason I choose that theme was the art doll idea that has been floating around in my head for a while. Once I started my book, I decided to go ahead and create the doll. I finally finished it last weekend. When my book returns, I'll display them together. The doll is polymer clay and the moon is a tin foil base, covered with DAS brand air-dry clay.

Three friends, Tricia, Lisa, Vicki and I decided to do an art doll round robin earlier this year. Each of us choose a theme and did our faces and bodies. Tricia choose Air, Lisa's was Celestial/Gems, Vicki went with Forest and I choose Water Sprite. We would meet once a month at one of the quaint little wineries or restaurants in downtown McKinney to exchange our dolls and visit. I have pictures from three of our meetings, 1st, 2nd & 4th. The dolls all turned out fabulous and we will definately be doing this again.

One of art egroups that I belong to issued a challenge - Ornies. The rules for the ornies are they cannot be bigger than 7 inches, must be able to be hung and have to be created from a premade doll. I got some small (5 3/4 inch) porcelain dolls from the dollar store as the base for my ornies. I used butterfly wings that I had purchased at Michaels. I had so much fun doing these.

Polymer Clay Candy Tin Purses

After taking Lisa's class, I was excited to use the technique to create another doll. This was another face I had sculpted and set aside, not sure what to do with him. I'm not sure why it is, but it seems like when I sculpt faces, they turn out to be male more often than not. I'm always pleased with the faces, but am challenged to come up with the rest of the doll to go with the face.

This face had a little bit of arrogance about it - and needed a pose to match. It took a little bit of engineering to come up with the pose using the method I learned in class. I did learn from this doll and I would do a stronger, longer support on the next one.

I had the pose and finished him and dressed him similar to Serenity, but I wasn't pleased. My friend Vicki was over (she is excellent with costuming) and I asked her what I should do for him. We went to my fabric stash and she made her suggestions. I took off the original clothes and redressed him as you see here. Voila! perfect. A piece of feather boa in rust became his hair, a dried pod with a feather made his hat. He holds another dried pod in his hand and a curly gold staff.

I'm very lucky that my friend, Lisa Renner lives nearby and I'm able to take classes from her. She taught a Stardust Fairy Class for our local polymer clay guild in June this year. Lisa makes taking a class such as pleasure, not only due to her abilities as an artist and teacher, but also the preparation work she puts into every workshop she teaches. The workshop was a full day and we were able to go home with a completed fairy doll. My doll is called Serenity, as her face suggests.

When Patricia Rose offered lessons through her guild program, I immediately signed up. I was very excited to learn from such a great sculptor. I signed up as soon as I found out she was offering the program. I was definately intimidated when I received the first lesson! It was a full body sculpt - of the classic Venus - in other words, a nude. No chance of any clothing hiding any mistakes.

I bravely proceeded, printing off her step-by-step directions. I began sculpting the face. When I finished the face, well, it wasn't Venus. In fact, it wasn't even female - but it was a fabulous face and I really liked it. It was too good to smash, so I set it aside and began sculpting the Venus face again. The second face was better (it was female at least) and I did finish the whole sculpt. All I can say is that it was a good first piece, but the only resemblance to the orginal Venus were the uplifted arms and standing on a seashell. I have it in my studio on a top shelf, but I would never post it. I did, however, still have the orginal face still staring at me, wanting to be completed.

I sculpted a body to go with the head and Tristan was born. He dances through the forests, clothed in leaves. I'm very pleased with the way he turned out.

The second piece I worked on while I was away is another bracelet, this one with the remaining frog beads to match the necklace I did previously. I did a peyote stitch base and added the frogs, leaves and flower beads. It isn't finished as I haven't decided what to do about a closure. The piece is rather heavy and I'm afraid a button closure will work loose with wear.

As I've mentioned, when I travel, I bead. I recently went to Rhode Island for my annual artist getaway with fellow artists. I did the base of this bracelet prior to boarding the plane and beaded during the flight. One of the airline attendants was a beader, so she was very interested in my piece. She said that she only did simple beading. This bracelet was inspired by the silver fish beads I bought at the Bead Renaissance Show in May. I wanted the fish to appear to be swimming through the grass & moss.

One of the egroups I'm a member of issued a challenge - Dolls with a Secret. This sounded like something I could have fun with, so I started to brainstorm. I'm not sure why butterflies in her stomach came to mind, but it did. I had fun creating this doll.

Last week was another road trip - my stepson graduated from Army basic training last and we drove up to Fort Sill (Lawton, OK) to attend Family Day and the Graduation Ceremony on Thursday & Friday. As I had already finished the mermaid necklace, I needed to find another piece to make. I was working on a couple of birthday presents and needed accent beads for them, so I looked in my lampwork box. I found those beads (and finished those bracelets), but I also pulled out two sets of beads I bought when my friend, Debbie Givens first started making lampwork beads. I added some glass beads that had gathered at various conventions and created this piece, which I finished yesterday.



My friend, Irene modeling the necklace. Her smiling face adds alot to the necklace, doesn't it? She said it was perfect for her - in her colors. Doesn't it look good on her? However, I did bring it back home with me. It doesn't look bad on me either.

When I went to the bead show this past May, I found some marvelous carved bone beads. I loved the detail on these beads. I bought several frogs and three mermaid beads. I also bought lots of leaf beads. I made the Garden Frogs necklace first, using only two of the frog beads. I created a triangle-shaped peyote base and added leaf and flower beads over the whole area.

My husband had a day surgery procedure last month and I took the beads to do the Mermaid Reef necklace while I was waiting. I got quite a bit done while waiting and finished it up the following week while watching television.

Last year when I was on a dragon-creating spree (thanks to Christi Friensen's book), I made this dragon and beaded the necklace with beads I found at the local bead convention.