Creepy dolly

Well, here she is!  Finished project, sitting on my mantelpiece.

I like to think of her as Olga, the Chubby, Germanic, Awestruck Wunder-Child.  Which is a much nicer name that what I have said out loud.

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T-shirt Deconstruction Bullshit

Thinking to do my part for Mother Earth, I grabbed two ugly pink t-shirts from the Goodwill pile at work.  Because our office is moving this fall,  a wealth of Goodwill-appropriate riches have accumulated in the main hallway.

And I hopped onto the Internet, to determine a wise way to "upcycle" them.  Or "deconstruct," if you will.

I was looking for something easy as well as theoretically useful.  Hence, I came upon the upcycled t-shirt scarf (or, l'echarpe du t-shirt recycle, for my French friends).

It really did take about 10 minutes of simple snip snips:

And then I streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetched the strips, and bound them with the hem:

OH MY GOD A SCARF!

Will I wear this?  That remains to be seen.  I'd like to wear more scarves in my everyday life, but the ones you can buy at Target (le Target) entail way more fabric than my small frame can bear.  I wind up looking like I'm trying to artfully hide a neck brace.

I had one more shitty tshirt to go, and so I thought I'd experiment with something more daring... a workout shirt (un t-shirt de l'exercise, Froggies!).

While I liked the back...

                                                                                                                                                               

Well, I mean I kinda liked the back... Ialthough did just leave the bottom twiney bit loose, which looks stupid, but.  When you get lazy, you get lazy, ya know?

WHOA Blogger is acting stupid.  Ignore the brand new word above, which should read "although I".  Obviously! 

Anyway.  Would I wear this as a workout shirt?  Sure, except that for this particular deconstruction did not change the very cringe-worthy frontside of the shirt.  So fucking cheesy, but it made for a power shot:

Give Life, Live life, bitches!  Register as an organ donor today, etc.

Just for a laugh, I pulled a sleeve over my head and tried to convince Husband that I'd crafted a tiny hat.  He nodded very respectfully.  When I told him I was just kidding, this is just a stupid sleeve, he looked relieved and said "Oh, phew.  I was having trouble pretending that your hat didn't look stupid."

Ha!

I hath birthed a curriculum!

First off, I wrote a pretty bad-ass $20K grant for this project, so I"m pleased to have been the one who saw it through.  Initially, we were set to hire an external curriculum developer, which always struck me as a little silly - I mean, I do have a teaching license so I know how to do this kind of curriculum-development-jazz.

But anyway, that fell through and I rose up as the Mighty Writer of a Cool Thing.

You can download it now at GoRecycleYourself.com for free.  Just click on Resources for Educators.  And realize that I was the one behind everything you see (even the video selection for the gallery).  Yay!

One sad thing is that my boss made me delete my byline within the actual curriculum's Acknowledgements section.  I'm merely listed as a contributor, along with several people to whom I talked to about the project.  I suspect that sometimes, bosses want to take some credit for projects they did not participate in.  And it helps if they can physically erase the authorship of the actual worker bee. 

But I actually wrote the entire thing, dammit.  Let this be known to the world!

New York Rye and Bob's Red Mill!

Yes, I count my breadmaker as an outlet for culinary creativity. 

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to begin stockpiling exotic bread ingredients, such as sesame oil, raw pumpkin seeds, and non-fat dry milk powder.  I purchased a bunch of rye flour, upon spying it in the bulk bins of Fred Meyer.  I wanted to be able to produce beautifully named mystery breads, such as Lakota, 14 grain, and Rosemary Mugwump, at the drop of a hat.  So impressive and delicious!

But it turns out that I bought DARK rye flour, which is apparently of limited use to breadmaker enthusiasts such as myself.  The majority of recipe writers seem to very much prefer LIGHT rye flour.  What fuckers!

But because Bob's Red Mill is amazing, I found a pretty good recipe, and so dumped my dark rye into the magic tin hole of gluten-based goodness. 

It's called New York Rye, and turned out to be a squat little loaf that my husband won't eat.  "Too minty!" he says.  "Those are caraway seeds,"  I replied.  "Too minty!" was the unwavering verdict.  But he also thinks Coca Cola Zero counts as water, so whatcha gonna do?

Ignore him.  It's pretty good! 

This makes a 1.5 pound loaf.  For whatever reason, the original recipe puts the ingredients all out of order, so here they are properly (because the order makes a huge difference to your machine). 

• 1-1/8 cups Water at room temperature
• 1-1/3 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
• 2 Tbsp Honey
• 1 tsp Sea Salt
• 1 Tbsp Whole Caraway Seeds
• 1-1/3 cups Organic Dark Rye Flour
• 2-1/4 cups Unbleached White Flour
• 1 Tbsp Vital Wheat Gluten (optional)
• 1/4 cup Non-Fat Dry Milk Powder
• 2-1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast

Result:  BREAD!



Original recipe here:  http://www.bobsredmill.com/recipes.php?recipe=720

I want a DIY Kimono

I'm going to make this, I swear to god!

 

The instructions I found on Babble are a little puzzling, but on the other hand - it ain't no big challenge to make a kimono, which is practically a square with two holes for your arms.  A five second plunge into Google reveals that there are a million free "patterns" out there.

Beyond the actual pattern, I was very excited to discover Girl Charlee, an LA-based purveyor of fabric fineries.   

I think it'd look lovely in Dusty Red Pink Flowers...

And I also feel like there's got to be a good reason for me to buy two yards of Black Chevron on Heather Gray.

Especially since there's a 10% off discount for new customers such as myself.

Girls with Guns

I had never painted a human face (that is, making any attempt to realistically portray a human face) prior to my husband making a birthday request of me last spring:

"Can you paint me the cover of The Big Sleep?"

I will assume that he said "please" at some point, because I said yes.  Then, I learned that he specifically meant this cover:

 

Oh my goodness.  

People!  Bedsheets!  A gun!  Shadows!  Hair!  This shit be tough!

But he bought me a canvas, so I had to give it a try.  

Copying the art of another is a more fun and creative process than I had anticipated.  I guess there's a reason people do it all the time - imitation being a sincere form of flattery, learning from the masters, and all that.  The fact that I didn't have to come up with the image made my lazy brain feel very relaxed.  Whereas, approximating the colors... trying to capture her coquette look... that is what gave me conniptions.

My husband, being unfamiliar with oil paint, assumed the process would take me a week.

This is what I came up with, in June, after about three months of weekend labor. 

Although there is an obvious difference in quality, I must say I'm pretty darned proud of what I finished with.  Her skin looks relatively skin-like!  That is very likely a bed she is laying on! 

The tousle of her hair is beyond me, and don't even get me started on the lazy black outlines that the original artist basted upon her head.  I tried, and it immediately looked like I was trying too hard.  But hey, the bedsheets turned out about 1000% better than I'd anticipated.  And weirdly, the gun looks pretty good.

Butterface.  Yes, her face.  Her face is soooo narrow and perfect in the original.  There's just something so bad ass about her eyes, the ever-so-slight curve of her lip, the downward tilt of her chin, and the way her eyebrows disappear into a cloud of hair.  Yeah.  No.  I have painted a decent looking lady with a sunburned shoulder.

Husband was somewhat bummed that I did not stencil THE BIG SLEEP over her head, because, as it turns out, he had hoped for a very literal painting of the book cover.  But I made the decision early on that sacrificing all that space to the blue margin was questionable; replicating the multiple fonts would be very difficult, and basically, fuck it.

To date, this painting has made its way onto the wall which introduces people into the cool depths of our basement. 




This month, I decided to play with my oil paints, and felt inspired by my Pinterest board of portraits: 

There is a pretty bad-ass picture of Diana Riggs as Emma Peale, of the Avengers.  So, I picked up an old canvas that had a really ugly old picture on it, and decided to do an exercise in monochromatic painting, using only crimson, and wiping out parts of the background to supply some texture:

Again, only the second time I've painted a person with any attempt at reality.

Whenever I post some digital picture of a work, it seems to suffer in the process, as does my initial surety that the painting had turned out well.     

The gun came out pretty well in both paintings.  Maybe I should skip the girls and devote myself to painting guns?

Doll Making: How I did it, and important screw ups I made which will inform future doll making

I began my quest to make a doll sometime in 2013.  I'd purchased Layered Impressions by artist Katie Kendrick at a fabric store on dull Saturday, intrigued by the wide range of projects Kendrick presented.

I usually shy away from these "how to craft" books, especially from the Northern Lights publishers, because they inevitably do not really provide you with followable instructions.  There are lots of really pretty pictures and inspiring pictures which make them very tempting to buy... however.  Things nearly always get very fuzzy when it gets complicated, which has led to much frustration and the brink of tears.  More often than not, I wind up petting the pretty pictures, whispering to myself "why can't they just explain the stitch?"

But again, the diversity of projects and more-detailed-than-usual instructions intrigued me.  Especially the dollies!

I like tangible, fabric-based arts, and I thought that Kendrick provided a good balance of instruction and inspiration.  AKA, I could make a doll that looked like I made it, rather than being some dull copy of another artist's work.  

STEP ONE:  SUPPLIES!

So last winter, I drove merrily over to Michaels to equip myself with recommended basic supplies.

I bought these funny little wooden nobs to provide a base for the head, too.  They look like a small ball on a pedestal, and they worked out extremely well (so much so that I used them all immediately).

The green stuff, usually for flower arrangements, is a mixed bag.  It's great in that you can conveniently chop that dolly's body to size, with little more than a retired kitchen knife.  BUT.  Oh, my god.  The green, clinging, evil dust which emanates from every slice!  IT'S EVERYWHERE.

It was actually so messy that I put this project off for two more seasons.  This summer I've been able to walk out to my garbage cans and slice it to shape in the great outdoors.  That kinda helps, but even just bringing the thing back into the house and working on the doll... that green stuff leaks out, I'll just say.  My house will never be clean again.

I purchased the wooden hearts intending to use them as a sturdy base, upon which to attach the green body.  I'm one doll in and need to come up with an alternative, as they wound up much larger than the doll's body, and hence throw off the way her dress hangs.  They are very solid and stable, and you only need Elmer's glue to attach them to the body - but looking for something smaller will be on my radar.

I also went wild purchasing felt squares, at only 33 cents per square.  Handy to have around, so I indulged myself in a big, fat pile.

This actually deviates quite a bit from Kendrick, whose dolls rely on felted sweaters for their entire clothing ensemble.  I have never felted a sweater before in my life, but read somewhere that all it took was washing a wool sweater in hot water, then drying in the machine.  I felt confident that my local Goodwill would provide me with many whimsically printed options.

Not the case.  First off, when did Goodwill get so expensive?  The selection was poor; nothing like the perfectly beautiful rejects which Kendrick's book showcases.  After spending $14 on two sweaters that I knew I'd only end up cutting up, I called it good.


Aaaaand it turns out I bought the wrong kind of sweater.   Note to self:  you have to check the percentage of wool!  Mohair does not felt!  Neither sweater I bought felted up, at which point I decided to say"fuck it" and move on.

STEP TWO:  HEADS!

Making the heads was not terribly easy, and I'm still not entirely satisfied with how it went down.

Wrapping little tight balls of paper, and taping them to my ball/pedestal neck thing was easier than I'd thought it would be.  They looked satisfactorily head like to me.  But they needed a layer of something paint could stick to.

Kendrick's next step involved paper mache-ing the heads.  For whatever reason, I chose not to do this.

I thought myself sooooo clever for buying washi tape at Collage, which featured tiny and adorable little prints that I thought would add some character to my final doll head.

Never mind that essentially, I was telling myself, "Hey, cover up that slick layer of tape with more slick tape!"

I spent a LOT of time wrapping those heads in washi, folks.  And hen I went to pull out my paints...

  Sadness and catastrophe.  That paint would not stay put.  It laughed at me, in my futile efforts to add a skin-colored layer of acrylic to my knobby little heads.

I debated pulling off all the washi, but that would have probably also damaged the tape and paper layer just below it.   I could have added a paper mache layer on top, but then the heads would have become way too large.  Lost and alone, I abandoned ship on the project altogether, leaving this to rest in my attic/office :

Spooky heads!  Stuck into a milk crate, almost completely untouched, for seven months. They managed to thoroughly spook my niece last winter.


So, what changed the tide?  Total stupid luck.

I wound up working on an oil painting for my husband over the spring, the first time I'd ever painted a person, and therefore requiring a lot of experimentation in skin tones. 

I'd have a lot of skin tone oil paint leftover, and, not wanting to totally waste it, I just kept wiping it onto the heads.  Because why the heck not?  It kinda stuck, even though it did not look great.

Well, that layer of oil paint dried, and it did the trick.  I've successfully been able to paint my acrylic layer on, thanks to that random act of thrift.

STEP THREE:  BODY & CLOTHES!
 
As I have said, carving those bodies is no fun.  But it was very satisfying to finally see a stack of stuff turn into something vaguely doll-like:

Can anyone out there suggest a replacement for the green stuff?  I just can't bear the mess it makes, but it's so nice and easy to sculpt...

I drew on both my embroidery supplies and my sewing machine to devise a simple outfit.  Ha, simple!  It probably took me about a day, and I totally winged it.  Although Kendrick gives some prompts, I quickly discovered that key details were missing, or my own alterations voided her advice.  For example, the bunny headband:  I wasn't using felted wool, so it was not stable enough to run through my sewing machine.  But even if I could, it was very vague about how you could hide the individual bunny ears... would you need two layers of headband?  How would that not be ridiculously thick?  My end result, as seen from the back:

Oh, well.


Overall, I did fairly well copy Kendrick.  I loved her idea of the apron and bunny ear hat, and practically speaking, putting the doll in mittens and wearing a scarf = easy to cover up otherwise difficult pieces and parts to cover/stitch/create.  Still, the instructions didn't make much sense to me, so I just did my own thing.  Result:  even my husband can tell which mitten I made first:

 Are they mitten-ish?  Yes-ish.  And that's good enough for me!

You can see in these pictures the layers of felt I attached to the bottom of my mohair sweater sleeve-turned doll dress.  I made them one long string, then wound them around the bottom with a simple embroidery stitch.  I like the rustic look (clearly) so wasn't too fussed about perfection.

At the same time,  it's quite obvious in the lower photo of what I meant by the heart pedastal's distortion of the dress bottom.  It is a bit more obvious than it should be, because some glue attached itself to the felt - I could dig it apart, I suppose, but.  I like to move on.

Getting near the end!  I added a little golden braid to my lady...

And, as of this morning, was very excited to glue on her bunny hat and be done.

AND THEN I MESSED UP.


Last night, you see, I decided that I didn't like her face.  So I spent this morning quickly repainting it.  Actually, I think I managed to make it even worse!  But this is now a moot point, given what happened next.

The blue of her eyes did not dry completely, you see.  I glued the braid upon her head, sat back to gaze upon my almost-done project...

And found that I'd dragged blue all over her face.  All over it!!! DAAAAAAAAAAAAANG IT!

I'm walking away from my doll for the afternoon.