Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘faerie’

Crazy times, that’s where I’ve been. Crazy Not Good times. J got really sick in mid-January. REALLY Sick. Like emergency surgery and then repeated surgeries All Year sick. So it’s been an incredibly stressful year. Fortunately this last procedure seems to have worked and we are doing our best to adjust.

So sorry to go missing with no explanation or anything. But I wasn’t ready to share this until now. Now, as in meaning with him being mostly better, I can talk about it.

So despite the horrible year I did manage to do a few things. Last holiday season (before the ugliness began) I managed to update one of my old Fae dolls (remember this).

Market day detail

I was wrong, she was never a gentle soul and she was never happy about how she looked. So I gave in and gave her what she wanted.

pirate girl

Now she’s a Pirate and we are both Much Happier. I know, I know; the photo is crap. Better ones will come. She is now a spy in the marketplace, collecting information from local informants and scoping out the various merchants.

Here is the brand new piece I made very early this year:

pinoch detail

pinoc

Pinoc-enstein! Made for the Stampington Art Doll Quarterly Autumn 2018 issue he is a mash-up of a fairy-tale and a classic horror story. He made the cut and was published in the magazine.

Yes, he does look a bit like Bruce Campbell, who I adore. And No, it was not intentional, I didn’t notice the resemblance until he was 90% done and I was doing the costume. Shades of Bubba Hotep!

Other notes: tuning peg electrodes for a quick energy boost, unequal size eyes ala the Scarecrow from Oz, Wooden shoe on the leg he ripped off a Dutch puppet, large left arm ripped off a different puppet, a built-up shoe so he can walk mostly evenly, and fabulous wood curl pompadour bangs. He has one of my jackets but I made it a sort of Lederhosen-Bolero. I had a Great Deal of fun with this one!

emsh_1957_01_galaxy

Lastly, a Little Good-Hearted Alien Holiday Cheer!

Even little green kiddies aren’t so sure about Santa. Good thing Daddy is there to hold his hand.

So, Ho-Ho-Ho and the very best Holidays to everyone. Happy-Happy!

Read Full Post »

‘Cause if you do I’m about to make your day.

He has a new book in the works. And it’s a poem dear to my heart.

Goblin Market - Omar Rayyan

Yes, indeedy: Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. It’s on Kickstarter so go back it already!

I can’t remember where I first saw Omar’s work but it was likely either Spectrum or Cricket magazine. I do remember that it was love at first sight. He has a print of Alice and the Griffin playing chess in his Etsy shop that I just love — if only I could find the wall space. Oh, the curse of the itty little house. Ok, so I could likely shoe horn it in somewhere — the large is only 13 x 19 inches, but just now I defo can’t afford it and getting it framed too. It will have to be a “do it later” project for now.

Read Full Post »

Wow. This is something I hadn’t heard in ages, but once upon a time was pretty much the soundtrack for my life. . . Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter, Paul and Mary.

puff magic dragon record

I went to the Muddy Color blog as I do most days and there it was a whole big lovely post by Donato about this great old song. Read the post, click play and if you’re like me you’ll put your head down and sing along. Hooray! I remembered most all the words.

Many, many thanks to Donato for loving Puff and for telling people that you have to keep your dream dragons alive. And yes, I still have the battered 45 from when I was just little.

Much love and some more pictures of Puff.

puff the magic dragon

puff magic dragon

Puff-the-magic-dragon

Read Full Post »

Today you should go and read about the artist Jean-Baptiste Monge on the Muddy Colors blog.

Monge

Read it today because the Kickstarter for the lovely new book ends in nine (9) days. Having already surpassed the initial goal for printing the new edition; this one looked so good that I finally signed up and pledged to the project. Whether you do so is up to you, but unless you read Muddy Colors a lot, you might miss out on the opportunity to get another great faerie book.

Am I back to blogging every week? Probably not given that my current project is getting my workroom to a state where I can actually work in it. For a long time it looked like one of those “bunging out the Augean Stables” sort of tasks but now I can see a significant portion of the floor and the sewing table so it’s beginning to look do-able. Right now I’m going to try to meet an every other week post schedule and hope that you will forgive me if I miss here and there.

 

Read Full Post »

I Got a Makie!

Now some of you are no doubt saying to yourselves “What the heck is a Makie?”

Allow me to explain: a Makie is a 10 inch tall doll which has a customized 3-D printed head and an injection-molded body with detachable parts. Like the hands and the feet so they can be dressed easily and so that optional extra parts; like alternate pose hands* and cool shoes (some are slip on and some are like alternate feet).

Yes, I totally missed the boat on the entirely 3-D printed Makies (last ones went at the end of the summer) but thanks to a wonderful review of the new body by flyingpurplemonkfish I now have one of the new dolls.

Here is my very first Makie, named Thorn, fresh out of her box:

makie thorn box opening

Please note that she is bald because I asked for her wig to be left unglued so that I could swap out her wigs (that cookie envelope on the right of the photo is a blue wig). Also please forgive the background, this is the only spot that still had enough sunlight for photos.

makie thorn closeup

This closeup shows the body color vs the head color. The match isn’t too far off — I think part of the problem is that the head color has a depth and radiance due to the white nylon showing through the skin dye, whereas the body color is opaque solid plastic. It matches better than this in real life to human eyes.

And here she is with her wig on:

makie thorn wig

Now that she’s here I can see a definite resemblance to “Carla Conner” from Coronation Street though I didn’t plan it that way.

Her digital preview:

Makie Thorn digital preview

The create-a-makie on the makie website is addictive, I can spend waaaay too much time here designing faces. Oh yeah, the primary attraction of a Makie is that you design the face, including choice of three skin colors. If you try it make sure to click on the more options button to turn on the custom face screens. The ears don’t show in the digital preview so here is a screen shot of the settings I used for Thorn’s ears. Yes, Thorn is Fae, as in Faerie.

Makie Thorn Ears

I guess I should mention that Makies cost $75 US, they ship worldwide, and that they are very poseable and fun. They also have a range of disability accessories (like hearing aids) and they encourage kids to be Makers. The new career packs (Musician, Veterinarian, Archeologist, Photographer) that they have just released for the holiday season are very cute. So are the new shoe packs and glasses packs.

So head over to Makie land and have some fun.

*The alternate pose hands for the new body aren’t available yet, but hopefully soon.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Yes, things have been crazy busy here. I am squeaking in with a short but sweet halloween greeting to everyone out on the inter webs.

HalloweenTime

Love all those goolies appearing in the upper right!

Wishing lots of good things to eat and drink but not so much that you get sick. Ever the pragmatist, that’s me.

Read Full Post »

That’s right, my friend Forest Rogers wins GOLD in dimensional illustration at Spectrum Live.

Go over to Muddy Colors and scroll down to see the list of winners. Go to Forest’s blog to see her amazing Venetian Harpy, she also has wip photos for this piece over to the right of the window under Current Work II.

Please join me in a joyous Happy Dance in honor of a great artist and a much deserved win!

Read Full Post »

and to always be open to little silliness.

one day when we went walking

Trust yourself, believe in faeries, and remember that the bah-humbugs can all go jump in the lake.

Have some fun over this long overdue three day weekend!

Read Full Post »

is not such a bad place to be, if indeed that is where you find yourself.

InDarkForest

The cool pools of shadow, the dense drifts of pine needles; it can be an ideal place to just sit and think. Part of the charm are all the little creatures with sharp little teeth and hungry little tummies. Remember to bring a jar of peanut butter and plenty of spoons to go round.

Read Full Post »

Happy Leap Day!

Here’s a pretty picture to enjoy while we wait for spring. It’s by German artist Sulamith Wulfing (1901-1989).

I particularly like the way the beetle is carrying the caterpillar in two of it’s arms and propping up a blossom with the other two. Also the red socks on the elderly little fae look quite cheerful.

 

Read Full Post »

First off; Milton Glaser is adorable. Really cuddley, love to have dinner with adorable. For those of you unfamiliar, Milton Glaser is a (absolutely famous) graphic designer. There are those who say he’s The Essential American Graphic Designer. He’s just plain brilliant. Do a Google image search — go ahead, I’ll wait. . .  See what I mean? But here’s the real deal: everything he does, he does thoughtfully. He doesn’t just “phone it in”, he thinks hard about what he wants to happen as a result of the imagery he designs, and he purposefully chooses to make designs that will affect a positive change.

Wha?? Yes, that’s right Virginia — simplicity done right is really, really bloody difficult.

The other day, I was in the puddle-dom zone so I turned on the TV and wow! Sundance channel was showing Milton Glaser: To Inform and Delight. So I watched it. And loved it. Now lest you, dear reader, think I’m new to the Glaser fan club; when I went to graphic arts school (an undisclosed number of decades ago) Glaser was mandatory subject material. Then in the 90’s I saw a show about him and some book project he was working on (massive brain food fix), and now this new (made last year) documentary comes along. Happy, happy little brain cells are dancing in my head, they’re having a party and I do believe that there is even cake and ice cream.

Now by this time, you are probably saying to yourself “OK, so she adores Milton Glaser, but what the heck is a Chatterling and what’s it got to do with graphic design????”.

Here’s what: Words have Power. Images likewise. Knowledge of what words mean and how to use them correctly has massive power over the ability to communicate. Which brings me to the Chatterlings.

The Chatterlings in Wordland, by Michael Lipman is a fascinating and delightful vocabulary/grammar textbook (disguised as a storybook) from the early twentieth-century. It teaches the necessity of using the most precise word possible in order to communicate what you really mean. Yes, instead of making people guess (“well, you know what I meant”), actually just saying what you mean in the first place. Wow, what a novel idea! Which requires that you learn the sometimes not so subtle difference between the meaning of different words — oh drats; that’s vocabulary — arrggh! Well, this beautiful little book does it in an entertaining, indeed enjoyable, way. Here’s the beginning of the story:

See what I mean, it’s a fun story. Oh, and a spade is a shovel with a flat, rectangular blade (not pointy). It falls into the category of all poodles are dogs, but not all dogs are poodles. It’s all about precision.

The illustrations are great, I just love the way they help to demonstrate the distinction between words that mean similar but not identical things (which is really the entire plotline of the story).

Here’s another example:

Which by the way clarifies why “Tell the Captain I am disinclined to acquiesce to his request” is such a great line. Yeah, I’m a Pirate, no surprise there.

Even the Suggested Helps section at the end is full of great stuff. Suggested Helps, what a wonderful name for what would now be a Study Guide or Teachers Guide section (how drab and off-putting). Suggested implies that a child could and perhaps should read the pages and maybe even take something away from the experience.

The world admires the man or woman who writes and speaks English correctly. Oh, how I wish that this were still widely true in America. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of the fact that learning can be both fun and functional. That the big picture most definitely depends on the tiny details being accurate. I very much wish that someone, somewhere would bring this very useful book back into print. There are a great many children (and no small number of adults) who could greatly benefit from reading it.

Because after all, there is great power in words and their attendant images.

Read Full Post »

as in, my word but it’s been rather too hot for quite a lot too many days in a row!

Today it was considerably cooler and I took advantage by popping over to the library and changing my books. Then I ran out of steam so I went to the park with a cool drink and read cookbooks. By the time I left the parking lot was full of other people doing exactly the same thing (well . . . probably not cookbooks).

bug and wog dog outside

Guess I’m not the only one who was experiencing a bit of “gracious, it is nice enough to actually enjoy the outdoors”. Wishing everyone a cool breeze ’til next time.

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »