Happy New Decade

To all my friends and followers, thank you for all your support and encouragement during 2009.
May I wish you all a fabulous New Year and new decade with all good things.

Work In Progress

Here are some progress pictures of a doll I am working on. This doll is the subject of an instuction book I am working on that covers making an Izannah Walker style doll from sculpting and painting the head to making replica 1850's clothes. The book will be available as a hard copy or a downloadable pdf and it should be finished in a week or two.

Christmas '09

Well, it's all over for another year.......managed to feed the multitudes and we had a wonderful, sunny, happy day. Here are a few shots that I want to share. Forgot to take any of the feast, mind you! Under the tree....."before" and "after" (note the speedy unwrapper in the foreground!) Don't ask about the mud-smearing! Suffice it to say that it is a strange Antipodean Christmas custom. The little embroidered Superb Blue Wren (a native bird around here) was embroidered for me by my mother. It is all done with a single strand of embroidery thread in a painterly style......isn't he just wonderful? I might add that my mother will be eighty five in March! My sister, Linda, gave me a fabulous bear ornament that she made - it is a tiny white bear "riding" a green and red mohair bauble (a furble? a bearble?) Here is a fairly bad photo of it - will try to take a better one later.

Merry Christmas!

To all my friends and followers out there in blogland, have a happy and safe Christmas with your nearest and dearest and I wish you wonderful things only in 2010.

Thanks for all your support and comments during 2009......it's been a blast!

Secrets Revealed

I think I can share this with you now - the little girl that featured in my last post was made a a retirement gift for one of the long-standing members of staff at the school I work at. This is what she requested and I was thrilled to make it for her. Here is an incredibly bad photo of her unwrapping the gift at our end-of-year lunch (Yay! School's out for summer!) I think she was very happy!

The other picture is of some Christmassy Zozies ordered by a friend of mine in Melbourne (one for her and one for a friend) I think it is OK to post them here - she should have received them by now, except that there is some kind of postal workers strike happening so she might not have got them yet - if that's the case, sorry S. - the cat's out of the bag.

Minty Girl

I've just finished this sweet little girl in her mint-green dress. I used some glorious strawberry blonde Tibetan lamb that I had in my stash for her wig and I hand-smocked her cotton seersucker dress. I love to occasionally make a child doll like this. She is a commissioned piece. I still have a few more to get done in the next couple of weeks, so it will be nose to the grindstone to fit it all in along with the usual pre-Christmas mayhem!

New Dolls

As Christmas gets scarily close and so much yet to do before then, here are a couple of dolls I have recently finished. They are both Izannah Walker inspired dolls (Charlotte is the larger of the two and Arabella is the little one) and I will be offering them for sale in my Etsy store as soon as I get their underwear finished! The little mouse is "Naughty Mortie Sneaks A Peep" - a little piece I made for an ornament swap on ADO. I'm still working hard getting commission work done.......... Oh yes, I've also just taken up the violin. Had two lessons. Loving it!