Snowflakes

Last year, around Christmas, I discovered snowflakes. There are TONS of patterns out there for snowflakes and when I gave it a try I got a little hooked. I made a couple dozen snowflakes and gave all of them away. I have noticed that when I make that many of one type of thing I burn myself out for a while. So after Christmas I stopped, even though I had hoped to make some for this Christmas to give away again and hopefully to sell. This weekend I found my "snowflake wind" again and made three more. I don't have pictures of them yet, as I want to make some more and photograph them all together in sets. But here are some from last year:

Finally

I finally finished an outfit for my doll, so now I can post a picture.

I also made another bigger doll outfit...

Even More Doll-related Stuff

I set out this evening to start at least one regular doll outfit that I had promised for the woman on the bus. I used the dress from this doll pattern as my "first attempt." It was a pretty simple pattern, though I did have to use a larger hook than I'd started with because the dress was turning out too small, even for the small doll I have. Here's hoping it fits on one of the little girl's dolls!

More Doll-making

I finished my second crocheted doll and she's WAY better than the first. I don't have pictures of her yet because I'd like to get at least one complete outfit on her before I take pictures. The first doll I made is already being sold to a lady at school for her daughter. When I was working on some of the doll clothes on the bus last week I got a request from a woman to make some doll clothes for her daughter, so I'm going to try that out as well. Pictures will be coming!

Her First Outfit

I really like how this turned out...

A Doll

For a few months now I've wanted to make this doll. It was frustrating to work on the legs, being as narrow as they are, so I put it away for a while.

It's been a difficult week for me and I got the urge to go back to the doll and finish it. So I did! She turned out alright, for my first doll, and now I'm working on clothes for her. I'm almost finished with her first outfit.

A New Little Girl

A Little Bump

I started on the second half of my paper mosaic and I hit a bump. As I applied the paper around the tree branches I saw that the tree branches simply blended into the background. Not good. I tried a few different things to solve my problem. First, I tried outlining the tree parts in a bronze-gold color. That didn't look so good, so I thought I'd do a wash of the bronze-gold over each piece. But the outline was too dark and the whole thing looked terrible. My last-ditch effort to save the work was to just paint in the parts of the tree in brown-black. That didn't work either. At this point I was frustrated and about to give up.

So I took a break, I took a walk, I got an ice cream sandwich and I regrouped.
When I came home I had a new idea. I cut the board in half, saving the half that turned out well. Then I took a board I had started working on before and cut off the half that I'd messed up on that one and started my "gloomy" half-tree over. Now I have a two-panel art piece:

Halfway Done

My paper mosaic tree is halfway done!

Frustrations

I've never really been a quilter. In fact, I've never successfully completed a quilt on my own. But I REALLY wanted to do this quilt. And did it work? Well...not yet. I got frustrated and put it down while I contemplated solutions to my quilting problems. In the mean time, I got a new idea. Paper mosaic of the same image.

As a side note, I noticed that when I started my new medication my creativity seemed to diminish. I'm glad it's coming back.

Soooo...I started the paper mosaic. It was tricky, just as the quilt was, but a little easier in general. After all, I have done a lot of work with creating images out of scrapbook paper. It's taking a long time, but here's the beginnings:


P.S. Unlike my amazingly talented friend at Aroha Photography, photography is not a strength I possess.