this is what I am in the middle of-

I am trying to choose some clothing fabric, trying to decide if it should be a boy or girl Kitty and trying not to make it be completely and obviously inspired by Tar-tan’s amazing creations.

What I’ve been doing instead-

I took a workshop last weekend with Sherry Goshon. Our doll club brought her to town to do a gourd doll class. I signed up with several ideas about what I could get out of it. I thought it would be interesting to see and try someone elses approach to gourd dolls. Also, I thought it might be a very good idea to take some more classes… to see what it is like sitting on the other side of the table. I was pretty discouraged with teaching after my last workshop.

Of course what you think you will get out of the workshop is very rarely what ends up being the pearl that makes it worthwhile. We got to play with lots of materials that I seldom or never have used. We made the faces using polymer clay in Sherry’s pressmold. Here I am gluing the face to the gourd-

you can also see the legs and shoes. The shoes are paperclay over aluminum foil. The “jacket” is made of plaster impregnated cloth- the kind of stuff they used to make casts out of. We used epoxy sculpt to attach the face and legs securely and also for embellishing. After 2 long days, this was what was accomplished- Sherry’s doll is the 5th from the left, in the middle of the crowd.

Most of the dolls were not finished. This is what I brought home-

this is what I’ve done to it since I brought it home-

I cut off the arms- they were really bothering me. Then I cut of the plaster cloth jacket. It seemed to get the paint chipped off everytime I looked at it. I sanded everything a bit and then put some more paint all over it. And made some new arms and hands.

I’ve cut out and fused some backing onto some ginko leaves from the fabric I used for the pants. So, this is pretty much where I am now. Hopefully, I will be able to post the finished doll tomorrow- I can’t let this take over!