flower power

Posted on September 21, 2007 by mimik

I’ve had a great week. I haven’t gotten much work done, but it has been good. The weather has been cool and fall-like. School is settling in. I like the more structured schedule of the days. I’ve had the opportunity to talk craft with several people- the kind of conversations that charge you up and are exhausting at the same time because they get your brain working in new directions.

I am working on postcards- these are a celebration of the end of summer garden.

My camera seems to understand the color of grass- if I include grass in my pictures, all the other colors seem to be right. Funny, eh?!

more tattooed men

Posted on September 18, 2007 by mimik

Tattooed man #3. He is the tallest, because he stands on his toes.

Some people felt that the black toile print looked like body hair instead of tattoos.

and here is Tattooed man #4-

Here is a close-up of his feet. I’m thinking of this as a cowboy boot style. In the top photos, where he is lying flat, they point down. Below shows him standing.

I had a technical problem with these guys, especially #3. I use a water soluble marker to draw faces on my dolls before I embroider them. I have had no problem with these markers when I’ve used them on wool(except that they seem to dry up very quickly!). I draw, then embroider, then give a spritz of plain water with a spray bottle and all marks are gone. The cottons I’ve been using are reacting differently. I spritz, the blue disappears, and then when the doll is all dry again, the blue has migrated to somewhere else. When I unpacked #3 man at the Market on Sunday, he had a blue mark across his face- I was so frustrated. I must have wet his face 5 times already! So, he did not get displayed. Yesterday, I submerged his whole self in the bathtub and have hopefully flushed all that blue out of his system. But, I’m going to give it a few more days before I am confident it won’t come creeping back.

market report

Posted on September 18, 2007 by mimik

The Market was fantastic! I was so lucky- Sunday was a perfect weather day (unlike cold, windy and rainy Saturday) and there were crowds of people. I met and talked to interesting people, handed out many magnets, sold lots of stuff and am all charged up to get back to my studio and make more art!

Here is our booth, first thing in the morning.

I spent some energy last week rethinking my display. For this sale, I used some vintage suitcases as risers, put out fewer dolls and kept my extra inventory out of sight. I think it helped keep the table from looking like such a jumble and if someone was interested in something, I pulled out my similar dolls to show them. It worked out very well.

The day started off with a bang when a man bought 2 Tattooed men and the naked robot! It was only later that I realized that I’d never gotten a group shot of the tattooed men- oh well, I’m not complaining-hehe. I will do separate posts with photos of the other 2 guys.

I have been accepted to show at Craftland in Providence, RI for the month of December. Hurray!

And, a garden peek- this is a pod on my tree peony. Such beautiful colors.

the men- tweaking

Posted on September 14, 2007 by mimik

I’ve been working on these guys all week. I’ve really enjoyed playing with the hair embroidery.

4 heads, front and back-

I’ve spent a lot of time tweaking. The feet have been an issue. Four dolls, four different feet designs.

The first guy? I took off his feet, restuffed his legs, repositioned the feet and sewed them back on again. Then I embroidered the white of his eyes- what a difference that made- some contrast! I gave him a mustache and embroidered details on his pants. And I decided that the blotches weren’t so bad after all.

Second guy– I thought a lot about the comment Babs left… I agreed with her. I wasn’t satisfied with the lower half of the body. I thought about adding dimension by using a 4 piece pattern for his pants. In the end, I decided that was not the direction to go in. If I did that, I’d really have to change the head too; give him a chin, a round head. There is a balancing act of keeping a simple design and making a believable figure. So, on this guy too, I removed his feet, restuffed the legs- that made a huge difference- repositioned the feet and sewed them back on again. I added embroidered detail onto the front and back of the pants.

Hopefully I will have them all completely finished and ready for their formal portrait tomorrow. I’ve been doing so much hand stitching that my fingertips hurt!

I put some of the embroidered head photos on Flickr, if you want to see more detail.

rainy day news

Posted on September 11, 2007 by mimik

this is going to be one of those all over the place posts… bear with me.

It is a rainy day today- hurray! We haven’t had rain since my July workshop and everything in the garden has been shriveling up. That said, I hope it stops by the weekend because I will be showing at the South End Open Market on Sunday (9/16). It is the Open Studio weekend in the South End. I will be sharing tent space with Betsy of Stonehouse Studios.

I have had a classic me kind of morning.

I went upstairs to get to work. My table and desk had gotten to the critical point where I had to do a little cleaning up. I dug down through the layers- tattoo men patterns and fabric on top, a few big man pattern pieces and floss colors, lots of swaddled baby wool and rejected cut out applique pieces. Okay, I got the table usable again. Back to work on my latest tattoo guy. I was busily embroidering away, trying out some new stitches on the hair. Having fun. I ran out of my color and went to find the skein- I couldn’t find it.Â Arg! I HAD to have more. I went through my drawer. Everything out. It turns out to be a clean and sort morning. I pulled out the wood cigar box at the very back of the drawer. (This box has history. My mom used it to store rayon embroidery threads probably as old as the 1920’s. I still have those threads although I’ve never figured out anything to do with them.) The box has a big tangle of floss that probably dates back to the 60’s. Not anymore though- I untangled them and sorted them by color and added them to my other threads. And, I did find my dark brown floss- see, I knew I had it!
And here is the drawer now- probably doesn’t look so great to you, but it works for me-

other things-

* An acknowledgment- I want to credit this cute little girl by Heidi for the push to make my tattoo guys. I have lots of ideas in my head and sketchbook that never get made. The dolls in limbo. There is always some little spark that causes one idea to jump to the front of the line. I’d been mulling over the toile/tattoo idea since June.

* I got an IPod for my birthday- I know, I was the last person to get one. I love it!!! I am still figuring out all the great things I can do with it. As of yesterday, I am a CraftyPod-aholic. After a few tries I successfully got the podcasts onto my Ipod- I was a bit Itunes store phobic- afraid I’d be sucked into some money pit vortex or something. Phew, over that! Anyway, I’ve listened to about 10 so far and have to remind myself that I don’t have to listen to all of them at once. They are so much fun though- as I listen I am thinking/saying “Yes, yes, yes! That’s just the way I do it” or “I think that too!”. I love hearing the voices of the people whose blogs I read. Now I will go on a Craftypod diet so I’ll be able to savor them longer.

This is my table now- tattoed men and tikis piled up.Â Lots of projects started…

tattoo man 2

Posted on September 9, 2007 by mimik

Okay, it went much better this time- (chapter one here)

This toile is perfect. I dyed it before cutting and sewing (lesson learned) and the scale and images on the toile is wonderful.

approx. 21 inches tall-

his back-

he needed a belly button-

I loved embroidering his hair-

Now we are going to go buy more peaches so I can make some more yummy end of summer desserts.

earrings

Posted on September 7, 2007 by mimik

I was looking for some earrings to wear to the selling event last night. I was thinking- I wish I had something that looked like my artwork. So… tada! I made these with my moo stickers!

they have stickers on both sides.

love this-

events and photos

Posted on September 5, 2007 by mimik

Have you seen the new blog I’m associated with?Â Boston Handmade.Â It is connected to the Boston Etsy group that I’m part of.Â If you go there, you can see that I will be showing my work in Jamaica Plain, tomorrow evening (9/6).Â I will say it once again (since it has never happened), tell me you read about it on my blog and it will make my day!

I’m working on taking photos to send out when I need to include something when applying for shows.

Noah is on his way…

Posted on September 4, 2007 by mimik

to Mav in Portland.

Saying good-bye to friends-

More photos of his worldwide travels here on Flickr.

sometimes the ideas work out perfectly,

Posted on September 3, 2007 by mimik

other times, not so much.

The idea was, make a tattooed man using toile. I scored a great selection of toile scraps at a swap I did with some fellow Boston Etsy people.

note to self- check to see if decorator fabric has been Scotchgarded, before using on a project that includes dyeing/painting the finished piece. hmph.

Maybe you can’t tell from the photo, but the color went on unevenly and worse, the fabric looked scabby after the paint dried. Yuck. Since I knew I wasn’t satisfied with it, I thought I might as well see what I could do to make it better.

First, I put him through a gentle cycle in the washing machine. That made the texture better and the blotchiness worse. So, I stuck him in a bucket of dye for a soak…