Do You Feel Neglected?

I used to laugh when I would see someone do a blog post about being absent from their blog writing for too long.  Not that they were posting about the absence but that they were apologizing to their readers for it.  I just always wondered if anyone really cared or got upset.  Like did someone seek out therapy because they haven't been able to read about the doings of some stranger's life.  It seemed absurd to me.

So, I'll spare you any apologies.  :)

With the invention and popularity of Facebook, it seems more and more people are sharing their life and their work there..  I used to spend hours a day reading various blogs and now I find I prefer to keep up on Facebook instead.  I do read the blogs I follow about once a week though.  When I post wip pics and finished pics on FB, it seems redundant to then come to my blog and post them there too.  I'm trying to get back in the habit because I really do miss my blog.

I really haven't had much to share lately either.  We're in the process of packing to move into another house so that is keeping me really busy and I haven't had time to work on many creative things.  BUT, I did just recently finish a commissioned order for some Halloween themed Dunderhead ornaments so I thought I'd pop over and share pics of those.

I've also done a bit more work on the Bearded Lady Doll that I'm working on for the ADA Spring Challenge.  I wasn't liking the goat-tee looking beard I initially gave her so I went with a full beard instead.  I gave her some hair and a little black rose too.  Now I just have to work on her clothing.

I'm also putting the finishing touches on a doll for Kate to replace the 'Lil Birdee that she let me keep.  I'd show pics but I want her to receive it before I share photos.  I don't want to ruin the surprise for her.

Anyway... that's about all I have for you today.  I wish there was more but my days are filled with eBay listing of random stuff I don't want to pack and move and sorting out all of the logistics that go along with moving all of your belongings to a new place.

Oh!  I got my hair cut too.  :)

What have you been up to????

Hugs,
Moriah

The Wait Is Over

My copy of Art Doll Quarterly finally came today and I was able to see my "lil Birdee doll in print, in person, for the first time.  I am over the moon happy and cannot wipe the smile off of my face today.  My husband also had some great news today so we are treating ourselves to a night out to celebrate.

My Very First Publication

I am over the moon happy!  My 'Lil Birdee doll was published in the current issue of Art Doll Quarterly, Summer 2012!

This is the first of my work to be published and I have to give Marina Lenzino a thank you for pushing me to send in pictures of my work for consideration and a huge thank you goes out to Kate Sacco who has made this experience one I will never forget.  I haven't received my copy of the magazine yet but Marina was kind enough to send me a photo of the page.  :)  Thanks again, Marina!

I Decided to Go With A Full Beard, Instead of a Goatee

What??  No, no, no!  Not for me, silly.  For my Bearded Lady doll.  Sheesh!

Our art doll group, ADA (Art Doll Artists), is sponsoring a Spring Challenge with the theme Vintage Circus / Sideshow.  I'm participating and chose to create a bearded lady.  I had sculpted a head more than a year ago that I intended to use for that very purpose so it was high time I got busy on bringing her to life.

I started with just a head.  I gave her some make-up and a mustache and a goatee.

 I wasn't feeling the goatee after staring at her for a few days so I went with a full beard instead.  Now I'm happier.  :)

I gave her a cloth body with movable arms.  Now I just have to sculpt some hands and feet for her.  Then I get to do all of the really fun stuff... wigging and costuming.  I'm really liking her so far.

In other news, I made another dress form.  Man, they are so fun to make.  If you click on the photos, you can see them larger.  This one is in shades of Yellow, Orange, Red and Cream.  It kind of has a Bohemian feel to it, I think.  I listed it in my Etsy Shop today.

Love, Love, Love!  If I do say so myself.  :)

If you were to create a doll in the Vintage Circus / Sideshow theme, which character would you choose?

Moriah

'Lil Birdee Returns Home

At the risk of embarrassing the person involved, I have to share something with all of you. Everyday, on FB and other social platforms, I see lots of negative stuff. This person wronged me and that person is a creep and this sucks and that ... etc etc etc. BUT, every once in awhile, something so amazingly positive happens and I think it should be screamed from the rooftops. This is one of those things...

Awhile back I posted about an awesome buyer being kind enough to offer to send back the 'Lil Birdee doll to me so that I could send it in to ADQ to be photographed for publishing. I was overwhelmed by her trust and her eager willingness to do whatever she could to help me. I asked many of you to stop by her FB page and send her some love and many of you did.  Thank you for that.

Yesterday, I received 'Lil Birdee back from ADQ and contacted Kate to let her know that he had arrived, safe and sound, and asked her for her mailing address so that I could get him in the mail, back to her, right away. I was not expecting, nor was I prepared for, the response I received......

"I am so happy for you that your art will be published. That must be an amazing feeling. It must have been just as special to have Lil Birdee back home safe and sound. I’d like for you to keep him. He is your first published piece, and should remain with you and your family forever. Please don’t argue with me. I really do insist. It was a thrill for me to have been his caretaker while fame was waiting for you both. And I will always be thankful to have had him for the time that I did. But, as they say, he spread his wings for a few years and flew back home where he belongs. Thank you Moriah for letting Lil Birdee warm my heart during his bi time adventures.

Hugs to you and a kiss for Lil Birdee, too.

Fondly,
Kate"

I have agreed to keep him, but not without creating something special for her to take his place. I am overwhelmed and truly believe she must be an angel on Earth.

With so much negativity all around us and so many people trying to do us harm, Kathleen Stacey Sacco (Kate), has reminded me that there are a lot of really positive, good and loving people out there too. Kate is the best example I know.

Thank you, Kate, from the bottom of my heart! You have a forever friend in me and will always have a very special place in my heart. ♥


Go do something nice for someone today.  Just because you can.  Let Kate be your inspiration.  I know she'll be mine for quite some time.


Hugs,
Moriah

Some New Designs

I'll be listing some new designs in the BLU MUDD Etsy store sometime Friday evening.  I'll also be adding some old favorites.  I can't seem to keep the Tree of Life pendants in stock so I'm listing a few more that I managed to get finished this week.

I apologize for the cruddy pictures.  I took them indoors, at 3 am... lol

The Bearded Lady... in the works

I've started working on another doll!  It's been forever since I've done any dollmaking and I'm really enjoying it.  Our doll group, Art Doll Artists, is having a Spring Challenge.  The theme is Vintage Sideshow / Circus.  For my doll, I chose to do a bearded lady.  I've only worked on her head at this point.  Tomorrow I'll stitch up her body and sculpt the breast plate, arms and legs.  I'm having so much fun working on this doll!

If you want to join in the fun, go here for more info:  (Click on the picture)

My bearded lady... so far....

MIA... Pain in the .......

I so wish I had some awesome stuff to share with you.  I wish I had spent the last three weeks creating like a mad woman in the studio.  I wish I had dolls and pendants and such to display.  Unfortunately, I haven't been in the studio much lately.  :(

A lot has been going on here lately.  Some good, some not so good.  I'm still trying to get my feet back under me and my head wrapped around everything but I'm getting there.  A few weeks ago I hurt my back, or my neck, I'm still not quite sure which.  The result was stabbing, shooting pains from my shoulder blade through  to my chest and also straight down my left arm from my shoulder, into my fingers.  I couldn't stand or sit up for more than about 5 minutes before I couldn't take the pain anymore.  Sigh.  All I could do to get any comfort was to lay on my back, with a pillow under my head and shoulders.

Me, lying on the couch.

Funny.  I used to see one of our cats lying around all day and think, wow.  That must be the life.  Just lounge around all day, eat and go back to lying down.  No one expecting you to do anything.  No one asking you what we're doing for dinner.  Just lounge around.  Boy was I wrong!  I had that exact situation for almost three weeks and I hated every last second of it!  Well, almost every second.  I'll get to that in a sec.

I spent the first few days in bed watching tv.  That got old really quick.  I didn't like being away from the kids and tv was SO boring so I set up out on the couch instead.  Again, watching hour after hour of brain numbing television.  I was bored to tears.  Until I got an idea.

I started a group for Doll Artists back in 2010 on Facebook called Art Doll Artists or ADA.  Facebook is ridiculous when it comes to trying to organize anything for groups so I let it just be a show and tell kind of group for almost 2 years.  I even handed it over to my friend Jen for awhile and left the group myself.  Eventually, I came back and while I was laid up with nothing to do I decided this would be a great time to move the group off of Facebook and onto it's very own website.  I had nothing but time on my hands and desperately needed something to work on to save me from yet another hour of watching Hoarders.  

I grabbed my husband's laptop and the laptop tray and set up ADA central command right in my living room. :)

I thought of all of the things I wanted to do in the group and how I could make a site to accommodate it all.  I made some sketches and decided on what would be for members only and what would be public.  I was SO grateful for the distraction from my back and for having something creative to do.

Once I figured out what I wanted to make it look like, I had to figure out how to make it happen.  I have limited web design skills.  I use a drag and drop kind of web design software and it just wouldn't cut it for what I had planned.  I didn't have time to learn some complicated program either so I headed over to Google and started researching what my options were in the open source programs department.

I came across some social networking software that sounded  like exactly what I needed.  Then I found a web host that offered seamless installation from their CPanel with pretty good rates per month so I signed up and got busy installing.  The end result, after tweaking everything and adding all of the group content was a pretty awesome little member's only area where everything I wanted to do could be in one place, easy to find and easy to use.  Rock on!  Here's a peek at what it looks like:

Not too shabby, eh?  I'm pretty darn happy with it!

Next I decided I needed some public pages so I could share information about the site, what we do in the group, who we are and how to join.  I also wanted to create a blog so outsiders could keep up with us.  I quickly realized that there was no way I was going to be able to keep up with all of this myself so I brought on my good friend, Jen, once again.  

We did some brainstorming and decided on a blog schedule and Jen headed up our Facebook Fan Page.  I got busy designing the blog and making some blog badges for members to place on their blogs.  My husband's poor laptop took such a beating!

Hour after hour, day after day, all I did was work on the website.  There's no way I would have been able to do all of that had I not been laid up.  I simply would not have had the time.  BUT, as luck (or bad luck) would have it, I was in a position to make it happen and make it happen quick.  I am super proud of it and I'm super thankful to Jen and the handful of members I brought in early to test everything.  They were such a great help.  

Here's what the front page looks like:

That's Ayala's Art Dolls' Ringmaster doll.  You may remember seeing him here on my blog last year.  He was one of the dolls I was lucky enough to have arrive at my door for the ADO Traveling Doll Project that I participated in last year.  

Pretty awesome, I think.  I love, love, love this site and Jen and I have so many great plans for this group.  We are still in the process of getting all of the ADA Facebook Group members moved over to the new site.  At the end of April we will close down the Facebook portion of the group and finally settle into our new digs, once and for all.  We're pretty excited about the whole thing.

Oh, and before I forget, Jen and I would love to invite all of you doll artists out there to come join us.  The only requirements we have are that you make dolls, that you have somewhere online that we can see your dolls and that you're nice to other members.  That's it.  Really!  What's that?  Does it cost money to join, you ask?  Absolutely not.  All areas of the site are free.  Once we're settled different members will be offering workshops which won't be free but everything else will be.  No membership fees.  Not now, not ever.

If you want to find out more about ADA, head on over to the website and check it out.  If you'd like to join, the instructions for that are on the website as well, or you can just click the badge below.  I hope to see you there!

Thankfully, I am back on my feet and moving around again.  I managed to get all of the commissioned orders finished and have started making new pendants too.  I'm also working on a doll for the ADA Spring Challenge.  The theme is Vintage Circus/Sideshow and I have a bearded lady screaming to get out.  :)  I try not to push it too much though.  I don't want to re-injure myself just because I'm impatient.  So, I do what I want but when I start to feel a pull in my shoulder, I stop and relax for a few hours.  Each day I can go longer and longer without a break.  I am thrilled to be able to work again and to move my body again.  YAY!

Today, be thankful for being able to do the things you love to do.  Create something, anything.  Oh yeah, and if you're a doll maker, get your hiney on over to ADA and join in the fun!  That's an order! ;)

Much Love,

A finally back on her feet,

Moriah

XXOO

I Feel SO Bad!

I was looking at some previous posts and realized that I hadn't received a comment in a very long time.  I chalked it up to Facebook.  Little did I know that in my blogger dashboard there were 48 comments qued for moderation!  Oh my gosh!  I was thrilled at first and then horrified.  That's 48 times that someone took the time to reach out and didn't get a response from me. :(  That's not okay.  So, I will be going through each and every comment and responding to them all this evening.  I am so so sorry.  I'm also going to go investigate why I'm not receiving email notices about comments... grrrr.

Anyway, thank you so much for all of your comments.  I'm off now to read them and reply.

A Commissioned Ornament in Paperclay

It's been quite awhile since I worked in Paperclay.  I missed it.  :)

I was contacted and asked if I could make an ornament based on what 2011 meant to this person.  I said sure!  I mean really, how hard could it be, right?  Well, um, it can be really really hard!  lol  I spent weeks sketching out ideas after reading her letter and everything sucked.  I didn't like any of them.  Sure, I could have slapped something together and said here you go but that's not my style.  I really do try to do my very best when making something, especially when it's for someone else.

I was just about to give up and tell her that I didn't think I was the right person for this task when it hit me!

I'm not going to repeat what was in her letter because, well, it's her private stuff.  But, I'll give you the jist of it so you can better understand how I came up with this ornament.  In her letter she said she had severed ties with some negative people in her life and that she had been incredibly blessed in 2011.  It was all about things that caused her grief no longer affecting her, so I FINALLY had the idea to create a butterfly, with a human form, emerging from a cocoon and about to take flight.  To symbolize her shedding all the negative people and  all of the baggage that was weighing her down so she could spread her wings and fly.

I hope she likes it!  I am mailing it out today so I'll be pacing the floors until I hear from her and know what she thinks.  Fingers crossed!

Here's the ornament:

Now I'm off to bisque fire some commissioned pendants.  I hope you had a lovely Valentine's Day and that you're finding some time to do some creative stuff yourself.

Hugs,
Moriah