How to Reach Out and Touch Cloth Dolls...

...Or Why I Love My FB Page Friends

Despite having had a Cloth Doll Designs Facebook page for  over a year, it was only this weekend that the idea of using it interactively occurred to me. The struggle with coming up with a cheap yet cute tchotchke for the Shippensburg Corn Festival had seemed like a simple enough task once, yet each iteration of cloth corn dolls looked less appealing than the last. So I've started putting them up on Facebook to ask for feedback from the only personalized - and quite chatty - craft community I know.

The comments are great -honest and funny; insightful and thoughtful- all in all a relief from the scattered impressions whirring around my own brain. It doesn't matter if I actually use the suggestions or not. The point is that sometimes you just need to touch base with the people who share your goals for a reality check. So, thanks to all who commented. If you haven't yet, please visit and "Like" us at www.facebook.com/clothdolldesigns and let me know what you think!

Beyond the whole corn baby fiasco, it's time to get to work on more creative and fun themes like Day of the Dead. My very first listing on Etsy was a Day of the Dead doll that sold after only 36 hours - proof that you can't go wrong when you follow your passion.

My adopted Mexican heritage gets a chance to show off every November 2 on Day of the Dead. Despite my German surname and Central Pennsylvania birthplace, the kaleidoscope of textures, colors and flavors I absorbed during years living and raising a family in the heart of Mexico  melted the Teutonic ice and grew an "alma Mexicana" where a cynical stoicism used to reside. My first inspiration to make dolls came from the ones the indigenous women sell on the streets; I love the challenge of  trying to honor the imagery and flourish of Day of the Dead in my own dolls. 

Mexican folk dolls

Day of the Dead calavera

Back here in the US of A, meanwhile, it's Memorial Day weekend. Thank you to all military men and women for your service. For the rest of us civilians, please visit the voiceofwarriers Facebook page for a closer look at the shameful way we treat our wounded warriors: 17 veterans commit suicide DAILY because of inadequate and insensitive medical attention.

In closing, have a fruitful week, crafters.  May your dreams be full of inspiration and may your skill and creative spirit grow like weeds. 

Spike

1997-2012

Rock on, Big Bubba

How to Sew Without a Computer...

Or, Finding out there is a lot more to crafting than wielding a needle and thread.

Pansy the Evil Cat wishes the ailing PC bon voyage.

I'm writing this weekly blog on my IPad because my PC died - the key board gave up the ghost after my husband "cleaned" it. No offense to Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, but using the Blogger app to compose an entry blows. And it wasn't until I started mentally planning for website and blog entries that I realized how much internet and photo work I do on my PC. Yeah, the definition and colors of photos on the IPad are amazing, if only I could figure how to upload them onto apps (Late note- Ah! Google+!).  On the upside, however, it's a lot easier to retire to the deck and work with an Ipad..

The loss of my PC- presently on its way to the repair facility- reminded me how a craft business, even a wishful thinking one like Cloth Doll Designs, is such a left-brain/right brained activity; that's why I love it. Every second of hands-on work with textiles and threads creates an opportunity to plot corresponding marketing, sales, and writing moves.

At least this week there is something to actually blog about. Now that that festivities of my benchmark birthday-of-which-we-dare-not-speak and the son's nuptials have passed, it has been a such a gift to get back to the doll cave. And while it is challenging to sew with an aggravated case of "texting thumb," I am too sure that the majority of crafters would not judge harshly my need to persevere when medical advice would suggest abstinence.

My goal this weekend was to create a prototype for low-priced theme items for the Festival of the Corn Craft fair in Shippensburg, PA, in August- something that would be easy to make assembly-line style and cheap,  yet still capture the spirit of the occasion as well as the spirit of Cloth Doll Designs. Meet, therefore, Children of the Corn.

And thus, another lovely weekend of crafting has come to a close. Only 16 school days until the blissful summer break beckons. Yes, it will be mostly filled with professional development, leadership meetings and summer school, but the pressure will be off, and long afternoons playing with dolls await.

To my faithful readers, all two of you lovely and generous soulmates, I wish you a computer-glitch free week. May your days be blessed with obedient children, songs on the car radio that remind you how far you've come since adolescence, and short lines at the cutting tables at Joann's fabrics. I leave you all with a quote I read yesterday that spoke to both sides of my brain:

"In my own art I felt the need to make things I knew would sell rather than things that's spoke to my own heart. Strangely, when I did start to make the odd characters that float around in my head, I found that those entities surpassed my normal "art" in popularity. ". -Sunny Carvalho,"The Girls of Dollandia" in Art Doll Quarterly, Summer 2012.

Please forgive me , therefore, one final admonishment: May your life, like your craft projects - this week and forever - speak as much to your heart as they it does to your mind. Go forth and listen to your hearts.

BLOG POST-DATE:  OK, I just took a fresh look at this model of Children of the Corn and ya know what?  Nope.  Not what I had in mind.  Back to the drawing board and the doll cave... something more instantly recognizable as a corn cob.  Mistakes are opportunities to learn.. 

Don't Text and Sew...

See this hand?  It's in a stabilizer because since last Tuesday this hand has suffered from  excruciating lightening bolts of pain across the base of the thumb every time I flex it,  grasp a pen, hold a pair of scissors, or twist the key in the ignition of my car. It doesn't take a genius to know that after three months of consistent, dull pain in the base of the thumb every time I text (and that, as my family will tell you is a LOT of texting) the beleaguered joint finally gave up the ghost and had to scream, "HAVE MERCY! STOP DOING THIS YOU FOOL!"

After regular applications of cold packs and large doses of ibuprofen, the pain is subsiding, but for the duration, using the scissors or the iron, threading needles, and generally doing anything associated with doll-making is off-limits.  I may be stubborn, but eventually, even  I learn.  Oh yeah, and no more texting.

This catastrophic event follows close on the heels of having developed a momentarily incapacitating bout of knee arthritis that has caused me to re-think the whole "Run a half-marathon in the Fall" plan. Coincidentally, both of these charming reminders of the fragility of our  mortal shells arrived on the scene just in time to accompany me to my  60th birthday celebration, where - stomach lining be damned -  I downed enough alcohol and Advil to dance the night away anyway.  Yay.  They say 60 is the new 40.  They lie.

 On the other hand, little doll making would have taken place these days anyway, as we are moving into the second week of assorted family gatherings to celebrate the wedding of  my son  and his beautiful bride.  These blessings of life are so poignantly felt and so richly appreciated that bodily aches and pains fade into the background and the routines of work - even doll-making - and home are gladly tossed aside.  Celebrate good times, come on!

And so full in spirit, if not abundant in doll production, we find ourselves facing yet another  manic Monday. May your week be rich in the small blessings of family routines, may your bottles of Advil be full, and may you always have a cold ice pack in the freezer ready for the next body part that fails. Party on, doll makers!

Thursday's Child has far to go, or why we make dolls...

Thursday's Child, a Fragrant Freaky Fairy

  Monday's child is fair of face

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay

When I was about 11 years old we did a classroom project making a connection between mathematically solving for the day of the week we were born and the popular poem, "Monday's Child."   Being a fifth grade girl, I was pretty pleased to find out that arithmetically I was a Monday's child. For pre-teen girls in the 1950's being pretty or not was more or less the Delphic oracle of whether life would reward you with a dreamy husband and a membership in the Country Club or  a life-time sentence cashiering at the A&P.

Sadly, then as now, my math skills were not their best. My mother - allegedly present at the actual birth  - quickly set me straight that I was born on a Thursday and thereby coldly dashed all of my hopes for an effortless and popular adolescence and life to follow. Ever since that  I have often mulled over - and sometimes even resented - what it means to be a Thursday's Child, since, in the ironic way that one finds fortune-telling in the silliest of childhood rituals, I have, indeed, led the life of a Thursday's Child for 59 years, one that has taken me far across continents of land, love, professions and relationships. 

When this particular Freaky Fairy emerged from the Doll Cave in the week preceding my benchmark birthday- no doubt at the behest of a troubled subconscious warring between despair at entering the land of geezer-hood and  sublime gratitude at being given the privilege to experience my seventh decade- I have been at a loss to articulate why she is my favorite.  In real life she is actually quite cute, if spooky, with her other-worldly eyes and Shalimar-scent, but she has been impossible to photograph well:  her eyes are vintage brass shoe buttons that somehow confuse the camera's light meter, making her face unnaturally white even in shadows and her midnight blue fabric trims difficult to distinguish.

I concluded that she was sent from the great Crafters Beyond - where all good crafty, creative, and imaginative ladies go when they pass on -  to answer a question that has been nagging me for the past 15 years: why do perfectly sane and competent middle aged women start making dolls for - according to my husband- no conceivable reason? My son says I make dolls because I don't like the people in my life and so I create my own.  The anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss might say that dolls are Totems, spirits we have chosen to help us make sense of our often arbitrary and incomprehensible physical world. I think that most people who dedicate hours to creating dolls began with one simple vision of what a doll - and what their lives - are and found themselves gently being pulled down into Alice's rabbit hole on a rich and textured exploration of possibilities for both their doll craft as well as for their lives.  Thursday's Child reminded me that it doesn't really matter why we felt compelled to embark upon the quest.  It is enough just to be on the journey.  At 60 years old - unlike at 11 -it's finally a pleasure to be  Thursday's Child and still have far to go.

And with that I officially conclude my self-absorbed birthday weekend and resolve to say no more about turning 60. To my readers (all two of you),  resolve this week to enjoy the journey that is your life. May your days be filled with blossoming  flowers, diminishing pollen counts, and 50% off coupons from Joann's Fabric, and may you, like Thursday's Child, have far to go. Party on, dollmakers.

Sewing notions from Home Depot and ....

..other essential tools for cloth doll makers.

 

Screws and chains

Possibly the highlight of Spring Break was the expression on the helpful gentleman's face in the Hardware and Fasteners department at  Home Depot when I told him that I was looking for something  to make a dog collar for a Goth fairy.  Give him credit though, for trying to recoup by cheerfully guessing that the length of  chain he later measured and cut was, "part of the same outfit, right?"

Screws and Chains - an alternate view

Which reminded me that years ago when I first scoured the internet for advice about doll-making the hardware store came up several times as a good place to find inspiration for dolls, as well as inexpensive DIY alternatives to things like arm and leg joints. New doll makers, take note!

In fact, one of the things that still  attracts me to the doll maker's trade (obsession) is the relatively low-budget outlay necessary for the materials, tools and (as my mother used to say) forteseedlefasteners of the doll maker's trade. When I first started experimenting with cloth dolls, I was broke: recently divorced with three children, an entry level job in education, scraping together $10 from under the seat cushions for a Dominoes pizza end-of-the-week treat.   Like magic, fabric from old clothes, a few buttons and thread evolved into cheerful little figures that kept me company while I grappled with the day to day struggle of bills and single-motherhood. My then pre-teen son remarked that I was making my own little people because I didn't like the real ones in my life.  Clearly he was a child wise beyond his years.

Forceps, not just for General Hospital

Still, some sewing implements seem to get mentioned more than others in doll patterns and instructions. Eventually my finances improved and I sucked it up and bought forceps.  Dear new-to-doll-making readers: BUY FORCEPS! Do without Dominoes Pizza for a week; buy them NOW!  They are essential for turning fingers and feet, stuffing  and correcting stuffing mistakes, pulling sweaty needles out of stiff seams, and best of all, for grabbing odd items that fall on the floor behind the sewing table.  Over the years I have accumulated 4, but all you really need is one.  I recommend the second from the right, the 6 1/2" one.

You may ask, "Where  do I get forceps?  Do I steal them from my doctor?"  No, silly. I buy mine at www.dollmakersjourney.com.  It's my favorite on-line doll making supply store.  There are many others, also good, but I love the fast service and personal response I get from Dollmakers Journey. I once wrote to ask about an order I wasn't sure I had received and the kind owner gently responded that perhaps,  as sometimes happened to her,  I had received it but left it around my  sewing area where it is now covered by strewn fabric and other crafty items.   And yes, that's where it was.

Some supplies are not essential but do turn out to be indispensable for certain jobs.  An example of this is a fabric stiffener called Stiffy that I bought years ago and never used until this weekend to make wings out of cheesecloth for a Mummy  Fairy  as well as the  Goth Fairies wings which, as you can see above, are unacceptably droopy for a fragrant freaky fairy to flit about on effectively (alliteration, anyone?).  Mr. Doll Cave found the name of the product quite amusing, as his favorite movie of all time is The Full Monty. I will leave it up to you to understand the reference.

The trip to Home Depot also yielded a 2' by 4' pre-cut pegboard that Mr. Doll Cave  installed once he had stopped making off-color remarks about my doll making supplies.  I painted it lime green and color looks like crap. I blame my friend Nancy, my PR expert.  She dropped by for a consultation with Mr. Patron and Mr. Kahlua late Saturday night as I was painting it and failed to mention how bilious the color was.  Still, it's nice to have everything in one place at eye level, and by the way, it would be polite at this juncture for the discerning reader not to point out the ever-present bottle of beer in the picture, which, in conjunction with the aforementioned Messrs Patron and Kahlua, makes Mrs. Doll Cave sound like a lush!

 Faithful followers of the Cloth Doll Designs Blog (all two of you) already know that last week's rebellion against cutesy-poo pink and lavender fairies has developed into a creative revolution down in the Doll Cave.  As soon as I finish creating one, another weird design comes begging to be freed from the fairy underworld.  I had no idea that these dark multiple personalities of  Cloth Doll Designs existed. But gosh golly gee, I sure as heck do like them!  The Fragrant Freaky Fairy Collection, thus far:

Lurking in the Doll Cave

Molly the Mummified Freaky Fairy

Dora the Day of the Dead Freaky Fairy, also in the shop for some wing stiffener.

Lorena, the Leopard Freaky Fairy

Gilda, the Goth Freaky Fairy

And on that freaky note, I see that I have successfully procrastinated away an entire afternoon of lesson planning and the last day of Spring Break.  Apologies for this week's never-ending blog update, and see you again soon next Monday with whatever creepy fairy buddies have appeared in the Doll Cave.  May your upcoming days move speedily to the end of the work week, may those days be full with the satisfaction of a job well-done, and may your needles always thread on the first try.  Stitch on, merry seamstresses.

From Holland with Boobs...

...and Cloth Doll Designs rebels against the cloying sweetness of sparkly pink and lilac fairies.

One of the lesser known fascinations of keeping a regular blog on Blogger is that you can check your stats: how many visitors you have to your Blog and  from where on the Web or how they got there. Apparently there exists a kinky doll fan in the Netherlands who searched specifically for dolls with boobs:  http://www.google.be/imgres?q=doll+with+boobs&hl=nl&  Good to know, and proof that doll makers and their followers  everywhere are not just Marie Osmond-obsessed blue-haired little grandmothers sipping jasmine tea from porcelain rosebud patterned cups. We are perverts, too!

Speaking of perverts, I discovered this charming doll artist Jodi Cain  at Tatteredragscreepydolls.net last week and was instantly abashed by how cottage cute Cloth Doll Designs had become with the whole pink and lilac sparkly fairy direction.

So I tried some freaky (yet fragrant) alternatives, still in the fairy mode, hoping the juxtaposition of fairy with weird would be - oh I don't know- ironic, or something?

Dora, the Day of the Dead fairy and her BFF Layla, the Leopard fairy

Dora the Day of the Dead Fairy

Layla the Leopard Fairy

The jury is still out - in my mind - about the future of this Fragrant Fairy line.   I never thought much of my drawing skills, and the cat face still doesn't look right to me.  I'll probably try another version and save Layla for the  next flea market. She's NYRFE - Not Yet Ready For Etsy. The Day of the Dead fairy seems like a promising idea, though, so stay tuned for more of that concept.

By the way, Cloth Doll Designs now has business cards (from moo.com), the ordering of which was a kind of "crossing the Rubicon" for me.  My plans for this Spring Break week are to register the business name in Maryland and complete the tax and other financial paperwork.  I still feel uncomfortable about the whole "taking myself seriously" bit; on the other hand, that discomfort is also increasingly at war with the "Why to Hell don't you see how far you can take this?" voices.  Running a small craft business is an excellent blend of right and left-braininess: hands-on creativity, marketing, accounting, pragmatic decision-making, AND  I can envision a line of patterns, on-line classes, and kits to bring in revenue, in addition to the online sales (ha!) and craft fairs. I have have 3 years of a real-world day job with summers free before retirement to explore the viability.  May as well test the waters.

Back in the Doll Cave, MonkeyButt gifted us with yet another doomed creature, but this time I managed to literally rip (more accurately, slap) it out of her jaws of death.  Say hi and "See ya later" to Mickey. 

His little beady eyes looked up so beseechingly into mine when he was clenched in MonkeyButt's mouth that I mustered every inch of energy to chase her around the Doll Cave and whack her firmly on the head until she let go.  Mickey fortuitously leaped into the art supply box, so Mr. Doll Cave was able to scoop him out (wearing protective leather gloves which Mickey-dearest almost bit straight through) and return him to the backyard shed without further mishap.  Mr. Doll Cave was considerably less sentimental about the grand rescue than I was, since according to him, Mickey and his cousins ate through half a bag of grass seed over the winter. Nevertheless, I left a scoop of walnut pieces by the door as an apology.

And that's all she wrote for this week's edition of the Doll Cave Blog.  As much as I have yearned for the  uninterrupted days and nights of Spring Break to play with needle and cloth in the cave, when the OCD jitters start, it's time to wrap it up for a while and head for a nice hike in the hills to clear the mind and burn off some calories, e.g., the bag of Twizzler Bites that somehow disappeared last night between the witching hours of 11 pm and 2 am.

May your week lead you with firm steps along the delicate balance of work and play; may the birds of Spring not wake you too early with their incessantly shrill invitations to "Hey BIRDY birdy birdy birdy...Hey BIRDY birdy birdy"; and as always, may all of your needles thread on the first try.  Party on, doll people.  Happy Easter!

Cloth Doll Designs Is On the Road to Glory, or...

...the count-down to Spring Break begins in earnest.

If you, like me, are a teacher in middle school, or you have a child in middle school, or, for that matter, if you were ever yourself once in middle school, then you know that this Thursday at 2:35 pm cannot come soon enough.  If you are lucky enough to be a teacher this week, then you also know that as much as you might wish for the next days to disappear effortlessly into the past tense, they will, in fact, be among the four most miserable and LONGEST days of your life, as you wrangle these pre- and post adolescent life forms  - whose only resemblance to sentient beings  is that they can recite rap lyrics by heart  and tap out a relentless yet complex cadence of rhythmic beats on their desks with pencils -  along the tormented path to secondary education. Spring Break - it's not just for college students.

Fairies everywhere.

Hopefully, Spring Break will be a time to catch more Fairies. They are starting to fly all around the Doll Cave and getting on my nerves.  There are so many different variations now in my imagination that I'm impatient to get on with the spring and summer varieties and move on to the fall and winter ones. Ideas for Halloween and  Day of the Dead poppets are milling around in my head, too,  and rapping on the inside of my skull for attention to get out. Spring Break will not be long enough and summer can not come quickly enough.

Fairies have smug little smirks, even when they've been caged.

 Hopefully, Spring Break will also be time for Cloth Doll Designs to get my act together.  One thing I've noticed these past, very focused and busy weekends, is that I spent a ridiculous amount of time dithering around the Doll Cave looking for supplies. The materials storage boxes are no longer accurately labeled, and more labeled boxes are needed as well for those materials that have become a priority. I also need a way to organize materials near my work area (the tiny sewing table) so, as my dad would say, there is a place for every tool and a tool for very place.  It never fails that while I am searching under the table for the Fray Check, the seam ripper hides under the bobbin box and the small hemostat scurries to the bottom of the supply carry-all. Maybe on Sprang Break I'll be able to devise a peg-board system where everything is can be neatly arranged in full sight. 

The Sachet Factory

Presently the sachet materials - essential oils, orris root and utensils, are currently housed in an attractive little hat box.  Cute, but hardly practical.  At least this weekend I had a breakthrough in how to fabricate the interior Poppet/Fairy sachets without wasting materials and time mixing up an entire batch of tea-rose or lilac potpourri for one or two dolls and then - as has happened - proceed to spill it all over the sewing table.  Still, with two geriatric dogs keeping house in the Doll Cave, a little spilled potpourri can be a blessing.

All in all it's been a very productive week.  The mid-week seminar on starting a small business at least provided a blueprint of action steps to take to get Cloth Doll Designs on a legal footing. I ordered business cards from www.moo.com for cheap and now I'm looking into plastic bags for packaging, since the sachet dolls require packaging that seals in the scent so it doesn't dissipate by sales time.  Between this and  actually sewing, it's no wonder I was driven to find relief in fresh made-from-scratch Tollhouse cookies.  And how nice to discover that they go so  well with beer!

Sweet and salty cookies combine well with Blue Moon, just FYI.

Please take a moment, also, to admire behind the beer and cookies the new granite counter top and Mexican Talavera tile my husband and his most remarkable brothers and father installed last month! 

Warning: Too much beer = cookies forgotten in the oven.

Burned cookies, lost hemostats and fragrant fairies pretty much sums up the last week. Next week's adventures will include the start of soccer practice  (yes, I'm the middle school girls soccer coach) and no, I don't know CRAP about soccer except for 12 years of standing on the sidelines as a soccer mom screaming, "PASS IT! KICK THE BALL!"   But nobody else wanted to do it and by this age, hopefully, the girls know how to play.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.  Go, Lady Knights!  But I digress.


A shout out to the community of cloth doll makers who support each other with their blogs, Facebook Pages and Twitter updates.  We may never get rich or famous with our earnest attempts at doll artistry, but at least we are keeping the world a softer and more comforting place for at least one more generation of doll lovers. 

So to all faithful readers - all 2 of you whoever you are - may your week be filled with the laughter of children, needles that thread on the first try, and the "thwack!" of well-kicked soccer balls.   Craft on, doll world.