A lost mouse

This little brown field mouse is Perdu Amant Fromage. He was so excited to get out into the world and show off the new hat that his mother made for him...that despite her warning of "stay on the path"....he did what little mice often do. Take a shortcut that seems like a better idea.

Well now poor Perdu is lost...and trying so, so hard not to cry. Fortunately for him, he has been found by a sweet fairy...one not given to playing too many pranks....and she is dedicated to helping him find his way home.


Both the fairy and mouse are OOAK polymer clay figures.
Perdu, the mouse, is 3" tall. Gabrielle is 4.5" kneeling.

Moral of the story....just because you get a new hat
doesn't mean your sense of direction suddenly improves!!!

Art doll-FALL

In one of the many Yahoo groups I'm in, we are doing an "ART DOLL" trade. I had fun sculpting her face.
Her name is FALL.

She's a bit peevish what with all the fanfare and general good feeling that SPRING and SUMMER tend to engender in most people. FALL realizes that she is more popular than WINTER, but not by much and certainly not by those diehard snow lovers.

FALL comforts herself in the thought that colors do not truly shine and sparkle the way they do in her midst....that last hurrah before harvest and the harsh winds of WINTER begin.

A day in the life of......

Me! Thanks Gai !!! LOL

Gai is an amazing illustrator/dollmaker from Italy that
I just adore! (I will get you back however!!!LOL) She has tagged me to describe a day in my life! Man, I bet this post
is going to get Hollywood producers clammering to buy the rights to make it into a movie....NOT!

Here's a photo of the courthouse in Sugar Land where I live. It's a dramatic shot....maybe this will lull you into the false sense that I live a dramatic life!!!



Probably not....but can you blame a girl for trying!

8:00 I homeschool my 4 kids, so this time of the morning will usually find me up, but not fully awake....at least not as awake as my 12 year-old daughter. My MORNING PERSON 12 year-old daughter. ( I believe she wakes up early to lead the birds in a rousing chorus of "Oh, what a beautiful morning....".) I will check her work, which she already has finished! And then she'll tell me about some arcane bit of knowledge that she has picked up in her science book and I'll be sitting there wondering how is is possible for ANYONE to be so AWAKE and ALERT and CHEERFUL all at once!

9:00 School is usually in full swing.....my 5 year-old is telling me about the lives of her stuffed animals, while I'm trying to do flash cards with her. By now, I have found coffee, so the world is good! Math is on schedule for the 7 year-old....who is following in the footsteps of her older sister by drawing little pictures all over her math book and then telling me she really doesn't have a lot of room left to work the problems.

10:00 My son who is 13....is up. He is not a morning person either! His way of waking up (and mind you he has been up for over an hour at this point!) is to have breakfast followed by an hour of playing Chopin on the piano.
(At this point I begin thinking that it would be lovely to have a larger/longer house, where I could put him at one end and let him play the piano to his hearts content. The piano is RIGHT next to the room we school in. Chopin is NOT the music of choice for people who aren't morning people!) I usually will jump on the internet and check to see if I have mail....and what's going on in the world before spelling!

11:00 The girls are mostly finished with their work....I have graded papers and begin to think that I could steal a
few minutes to work on something creative! My son is now at full swing with his work. I think he times it so that
he can have the entire table to himself when he works. I would love to say that he just wants it to be quiet so he can do his math and Latin, but the child prattles on non-stop stream of conscious. I am still utterly amazed at how well he does at school considering he talks to me WHILE he works!

12:00 Lunch time!....for the kids....I realize at this point I still haven't had breakfast!

1-4 I try to squeeze in a bit of working time if it's not cleaning day, grocery day or drop off one of the kids at music lessons day. By three, if I am lucky, I will have gotten about an hour of work in. Did I mention that ALL my kids are chatty sorts....can't imagine where they got that! So the afternoon is broken up with various conversations and observations and "can you fix this doll's hair" or "can I have that ribbon for this bear" or "would you like it if I cooked something" or ......you get the idea! It's funny, they do tend to sequester themselves in their rooms on cleaning day....hmmm!

5:00....I begin to fervently wish that I had a cook! I HATE cooking. There you have it. It's really not so much the cooking itself..it's just when you do it for 6 people....well, it's hard! And here I must clarify that none of my family save the 5 year-old is a picky eater (give her noodles and hot dog and she's good to go!) My family is very complimentary of my cooking. See, I have performance anxiety......I feel that TODAY's meal should top anything I have ever made! My family should be sooooo amazed at what I made that they realize eating anything in the future would be utterly useless and futile as this current meal was sooo wonderful.

Maybe I can find a cook......

6:00-9:30 A blur of evening activities....it makes me tired to think about it!

10:00-to infinity and beyond! Time to create and listen to books on tape....sweet!

"The Egg Thief"

Usually the fairies I find in the yard are polite enough to tell me their names. Not this one. She's busy stealing eggs out of bird nests. She knows if she stops and speaks to me I'll demand she puts the egg back.

Every spring this happens, a sudden spike in fairy thievery. The fairies will tell me, "Oh, of course we'll return the eggs...it's just for fun!" They say they do it to see who can "steal" the most.....with a prize for the winner.....but about a month later I always see all these baby birds in the yard dressed in beads and bits of ribbons....and a lot of angry mother birds! The fairies aren't fooling me...they are making pets out of these little birds!

Madness I tell you!

I tried leaving a few gold fish about, but the general complaint was that the fish get the ribbons wet....and some eat the beads. What do you expect, they're fish!

So for the next few months, I'll be trying to placate mad mother birds....chasing off fairies from nests...along with everything else that keeps me busy.

Do me a favor will you....if you see a fairy carrying off an egg...tell them to put it back! Get a fish!This little "egg thief" is a polymer clay OOAK doll. She is about 6.5" tall. She is detachable from the base....and you can remove her egg....though she will complain.

Happy Mother's Day!

Hi all! From my garden to your heart....happy Mother's Day! And remember, calories don't count today!
Hugs!!!

Altered Matchbox-The Fairy Looking Glass

Every now and then I work on something that is so engrossing that time loses all meaning! Today my daughter and I pulled out the polymer clay and as we played we watched a really campy version of Jane Austen's "Persuasion" from
1971. (Campy, but delightful!) My daughter made miniature dishes and I made an altered matchbox that is for a swap.
I loved making it. I think I feel a sudden urge to find LOTS of matchboxes! Here's the end product. It's about 2.5" closed....made with polymer clay, painted with acrylics and sealed.

This is the inside....it has the "Fairy" Looking Glass!

An Abundant Life: Irene Cottrell Brisco November 29, 1915-April 17, 2008

Today my grandmother Irene passed away. A few years ago I made a doll that I named ABUNDANCE that for me
was sort of an allegory of my grandmother.

My grandmother was fondly called "Frank" by my grandfather....and having a sense of humor to match his, she called and referred to him as "he"! ( I wonder why I have such an odd sense of humor?) My grandfather would pretend he was deaf (to all but small children) and she with a amused look on her face, would tell one of us smaller children, "tell 'he' that dinner is ready"!

My grandmother taught me by example that you are polite to all people whether they deserve it or not. One occasion I remember as a little girl was going to a store with her and hearing the owner of the store refer to her as "girl". (I had lived in the north most of my life and such southern ways such as calling grown women "girl" or mixed people such as our family was things like "colored" or "mulatto" were mostly unknown to me.) My grandmother smiled at him and gave him an appropriate "sir". Outside the store my aunts and mother turned into hens that had seen a snake!

They were outraged! How dare he!

My grandmother just smiled and shook her head and said that the store manager was not who she answered to. And the one that she did answer to expected her to keep a civil tongue in her head. Nothing else was said.

Nothing else needed to be said.

My grandmother lived to see her 92nd year, she would have been 93 this November. I hope I live my life even half as well as she did. A few days ago she told my uncle in the evening that she was "very tired and ready to go home." The next morning she slipped into a coma. Today she went home to be with her Lord and Savior, Jesus. I know I will see her again....along with a sister and a baby, Joshua, who both went home all too soon.

Till then grandma!

A Milestone to celebrate!

I found out over the weekend that I had made it through phase 2 of screening for ODACA! It still feels a bit unreal! The final round will mean traveling to Las Vegas with 3 dolls in tow....to be critiqued "in person". Am I afraid? No! I have kids....well, actually nervous would sum it up nicely!

I have been working on dolls.....slooooowly. so nothing new to share as far as a doll yet. The only things that I have completely finished lately are drawings on fabric for my online class.

This is an example of a blonde child:
and an asian child:
These drawings are about 3" x 4". Watercolor pencil on 100% cotton fabric.