first dollies of the year

I have made two more dollies.  One was meant for a birthday in October last year and the other one I wanted to make for Christmas but it took longer, as usual.  but I am pleased with them, I just have to make some more clothes for one of them.

 before stuffing and hair (below)

 She looked a bit sad to start off with so I had to put in a bit of smile.  and paint her eyes a bit whiter.

 She has a tablecloth back and kickers and shoe bottoms.

 a lovely white cotton frock

 a purple cordrouy pinafore with heart buttons

and a yellow crochet skirt and handkerchief top, with a little japanese kimono bag to put her spare clothes in.

lurcher

We have a new dog.  we were planning on getting a whippet puppy, but came home from a ten day break with a rescue dog, two year old lurcher.  She is very sweet and pretty and clingy and will only toilet on the carpet, ha ha. 

above this is her sister, who is also very pretty and sweet.
My daughter is writing a blog about her, at mollys blog

Moeraki

We have been camping in a little town of Moeraki in the South Island of NZ.  It is famous for the round boulders that lie on its beach.  It has a lighthouse with yellow eyed penguins and seals, which we bicycled to along a beautiful track to get to.

 there is a little beach just across the road from the campsite with rocks and sand and a lady at the campsite had photographed an orca swimming around the harbour the morning before we got there.  I wasn't very keen on going in after I found that out.  But it was very pretty.

Me and the girls walked along the beach to see the boulders this morning and we saw a dead rotted seal without a head and a dead conga eel.  My husband missed out on these delights by driving to the car park and buying coffee.  WE had a lovely time.

Things I like at my mums house

We are staying at my mums this week, in South Canterbury.  There are lots of pictures and other art works, some new and some I remember from my childhood.
This picture (above)used to hang over the cooker at home when we were kids.  It was given to my mother 30 years ago and heralds from Poland. 

 another picture from childhood, I never new what it was as a kid, but obviously it is waves crashing at cliffs, this is by George Kennethson the sculptor.

 and a not very good photo of one of his sculptures.  We were very pleased to be brought up able to visit his house and see all the amazing art works and inspirational finds that filled it.

 Old drawings by early white settlers in NZ

My mother has just painted this, I love the light, shape and forms, Gum tree obsessions.

10 minute sketch, rose

 Happy New Year to you all.  I hope you all had a good night last night, we had a wild night at my Mums, playing scrabble and going to bed at midnight.  Crazy heh!

Any way today we have had a lazy morning and then this afternoon me and the girls did some printing on my mums printing press.  The wild life never stops here.

 I drew some roses

 

And then carved the image into some MDF with some rather blunt tools. (poor work men....)

 This was my first print.  I always expect things to turn out better than they do, this was not what I thought would come out at all.  delusions.

 the next try was on some acetate, scratched in, we treid printing like a wood-cut, until we realised that it was more like an etching and then it worked a bit better, above and below

 The kids did some too

biscuits for christmas

 today I made some biscuits in pretty shapes from the Ready-Steady-Spaghetti- book.  It has lots of nice quick recipes for meals and sweet treats.

Then melted chocolate and sandwiched them together with a stick in the middle, like a lolly pop. 

 In the book the chocolate was very prettily stranded across the biscuits, not so on my biscuits, but I am sure they will still taste nice.

And I made cake for the trifle for pudding tomorrow, when I took the cakes out of the tins they had these nice shapes on them.
Happy Christmas to you all for tomorow, and to all those in Christchurch who have suffered another earthquake.

deck furniture

My husband has continued on the furniture making for the deck by making a modular sofa to fit in the corner.  I have been procrastinating about making covers for it over the weekend, mainly because I didn't really know what I was doing.  We managed to get some "end of roll" marine outdoor fabric and some marine foam to put on the seating, which is why the fabric is slightly groovy, but I like it's "kiwi caravan awning style", it reminds me of our old 1970's little caravan that we had for a couple of years.   Any way I can now visualise a summer of lounging on here sipping cocktails in the sunshine, unless of course the children want attention, or feeding, or other such things.  There are still more things required to make it look properly homely but we are getting there slowly.  

and below some inspirational photos

casapinka 

 house interior design

diy wrapping paper 2

I ran out of wrapping paper last night so this morning I thought I should do some more.  This was mainly taken from some of Tim-Biskups paintings I found in a book this one is Weirdo deluxe.  I just like a lot of his images.

 and below a mixture of the birds and clouds and polish flowers and some more hearts, I do like hearts.

 the girls took over from painting for me, I find relinquishing control very hard, but reasoned to myself that it was only wrapping paper which would be ripped off presents and have a short life so it didn't matter too much if it wasn't perfect.  breath deeply and walk away.

tried to go for old style colours which doesn't show up so well on here, they are a bit dirgier in real life.  I like it.

teeny tiny dollies

My nine year old daughter has been asking me to make her a tiny little doll for a long time now, and I finally got around to doing it the other day.  I drew a basic pattern out of paper and then cut it out and embroidered a basic face.  I put the pin in so you could see the size.  It was a bit tricky for me to make something so small and to work out how to do it.  With the limbs so thin it is impossible to turn them back the right way once they are sewed up, so I had to sew the top of the arms and head, and the outside of the legs on the machine, and then sew the other sides up by hand turning the seems in and over sewing.  all very fiddly, trying to do it nicely.

On turning this one the right way around I realised that the top of its head was a bit on the short side (below).  so I started again.

And I made two of them so they would have a playmate and could swap clothes.  (below) all sewed up and waiting for some hair.  Poor photo due to me trying to take it on my husbands ipod and videoing it instead of still photo.

 Above and below, with pink bob and blond locks and dresses, although the pink one is see-through.  clothing also a challenge for me as so small, seams get bulky and minor size alterations can make a huge difference.  trying to use fabric that is thin and wont fray and so wont need hemming. I also decorated a matchbox to make a little bed for them.  Magazine cut-outs and old lace. and they have a little mattress, pink on one side and cool old bit of tea-towel on the other.

I have decided they will be for christmas so a surprise as she doesn't know I've made them.

DIY christmas wrapping paper

The kids and I have been doing a bit of Christmas shopping today and so I thought I should decorate some paper to wrap the presents in.  We have big rolls of brown paper and big rolls of news print that hang around getting in the way generally but do come in useful.  so I used the news print and a vivid marker pen to start off with.  THe designs come from my sketch book, polish flowers, japanese clouds, folk birds and hearts.

and then I added a bit of colour with some acrylic paint.

 The design got closer together as I went along.

 And then I wrapped some presents and put them under the tree.

We have had some heavy rain this week leading to landslides and peoples having homes and gardens filled with mud.  Lots of homes have been red stickered (I think this means they are no good any more) which is so sad.   We live in the sunniest town in NZ, an easy mild-mannered sort of place, it has all been a bit of a shock.  We are untouched by it but my daughters friend had mud fill the garden up to three feet high, some houses are practically covered and over the hill the main highway has slipped off the hill, photos at stuff nz.