asking for feedback

greetings readers,
i will post later either today or tomorrow with the current critters i've been working on, but i wanted to send out some feelers. i'm having a somewhat difficult time grasping a market for my barbie goddess figures. i know there's a niche for them somewhere, but i feel it's being elusive.... people seem to love the images, but perhaps prints of the sculptures isn't the best medium for this. maybe i'm too caught between the reverent and the irreverent here? yes, theses are goddess images, but they are also barbie dolls, and i don't want to have people forget that.... do you think i should play up the kitch factor a bit? la santa muerte coffee mugs? set of goddess fridge magnets? kali pot holders? i'm open to suggestions...
thank you so much!
-sarah

fairies wear boots

"Fairies wear boots and now you gotta believe me
Yeah I saw it, I saw it
I tell you no lie"
-Black Sabbath


well, i don't know about others, but this faerie sure does!

look who i found in my backyard today! she was just sitting there at the foot of a tree. she looked so sad sitting there, i stopped to say hi and invited her into the house for some milk and honey, i told her she could meet a new friend.... she agreed, albeit reluctantly....





you see, i've been terrible with my housecleaning lately.... so much so that i discovered another resident of the house.....




a cobweb elf!













the two of them seemed to get along swimmingly, here they are waiting for me to come out of the kitchen:




after our snack they decided to run rampant around the house, causing trouble like only the fair folk can! the animals went crazy! sadly, the dog scared them so much with her barking that they swiftly ran out!

i still see both of them on occasion, and remember to leave out milk, honey and yarn scraps.... for some reason faeries seem to love yarn scraps..... at least those that hang around my crafty household ;)







the details:

the cobweb elf's dress is made of chiffon that i've burned with a lighter to get a cobwebby appearance. it is also hand beaded with glass seed beads to simulate a "dew on a spiderweb" feel.


























her wristlets are made of faux leather (as are her eyes) and stitched with embroidery floss.























in these two photos of her wristlet you can also see her spider web knee tattoo













she has spiders in her hair, but she doesn't mind... they just keep it tied up nicely! i made these little guys out of polymer clay.


















here are two shots of the faerie's wings. as you can see they are slightly two different colors on the fronts and backs (much like some butterflies and moths) they are filled with polyfil and needle sculpted. wings you can still hug :D































part of her knitted "sweater" (i wanted it to look like she just found a piece of knitted fabric and fashioned a top out of it)

and her skirt of leaves!














and a close up of one of the boots. the boots are made of flannel and lined with felt. they have leather laces. you can also slightly see her needle sculpted knee in this pic.











a close up of the stitching on her wristlet. these wristlets are made of the same felt used to line her boots

















these two little ladies will be posted on my etsy site soon!

thanks for looking!
-sarah

making faeries, making faeries :D

meet the "rebigulated" faerie i made a couple of years ago. as you can see she used to be very small: she's wearing an acorn cup hat, she apparently found a small knitted piece to make her top out of, and she sewed her skirt herself, complete with a button (see second picture)














i decided to pull out this pattern and tweak it a bit. i plan on making several of these, perhaps not all "rebigulated" but i still like that idea....






















this third picture is two blanks i created from the same pattern..... including my changes....


















here is one with (untrimmed) hair, ears, and needle sculpted fingers (i'm actually not sure if i like the needle sculpted hands with the simple face.... we shall see)
















and here you can see her needle sculpted knees :)


















and here's a pic of the original..... yes, that's her bottom, and no, even after i added this extra bit, she still can't sit on her own.... this is where i made my most significant changes to this pattern.












this is the new design.... there is also a small pouch of sand in the bottom... these new ones sit very well on their own, especially on the edge of bookshelves..... here's to hoping that this is enough to balance them out after the addition of wings.....




thanks for reading and i hope to have a finished faerie to show you next time!
-sarah

she emerges!!

yes readers, it really has been a while! what have i been up to? well, life's taken a funny turn and i needed some time to deal with that...... but lately i've been working hard at trying to launch something new and special! i'm teaching myself some marketing skills and we'll see where it goes from there!
but that's not the fun stuff: i've been making custom bellydance clothing, reveling in my inner geekdom while designing and decorating my "whoniverse" themed bathroom (and oh yes, there will be a barbie for that bathroom- process pictures and story and all, promise ;), dusting off a few of my old patterns, and generally crafting up a storm!
more fun to come!
-sarah

Arachne

Arachne

*gasp!* two posts in 2 days!?
so let's start with the last, first.... i am aware that this is definitely not your traditional portrayal of arachne... she came bourne of some frustrations i was dealing with and the urge to dismember barbies and just make a spider! part of the frustration was the tedium in dealing with the lilith/inanna barbie (which i will get to... no worries there :) -there were just so many things going wrong with that one!
this piece is more about all the spider goddesses out there in general and i wasn't even going to call her arachne, although that's what was in my mind the whole time.... i know the word just means "spider" in greek so perhaps that's why it persisted. so i did research on arachne and other spider figures.... and that's how i stumbled upon dore's beautiful illustration shown at the top of the page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arachne (along with a concise version of her myth)...and i realized that we'd created her in a similar manner so i simply had to keep the name (despite the theological liberties i took ;)
talking of liberties, i kept asking myself "would arachne crochet?" but i began obsessing over yarn balls that could be worlds that could also be the bulbous spider abdomen... about weaving the world or the universe... these are actually common themes in my older work, it was wonderful to get back to them again after many years.... :)
about the process: creating the figure herself was a series of hits and misses. i'm not sure it's clear from this photograph, but her body is *very* complicated. i started with *just* a modern style barbie body facing breasts up(they are the ones that have bellybuttons and don't twist at the waist) fully dismembered (yes, even her head) i then glued (lots and lots of hotglue!!!!) 3 pairs of legs (including the originals, they are in the back as they have larger feet... it's amazing to me just how much i've learned about the differences in barbie bodies... that's a whole post right there, though) i then reattached the original arms but "backwards" so the hands would be facing the right way. she now needed a face.... for a while i just had a face literally cut out of a barbie head glued directly onto the neck. now, that was incredibly creepy, and i liked that part but it just didn't go with the series. ...and i kept thinking about that dore piece, and the streaming hair.... so i swapped the face for a smaller than barbie doll head (because spiders have small heads) and, for added weirdness and barbie authenticity, glued the actual barbie face onto the smaller head. because it wasn't creepy enough, i then added tiny doll arms for mandibles. (the small heads and arms were also used in constructing kali, the first piece). then she was painted to resemble a weaving spider, as i thought that was appropriate. ..and once again she sat... while i worked on other projects, avoiding trying to figure out her environment....
then i finally decided to give in to my desires and have her crocheting.... so she crochets the universe out of the world on her back...

the long past due updates....

above is a test image.... it's a stepping stone i created years ago in loving memory of dearly departed frodo-cat... rest in peace in your olive tree my dear...

so, the first series of barbies is complete.... the show is up, and i've even put stuff on my etsy (see the link i've added :) ...and i've been remiss with my updating here... i've decided to do a series of posts about each of the barbie goddess figures i created... each with some background and a photo or two and links to the lore of each goddess as well as my techniques etc..... and i'll be updating more often about what new pieces i'm working on....

barbie madness.....

this is a piece that i completed in march of last year, titled "barbie the destroyer." it was initially just a lark for a work party, but the idea has grown into something more akin to obsession. i'm currently working on a series of barbie goddess figures for a show in april. i hope to post pics of these as they are completed. sadly, mother kali is still my only completed piece although i've been working on several at once. procrastination and i have a long history together and i'm hoping that since the madness of the holidays is drawing to a close that we can end our dysfunctional friendship, at least for a while.
hope this is adequate for a first post :)