Prototype Denver Rose

FINALLY today I will have prototype Denver Rose's art work done!

Her body is assembled so she'll just wait a couple of days for her head to meet up with her body so that the glues can dry and be aired out.  

I picked up a darling display box to add to her layette the other day.  

Whew!

I'll also be "finishing" a silicone baby for the show today with gloss.  I rooted tiny lashes into his sleeping eyes yesterday.

He has to arrive in Denver bald as I simply do not have time to root him.  I will offer him with the option of rooted hair.  

I have one more mini full-body silicone that I want to root hair onto.  I THINK I can get that one done but not the huge head on the doll I spoke of above.

Mohair processing is going well.  I wish I could twinkle my nose and get a lot more ready.  I've been working every evening on banding hair; washing, combing and dying it in the day, but it simply isn't going to be enough to offer to all of the artists at the show.

I've been assembling class packets and gathering supplies.  

I really need to start packing them as they are consuming the entire floor of my studio!

I DO feel like there is a light at the end of this tunnel and my excitement is escalating!

Hugs!

Registration is CLOSED

I feel so lucky to have 10 amazing and talented ladies joining me in my 

Make the Switch to Air Dry Paints at the ROSE show in Denver in just a couple of weeks!

We are going to have an amazing time there.  

I have much to share and am so thankful for the wonderful people who have enhanced this class with special door prizes and supplies.  

Registration for the class is now closed.

Did I mention...

I do not remember if I mentioned the fact that all four of the 

Denver Rose prototypes will be in my class at the ROSE show!

I know that if I asked, Marita would probably share the pictures of the one that arrived back to her completed, but I think I will hold out as I love surprises.

For now, I will enjoy gazing at the one I am working on.

Have a great week-ending and weekend.  

It is going to be a hot one here. 

XXOO

Rooting and mohair processing

The rooting on Denver Rose is going well~She's so adorable!!!

I won't have as much mohair as I had hoped for the ROSE show but I'll have a little.  I banded up another batch last night which I will wash today and dye tomorrow.  

This one will be AA curly black/brown!

I will be able to assemble another silicone baby that will have to arrive in Denver bald.

~sigh~

I simply do not have time to root his big head.  I will offer him as bald or with rooting option then bring him back home if his new mommy wants him with hair.

Counting the days....

Three weeks!

Excitement is building for the ~ROSE~ show! 

And I have THREE babies complete and ready to go!

Rooting of Denver Rose prototype starts today   :)

Happy Father's day to the men in your life...or to YOU if you are a father and visiting my blog.

God bless you all!

This too shall pass....

I was looking for a particular blog post to send to a gal that is working on her second doll.  

I know it had the word "Breathe" in it but I cannot find it at all.  

But through the searching I felt a bit sad as I simply have not had time to "play" (remember "Sharing my Collection Fridays??) and to do teaching video's.  ~sigh~

The move that we made at the end of October has been hard.  Anytime you move and change there are so many tasks to complete, and it seems they are just never done.  

But I do know that it will pass.  It will!

The Dolly House should be finished and all the dolls moved in certainly by I'll say....October.  

We have begun organizing our new garage so that we can move the old garage over.  

I am working on skirting the Dolly House so that I can bring my compost barrel over from the old house (it is huge and where I want to put it will be right in the way of the work I have to do to skirt).  

We have begun the groundwork for building a tack shed over at the horse pasture.  

There are a lot of beguns but one thing that I DID finish is stripping and restaining the front porch, park bench and the mail box post!

I failed to take a picture of the porch and bench before I stripped them but they were looking pretty bad. 
Here they are stripped:

It took me a long while to choose the color for the porch.  I finally settled on Australian Timber Oil in Jarrah Brown:

I really love it!

For the park bench, I selected a lighter color called Shaker Pine.  It was a "normal" stain and worked differently than the Australian Timber Oil.  I prefer working with the Timber Oil but the bench looks nice.  My husband tightened up all of the loose bolts.

We have had this bench for a very long time  :)

New porch!

I was out in the horse pasture resting over Toby's back and gazing at my handiwork when I realized WHY I liked the color of the Timber Oil that I chose....

It is nearly the color of my old geldings hair!  (You can see the mail box post in this picture.)

Cross that project off the list....

Getting there!

Turning off my phone yesterday helped SO much...mostly with my level of stress!

I think I will be turning off the chimes most days as the stress was just putting me asunder.

I won't be ignoring people, I will just have more specified times to handle what they need without a notification chime coming in every few minutes and making me think that I must stop now and handle it.  

~SHOW BABIES~

With the stress gone yesterday, I was able to get the artwork fully done on one show baby.  His body arrived yesterday afternoon and I may have time to assemble him today!

I will be able to finish rooting a micro-preemie silicone head today and quite possibly finish her artwork too!

I have washed some lovely alpaca hair for the next sweet thing to go into the rooting station.  

After that one is rooted, it leaves 2 other heads to root and I just am not sure I can get to the largest one.  I am pretty certain that I cannot so that one may have to go bald with the option of rooted hair.  

~CLASS PROGRESS~

The Class Color Guide is written, edited and ready for printing!

I have been organizing supplies as they come in/are purchased.  

I am going to have to start packing them soon as they are taking a large part of my space in the studio. 

Door prizes are being assembled and some arrived in the mail from a student who could not attend after all.  :(  

Oh, her gifts are precious and so thoughtful! 

A wonderful gift came for me as well!  

Thank you Melissa R!  

Hugs and love to you....you will be missed!

There are just NINE days left to sign up for the class

My thanks go out to Melissa George who has created wonderul promo items to promote this class and for promotion on her own pages and on Baby FX dealer pages.

You are the best Melissa!  

XXOO

NEW color guide available in late July!

It has been a long while since I have created a new color guide but with the upcoming class using the Baby FX paints, I was able to create one!

This one will be the class color guide for the newborn skin tone for use on light vinyl.  

It will be released after I return home from the show and recover.  

Yesterday I used the Baby FX capillaries kit for the first time.

I do like the results!  I have to work a bit more on placement but this really adds to the reborn!

In other news, I received the custom apron that I had made for the ROSE show:

Kathie Kern of 

~Me 2 You Creations~

made it. 

The pocket on mine is larger than most because of my long nursery name.

I love this apron and am looking forward to having pockets during the ROSE show without down playing my outfits.  This is made from a mans shirt with a collar!  Nice.

Today I am shutting off the phone so that emails, text messages, messenger messages and Facebook posts do not rob my time.  I really need to focus!

 

I will answer emails tomorrow morning  :)  

XXOO

To Belgium

Sweet little Tabitha has left my home for her new home in Belgium.

It is her "mommy's" first silicone doll.  I could not be more honored!

I had a bit of hard time parting with her though.

That will all go away once she arrives in Belgium and delights her new family.

I love my work!

Canon customer service A++++++

I called Canon Customer Service USA yesterday and they gave me the BEST customer service I have had in a very long time!

The young man on the other end of the line was polite, spoke English (AMAZING!) and explained everything that I needed to know in a slow and detailed way.  

They have a flat fee for camera repairs, which was reasonable.  

I was told that it sounds like the sensor in my camera has gone bad, according to the symptoms of the camera, and that it is the most expensive item to repair.  Whew.  I feel lucky to have a flat rate fee!

So my SLR camera is off for repairs and should arrive back within 2 weeks.  

My plan is to do the photo shoot and set up the auction for Denver Rose before I leave for Denver so that the auction can start the morning of my Make the Switch to Air Dry Paints class.  

I will be fine now!

Sweet little Tabitha's auction ends tonight.

Her current bidder is legitimate even though at first, after sending several messages and the bidder did not respond, I canceled the bid.  The bidder finally responded and does have intention of purchasing her.

Another new bidder contacted me today as asked permission to bid, which I have granted.  

It looks like this sweet little girl will find a home!

I think I will miss her!!!

XXOO

This has been the year for mechanical/technical difficulties

I am sure you are all tired of hearing me whine about the issues I have had with my computer this year.

I am still having issues, so I had gone to the Apple Store again to find out WHERE my start up disc was as I kept getting messages that it is nearly full and that I could not do the actions which I needed to do because of that.

I was told to move the movies from iMovie to my external hard drive.  

Ahhhh...easy enough I thought!

Well.  iMovie will not let me move them or delete them!  I guess it's too full or I just don't know how to twitch my nose just right.

I did manage to delete one movie that I had a copy for in another folder on my desktop by manually selecting all of the screens and deleting each one.  That has allowed me enough space to work almost without problem.

Now, it's my Canon Rebel EOS SLR camera.

When I did the pictures for Tabitha's auction, I thought the pictures were horrible.  I didn't know why until last night when I was taking other pictures...which I cannot show you  :).

In short, I still don't know why this problem is evident but here is another picture or two that I took yesterday of Tabitha where you can see the problem.

If you click on the picture to make it full size, and look the background, you can clearly see why my photos of her were so distorted.  

I do not know what that is!  

I have cleared all of the settings on my camera (sometimes it just gets clogged up and needs cleared) but that didn't help anything.

I don't even know if there are camera repair shops these days.  I guess I need to contact Canon and see what they say.  

It is a good thing I won't be doing any auctions between now and the fall since the ROSE show is just next month.  I guess if the camera is going to fail me, now is a good time to do it! 

I already know that I need a new computer come fall and I've looked at the new models and know the price.  

Now...a camera???  It seems like I just got this one!  

~sigh~

Ah well, it could be worse so I cannot really complain.

Hugs!

Only THREE spaces remain~Make the Switch

Excitement is in the air as we draw closer to the ROSE show!

As of this morning, only 3 spaces remain in this class.

I won't be able to add anyone last minute so please sign up before June 25th, the final deadline.  

There are so many exciting things to share!  

One of the students that signed up ended up not being able to make it due to a surgery.  She has made some door prize gifts to contribute to the class.  Isn't that sweet?!?!?  

Thank you Melissa!  

The Melissa's are blessing us left and right as Melissa George is also sending a complimentary Baby FX product for EACH student!

Marita is offering some awesome door prizes and I am too.  

We are going to have a great time at the 

~Make the Switch to Air Dry Paints class at ROSE~

XXOO

Tabitha is available on eBay!

I actually did get her auction completed on Wednesday, I just have not had time to come to the blog and say so!

She really is such a darling preemie! 

I thought all of her pictures looked great until I downloaded them.  

I forgot that once in a while, I should clear my camera settings.  It must get confused with all of the changes I make during a shoot.  ~sigh~

I didn't have time to redo the shoot so I put her up on eBay anyway hoping that people would trust that she is as beautiful as all of my other dolls.

~Tabitha on eBay~

Please click on the link above to view her auction as the views and the watchers will help her find her mommy.  Thank you!

Call the press! I finished a baby!

Please meet Tabitha, a precious silicone preemie created from the 

Little Warrior sculpt by Angela Lewis.

I love this baby's dainty features and defined chin.  

If all goes well, she will be listed on eBay today.

~HUGS~

Baby FX nail bed experiment

For those who have followed my painting methods through the years, you have seen that I like to prep the nail beds of my dolls before I paint.  

In the past, I have used Genesis Glazing Gel to create texture on the nail bed before I painted.  I would of course bake this in before applying air dry paints.

This is the look I acquired using this technique:

 

I love the texture of the Last Coat product in the Baby FX line so I thought this might replace the Genesis Glazing Gel without the need to bake the kit.  

It looked like it would work but after 3 days of painting, the Last Coat (mixed with just a dab of Slow Dry) began to peel off.  

I was able to remove all of the Last Coat from my nail beds without any damage to the paint around the nail beds.  Then I simply repainted the nails.  

Melissa George tells me that the Last Coat really is designed to go on last, not under any paint.  She recommended mixing the Last Coat with one of the other varnishes, either the Subtle Shine or Final Sealer to apply over the painted nails to gain that same texture.  She assures that used as a final sealer, the Last Coat is extremely durable.  I am excited to try this after my two doll kits are painted.  

The Baby FX line has SO many products to meet every artist's level of experience.

I have more mediums, varnishes and colors on the way and I can't wait to open that box!!

It will be like Christmas!  

I am anxious to try the Inner Glow to bring even more translucency to the "skin" helping my camera to truly photograph the dolls tone.

On the brows and any hair detail, I will try the Magic Flow which adds thickness and texture to the paint.  

Look at all of these wonderful new colors and products in the Baby FX line!

There is even now a Heat Set Replacement kit that contains some of our favorite Heat Set colors!

They can be found in Melissa's store:

~MG ART DOLLS Webiste Link~

As well as here in the United States in Lorraine's store:

~DREAM A LITTLE DREAM Website Link~

There simply isn't anything you can't do with these paints!

Happy Painting!  

(Ps, only FOUR spaces remain for my Make the Switch to Air Dry Paints class)

Make the Switch deadline EXTENDED :)

With my suppliers on board and able to ship supplies to me in time, I am able to extend the sign up deadline for the upcoming 

~MAKE THE SWITCH TO AIR DRY PAINTS CLASS~

TO JUNE 25TH.

This will be absolute latest date to sign up.  

There are just 5 spaces remaining and I offer a 2 payment plan on the sign up page in the above link.

There will be many wonderful perks to this class!

Not only will we be working on a brand new sculpt by Marita Winters~created for this class to be released in this class....

Marita has donated several precious items to be give as door prize drawings.

I will be teaching using the new Baby FX air dry paints by Melissa George of MG Art Dolls.

Melissa is also sending, all the way from Australia, several items from her new line to be given as door prizes!

I will have my own offerings of door prizes as well!

Plus, to blow my own horn a teeny bit, I am a world renowned air dry paint instructor.  

The education I give is not limited and no secrets in technique are kept to myself.  

Students will go away confidant in the use of air dry paints along with my personal techniques for creating a life-like, multidimensional skin tone.  

We are going to have a phenomenal time!

XXOO