Last Thursday our doll club, the Flying Phoebes, hosted a doll class and trunk show by Cyndi Mahlstadt of Meadow Bug Studio. She taught us how to make Evie Mae, a flower doll with a wire form base. As usual I'm a bit slow so my doll isn't finished quite yet. I DID learn a lot of interesting techniques and how to use Sobo glue.
Here's Cyndi's Evie Mae doll with a covered wire stand:
(This picture is taken from Cyndi Mahlstadt's website .. not taken by me)
and here's my unfinished version:
As you can see, I'm missing the ribbon on her right arm and a whole lot of fibers, leaves, beading etc until she's complete. I think that she'll be best displayed as a wall doll so I'll get a hook to decorate as well.
Cyndi was such a sweet and funny lady. She's originally from soCal (just like me) but moved to Iowa last year. Unfortunately we didn't have our usual beautiful California weather while she was here. It rained most of the day and night during our class and meeting. We managed to stay warm in spite of it.
Here's a quick picture of Cyndi presenting her dolls (okay, bad picture taking on my part because other than this shot Cyndi was smiling all the time):
and a closeup of one of her sweet ribbon dolls:
Cyndi's dolls are mostly wire armatures with covered fibers - ribbons, fabric, dyed cheesecloth, etc - that are then embellished with beads, velvet leaves, buttons, sequins, ribbons, glitter, basically anything pretty will find it's way into her artwork.
Go take a look at Cyndi's website and blog to see more of her darling creations. In the meantime I'll work on the finishing touches on my flower doll.
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On a side note, make sure that you have the latest version of Adobe Reader installed on your PC. I didn't have the most up to date version and there is a virus that exploits the older versions when you open a PDF that has the virus attached. My PC was attacked on Saturday morning. There wasn't too much of a solution other than to reinstall everything on my machine. Thank goodness Steve is a computer guru because he was able to copy all my files, pictures, etc to an external hard drive before wiping out my machine to start from scratch. So now I'm reinstalling my programs - a pain, but now my machine is happy once again.
My goodness that little Flower Fairy made me so happy today. Can't wait to show her to my Granddaughter's. Thanks for sharing the nice imagination!
Posted by: Mary Lou Weidman | January 25, 2010 at 02:22 PM
Can't wait to see yours done. She looks gorgeous already. Love the yellow rose you used to make the skirt.
Posted by: Heera | January 25, 2010 at 03:17 PM
Very cute little dolls. Yours looks great already...she will be fabulous when she is done!
Posted by: Nancy | January 25, 2010 at 05:02 PM
Oh- her dolls are lovely! I hope you finish yours soon- it looks beautiful all ready! I will be at a spinning conference all this week but will have my wee laptop. I try to take pics and post- there are supposed to be 200 spinners there this week- it's in Destin up in the panhandle- I am so excited! It will be like a mini vacation! will talk soon,
xo, kim
Posted by: calamity kim | January 25, 2010 at 08:17 PM
I sure miss having a doll club! Her dolls are lovely - what does she make the faces out of? Can't wait to see how yours turns out - I'm betting it will be fab!
Posted by: Judi W | January 25, 2010 at 09:25 PM
Oh how lucky you are. Yours is coming up wonderfully and I can't wait to see it finished. Cindy's dolls are awesome and what an awesome teacher you got to learn from.
Posted by: shashi. | January 26, 2010 at 03:08 AM
I can already see her fabulous beauty even before you have her completed. How wonderful your class must have been. Keep creating...
Posted by: Saucy Chick Sherry | January 26, 2010 at 09:04 PM
My mother wanna have some classes in order to create a perfect doll like that, but the problem is she doesn't have the creativity.How can I get more information about that?
Posted by: BV | August 09, 2010 at 09:22 AM