Lemon Tree Tales

Witchy Woman ATD

I forgot all about showing off the last ATD (Artist Trading Doll) that I made for a Halloween swap. I think that I bit off a bit more than I could chew when i decided to make this 50s inspired silhouette.

The base is cut out of the back of a drawing pad. I used it for the monotone brown ATD earlier this year so I didn't think it'd be a problem. However, this one had much more detail than the simple shape I choose last time. I just barely was able to cut it out with an X-acto blade and scissors. The clothes and face were cut from a variety of scrapbooking papers. The hair is a bit of dyed mohair. The shiny green thing is a frog sticker in her apron pocket (made from a polka dot vellum). And as you can see, I went a bit crazy with the black Art Institute glitter. It's now all over the dining room table. Like the comic Demetri Martin said, "Glitter is the herpes of craft supplies. [Once it's on you,] prepare to have it on you forever."

Thankful Weekend

Thanksgiving weekend went pretty well. Our original plans changed a few weeks ago so rather than having a big dinner we met with family at a restaurant on Thursday. Note, if you're in the Pismo Beach area DO NOT go to Marie Callender's for Thanksgiving dinner. Ye gads, it was the most horrible meal - from inattentive service to cold, awful food. But that wasn't the goal of the day. We were grateful to see my dad, my aunt & a cousin, and my grandparents. I realized that as I draw closer to my 40th birthday, that I'm pretty doggone lucky to still have not one, but two sets of grandparents alive. Maybe next time we can see my mom and her parents too.

After that meal the conversation turned to racing and cars. My dad brought pictures of his latest '56 Ford truck project. My aunt brought pictures of her friends' Rat Rod and the trophy that it won at a recent drag race. Then Steve brought out pictures from his day with the Ariel Atom. They were all happy and had big smiles.

From Pismo Beach, Steve and I headed over to Buttonwillow (near Bakersfield) via the 58 highway filled with curvy roads. Friday we hit the antique shops in downtown Bakersfield. It was filled less with true antiques and more with 30 year old items, yet the prices didn't reflect this. Nothing really popped out and struck us something that we wanted or needed, or at least not enough to spend the money and cart it home with us.

Saturday and Sunday we spent the days at the Buttonwillow race track. Such a small world since we met a few people who also live in the South Bay area. And in case you're wondering what I did while Steve sped merrily along the track, it had something to do with all those Gatorade caps in the picture.

A while back I made a pincushion or two using this tutorial that I found on Flickr by verybigen. Check out her gallery of great pincushions here. I brought the thrifted and felted wool sweaters from last year and made seven pincushions. They still need to be decorated, but I'm pleased with how they came out. Whenever I was bored with sewing (or more accurately, when my finger was too sore to sew anymore ... Note to self: next time bring a thimble) I cut out pieces to make more. I only cut out two from the purple sweater because I think that it could do with more felting. I guess these pincushions are a pretty "green" item since they use recycled Gatorade caps and recycled wool sweaters.

This worked out well, Steve was happy to be racing along and having me there for company. And I was happy to be making pincushions and keeping Steve company. I'll remember to bring more little projects to do while I'm at the track.

 

Diane's 3D Paper-doll

This amazing doll was made by one of my friends from the Gals & Dolls club of San Jose, Diane. Can you believe that it's a 3D paper-doll? She has the most interesting hinge joints. Her face is stamped and painted. Her hair is a mix of angelina fibers and what looks to be painted and melted tyvek and perhaps fantasy film? The dress is made from silk fusion, which is silk fibers that are combined with a textile medium to create a new piece of fabric. Diane used this great product called Paverpol to harden the paper so that it doesn't bend or deform in any way. The chair is also made with Paverpol strengthened paper.

You can see the back of the chair better in this shot.

And a closeup of her face:

As you can see, Diane is super talented. We're very lucky that she'll be teaching a class on her 3D Paper-doll Technique at our doll club in March 2008. In the meantime I need to find the perfect place for her in my studio. [UPDATE] Here's the link to Diane's flickr photos.

New logo design

Well folks this is the new logo I created using Adobe Illustrator for the very first time! Wow, I can't tell you what a learning experience it was. It seems that you learn best by actually doing a project rather than simply learning from a book. Who knew?  :-)

Kathy of Pink Chalk Studio deserves a thank you for encouraging me to use Illustrator. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I used this book as a visual reference for some basic guidelines. Then I used this fantastic free online program, VectorMagic (created by two Stanford students), to transform my original bitmap jpeg sketch into a vector file. Almost there, but I needed help transforming the white sections into transparency. That's where I discovered this amazing site, bittbox. This has to be the go-to place for great tips on using Illustrator. After a couple of days ... VOILA! What do you think?

Highway Survival Course

First of all, thank you everyone for all the well wishes. I spent most of yesterday afternoon sleeping so that I'd feel well enough this morning to take the Jim Russell Highway Survival Course at Infineon Raceway. (Yeah, I know it as Sears Point but somewhere along the way it changed names. Apparently someone over at Google is also a race fan because Google maps doesn't know where Infineon is but it sure knows how to get you to Sears Point.)

These were definitely NOT the things I learned how to do 20+ years ago. We drove in a skid car and learned how to control it. That was very difficult to do. Then we did some braking exercises where we had to brake just before it locked up. Once that was mastered we then moved on to braking the car just enough so that we could change lanes and come to a complete stop as if we were avoiding an obstacle. The third set of exercises was to learn how to pass lanes under speed WITHOUT braking. Basically this means that you whip the wheel to the next lane and back again. At 30 mph this wasn't too bad. Then we increased speed to 35 mph and finally up to 40 mph. Let me tell you that although that sounds slow it certainly doesn't feel like it when you're whipping the car quickly.  :-)

The course ended with a little autocross race. Yeah, I'm thinking that I went faster than 40 mph on the passing section. I so wanted to win since the class was filled with teenagers and only one other adult. Sadly I didn't get the fastest time (I missed the last cone in the slalom) but then again, I wasn't the slowest, or even the second to slowest. So that's something. But I did feel pretty happy that the winner was a girl. And she was unsure about doing it too.

I had a lot of fun and definitely feel much more confident with a car's braking limits. Before today I'd never had to brake a car that fast. Nice to know how it feels in a safe environment. I would highly recommend this course, or a similar one, to every teenager out there. It would probably keep a lot of them out of accidents. (Too bad they didn't have a better price on it. I wouldn't have been able to afford this when I was younger and it's really geared for first-time drivers.)

I for one want to do the autocross race section again. I'm sure that I'd be better at it a second time around. Now it's time to rest again.  :-)

Scratchy throat ... oh no, I'm sick!

Yes, it turns out that the scratchy throat that I've been having the last couple days has turned into a cold. I thought maybe it just was a little dry from having the heater on. Nope, no such luck. Well I'm still gonna go to Sears Point tomorrow so that I can do my driving course. Can't reschedule it. So I'll just spend a lot of time today resting and drinking lots of fluids. When I feel better I'll share the new lemon heads logo that I designed and made using Adobe Illustrator. (My first time using that program too!)

Hi, my name is Ms. Grumpy

Ah, I was very much Ms. Grumpy yesterday. I think it was a combination of factors (lack of good sleep, self imposed pressure to complete a project, clutter, and a late late lunch) but I think that the main thing is that I don't do very well when my space is a mess. The house is in complete disarray and it's driving me ape-shit. There's so much that I've been neglecting that I'm thrown for what to start first. Obviously the kitchen should be the first step. Then grocery shopping so that there's something stored in the then clean kitchen. The dining room, living room, bedroom, laundry, oh, and the studio too. Well, that'll just have to wait ... there's little unsightly piles everywhere, and I do mean everywhere! I believe that they must have little hands and feet that come out when you're not looking and travel to other spots. There's one on the dining room table, a little one near my living room chair, and oooh don't look now, but I think that there's 3 new ones on the studio floor. Ye gads! How does this happen?

Is it just me or does anyone else have days like that? I must have snapped at, oh maybe three different people last night at my doll club. That's not good because these are all nice people with whom I enjoy spending time. At least I managed to put together the blank doll embellish challenge before the meeting. Now I'm not saying that I'm thrilled with what I came up with, just that it was made. And on a day like yesterday being finished is sometimes all that one can do.

I didn't like the face that I drew. No, correction, I did like it, but the face wasn't dry yet when I stitched it on the doll. Yep, black streaks all over and no time to make another head. So I made a very large yo-yo and covered the head with that. Then I glued on a polymer clay face that I had bought from a lady at Doll U in August. The only embellishment was the punch-needle embroidery that I did on the butterfly fabric before I sewed her up. Actually that was pretty fun and my first time trying it. I'll pick a better project to showcase that type of embroidery next time. Well here she is ...

Discovering the Atom

Ah, if you've been wondering where I've been spending a lot of my time and attention lately ... wonder no more. My hubby has been preparing the last couple of months in anticipation of yesterday's track day at Thunderhill in Willows, CA to try out the Ariel Atom seen here. Most weekends we've been driving to various tracks so that Steve can race his car (yes, his personal car the Chrysler 300 SRT-8 with a big fast hemi engine), learning the basics of driving a car on a race course properly. He also tried out a few helmets until he decided that he liked this one. That's his own design that's painted on it. Pretty spiffy looking, no? It all paid off big time, because yesterday there were supposed to be coaches in all the cars all the time. It's too fast of a car for them to really relax and let inexperienced drivers out on their own. But after the first two sessions one of the coaches had to fly home to Canada (odd timing I thought). Since Steve's been at this track quite a few times he was allowed to take this baby out for two sessions by himself. From the huge smile on his face I could tell that he was in heaven! I tried to take a video of him racing the car ... I'm not sure if it came out or not. Hey I'm not really that great of a videographer, especially not when it's a bunch of cars moving very fast. A monopod seems to help a bit. I'm glad that he had fun. He was pretty happy that I've been tagging along with him to cheer him on from the sidelines, sometimes while working on a project. Now it's time for me to get a handle on everything else: housework, grocery shopping, my WIPs and fairies that are waiting to be introduced.

Paris Bebe is having a giveaway

PamKittyMorning linked to this fabulous giveaway from Robin, the creative force behind Paris Bebe Fabrics. She is having a drawing on Monday to giveaway these four fat quarter bundles from her new line. She's also throwing in the beautiful rhinestone brooches and the pattern for her fat quarter apron so that you'll have something to play with right away. Go check it out and sign up while there's still time.

Book Review: 500 Handmade Dolls

This amazing book from the delightful folks at Lark Books arrived yesterday, 500 Handmade Dolls. WOW! What can I say other than it's pure eye candy and inspiration for anyone who likes to make dolls or other sculpted figures. Some of the artists I was familiar with already, but others are new discoveries. The book is printed on beautiful glossy paper with luscious vibrant colors. The photographs are all lit in a museum catalog manner. Such a treat to look through. I'm sure that I'll pour over it many, many times before I even think of soaking in all the details that it offers. Here's just a few random selections: