DollsArtCats

Just a couple of photos today, since I had other things (like work) I had to do today. Above is Bubbles the Soom Cass again, this time with party lights. And then there is Serendipity, who was a Free Choice Galena head with a Beryl body, and I still need to paint her hooves. And make clothes--though hooves solve the shoe problem, they also make pants/trousers problematic. And finally Moonlight, a lavender Soom Migma head and hands on an Impldoll white skin body--I decided I would make do with the Impl body, and in fact, I like the thinner, spikier look of the body--it suits a "bramble fairy." Moonlight is a cousin of Dust Fairy Sirocco. (I have no idea what I will do if Soom releases the Migma head in tan!) I still need to paint the neck and wrists of the Impl body to ease the transition in colors. More tomorrow!

So here are more of the crown-modelling dolls--above is Carissa, A Soom Special Order Cuprit (modded by Charie Wilson), and one of the two girls who might wear the crown on a regular basis. Everyone else here is just goofing around with it. Here is Amethyst, a modded Dreaming Delf Lishe: Allegra, A Soom Special Order Cass, says "Wait, I'm not ready!" And I pulled the same trick on Rain, an Immortality of Soul "G", while he was trying to get his shirt on: Rain and Bryan, an Iplehouse Denzel, together: Then there is another couple, Sirocco, a Soom Migma; and Malachi, a Delf Moon: Then there is Bubbles, a Soom Cass, who has completely forgotten why she was in the living room after trying on the crown, and is now talking on the shell phone, "there was this cute little hat thing..and I was going to make some tea.." Myrtle, a Soom Coquina: Sirius, a Doll In Mind Elf Event head on a DollZone body: and Tamsen, a Dollzone Elf-Eared Wing that I...

For Christmas, Cat sent me one of her art crowns, and while I am not worthy, I was also totally thrilled. Since I couldn't decide who should wear it, I thought I would just go through and try it out on all my dolls. This is more difficult than it sounds, since some dolls share bodies and others are packed away, sealed in bubble wrap. But here are the dolls that were easy to find and pop into the chair for a photo. The one above is Violetta, a Delf Juri '07b (one of the two Christmas event heads for that year.) This one is Bird, my Soom Tremo: Sensei Fuzzy, A Soom Sphaler: Rilly, a Resinsoul Mei: Alejandro, A Fairyland Vampire Moon: Kip, A Resinsoul Ai boy on a B and G body (needs his horns painted): And Noodles, a Soom Gneiss: Lee, A Delf Juri 07A: Zinnober, A Soom Sphaler: And finally for today,(since the light was going) Balthazar;another Soom Sphaler (who already has a lot going on with his head, with his new Dikadoll horns, courtesy of Buff). So he...

My mom, who probably should be inventing the next Bejeweled or Tetris, is instead amusing herself by knitting and crocheting. And for Christmas, among other wonderful things, she sent me some tiny knitted and crocheted things for my dolls. Here Kalypso shows off her new hat, which I stuck a scrapbooking flower onto with a small pin. (I suspect the hat will have all kinds of pins and feathers attached to it, depending on what else Kalypso is wearing). It is simply adorable. And here is a grainy picture of Bird, trying on one of the scarves that the humans here got for Christmas. He actually got his own scale scarf as well, but I need to take a picture of him in it during daylight hours, so the detail will show.

J is a very good cook, and for Christmas he received some cooking tools and a large bottle of Himalayan pink salt, which is the newest "specialty salt", eclipsing the old and busted "Kosher Salt" and "Exotic Sea Salt". They also make cutting boards of the slabs of pink salt, and I owned, before people started to eat the stuff, a Himalayan salt lamp with a small bulb inside of it. I worry about what makes the salt pink...and is it, like some fashionable granite countertops, mildly radioactive? Or more importantly, are we levelling the mighty Himalaya, one teaspoonful at a time, until K2 and Everest will resemble Cherry Hill, New Jersey? (Cherry Hill, which a local disc jockey called "previously thought unscalable" has a water tower on top.) And who knew that "tasty" could be added to the description of the Indian Subcontinent?

Yes, you may have the stomach flu on Christmas Eve, but someone still has to get up and feed the cats. Photo stolen from someone named Ric Johnson off the Internet.

My Soom Gneiss (who is called "Noodles" here because her snake head ornaments look like rice noodles) is the closest thing to a Christmas Angel I have right now. I am not putting her on or near the tree, though, since Stripey has already managed to hurl the small tabletop tree to the ground, along with the tablecloth, a dozen Christmas cards, a pen, and a cup of coffee. Here is the new Soom Girl body neck, by the way--you can see it sticks out a tiny bit but that gives her head a lot of movement and hardly shows, especially with a long wig.

Soom has now reissued a resculpt of the Mecha Angel Saiph, and the head looks good. I am not quite sure if it's sitting well on the new body, just because Soom took all the photos of her looking down, which makes me say "hmmm". I suspect it's because the head may sit "tall" on the neck, like Gneiss does--it means that you have a good range of motion, but the neck will look long and you may see the neck at the sides of the head (fixable with a long hairstyle, or in my case, ignorable with Gneiss and my IOS "G".) But if you just order the head, at 110.00 USD plus applicable shipping, it looks like it can go on a LOT of other bodies--that pale NS looks great for matching.(Note--Angel of Dream girl necks are probably too skinny.) And you may want to get your own face-up--they minimized Saiph's best feature; those pillowy, kissy lips. New heads fit fine on old Soom bodies, too, just take off the s hook and use the "banana" instead if th...

Miss Peony is one of the least expensive dolls I own, and one of the best posers. She also comes the closest to being a "standard 60 centimeter" size, so she is the only doll of mine to get a new Christmas dress, courtesy of Buff, since everyone else was either too big or too small. Buff sent the "necklace" as well, it's actually a bracelet and Buff was using it as a belt for someone, but it looks nice on Miss P.

I bought a clothing set from Powerage on Renderosity.com because it came with an exquisite rapier,(I am doing 3 covers at once so I am piling up all the reference I can find) and I did not pay much attention to the clothing when I bought the rapier. Until today, when I did a test render of the set. It is one of the silliest fantasy heroine outfits I own, and yet there is something about it...you can't see them, but the boots have 4 inch square "Cuban heels" on them to finish out the whole outfit. It even.. almost... has kidney protection, but it definitely has girly white lace stocking and garters on the sides. And fingerless gloves, and something like flower petals for shoulder pauldrons. It looks like Miss Bolivia's alternate "military" costume. And I think if you added a unicorn tattoo and maybe a tiara of some kind, you'd be totally rocking. I have no idea what the superpower would be that goes with this, but maybe power shopping is involved. The...

Tom and Lorenzo report on the costumes at the Miss Universe Pageant: http://www.tomandlorenzo.com/2012/12/miss-universe-national-costume-2012-part-1.html I think they should skip the other parts of the competition entirely and just have the girls do the National Costume part of it. (Of course the Latin American countries would have an edge, since they are used to doing the "Girl as Carnival Float" thing.) I could actually wear Miss Bolivia's costume to shop at Trader Joe's, though people would ask me about the organic fruit. I wouldn't wear it until June, though--it's about 20F outside right now. Be sure and follow the links to the 2011 competition as well, it's even more "feathery."

After some closet digging, I found the Soom Breccia torso to put Hermione's head on. The problem was that the only feet I had were the Migma "bat feets," since the spare Soom ankle balls I once had, are now being worn by a cross-dressing Volks Date Masamune in San Francisco (and he looks Mighty Fine in them and his heels). So I put the bat feet on, and they were ok, but the neck key made Hermione's neck too long (and you can see from the picture above that it's long even without the neck key. Since I had to take him apart again anyway, I took off the bat feet and found some extra white shins that I had bought on speculation ages ago, and some Impl male feet, which have the ankle balls built in. (Every doll company should do this--I hate separate wrist and ankle balls.) The feet are sort of platter-like, but stable. To solve the lack of the neck key and the resulting neck hole, I just took the key apart and turned it upside down: With real feet and a stable ...

It's supposed to snow this evening--first snow of the season. And in Russia, Santa Claus is styling. American Claus wants to know where Russian Claus goes shopping. (Photo from reddit via Imgur: http://imgur.com/4sX9i )

Three of these items are "not real", not counting the obvious little rubber "ice cream cone". And if you said the pearls, you are partially right--but the iPhone in the middle is made of paper, and the smallest pearls are real.

Mostly the house is picked up, and neat. I say "mostly", because there are always a few things that really have no "place" to be put away, since normal people do not own them. Take two items that I had to find a place for today--a stuffed Raven and a hygrometer. The hygrometer was from an art project of K's, but useful for checking on the humidity of storage areas for dolls and paper items, and the stuffed raven has been photographed, scanned and painted many times. But the hygrometer is too fragile to toss in a drawer with the padlocks and mousetraps and screwdrivers; and the raven is subject to moths and cats, and can't be mashed into a drawer either. I used to have a huge trunk full of skeletons, masks, goth props, paper mache models.. and a complete model tidepool in a box,all useful for doing bookcover art. If I were in the movie business, I would just rent a locker and when the assistant producer needed a stuffed raven, I could give him the key and ...

--Clean Kitchen Floor --Express Mail Stollen Loaf to Aunt in Calif. --Do sketch for romance cover featuring Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf. (Yes, really). --Investigate mouse activity behind furnace --Wash Santa hat and cow slippers --Find several sets of doll-sized antlers and missing doll head for body on bureau. --Iron some magazine clippings so they can be filed neatly in photo reference file drawer. --Make a note that, in honor of the Mayan Apocalypse, the publisher will be cutting a check for the balance of the royalties for the Lair of the Jaguar God , so there will be no more in 2013. -- Clean shower drain. -- Finish putting commas in the last 40 pages of friend's paranormal romance novel. I probably won't get to the shower drain today. The girl here is gypsyangel's "Rheia", who used to be at Renderosity.com, and her outfit is by Aery Soul (I think they sell through RuntimeDNA now, as Alfaseed or something like that.)

I planted two dozen tulip bulbs today. It was tough digging in the clay soil, and I don't think I got them the 8 inches deep that you need to prevent squirrels from digging them up again (apparently squirrels get tired around 6 inches or so and give up, and go look for easier prey). One year in New Jersey I planted several in the front yard, and they were so easy to dig in! I stuck my trowel down and twisted it and just rolled those bulbs down into the dark. It turned out later that I had been following a vole tunnel, though, digging into it every few inches or so. Now picture Mr. Vole sitting, reading his paper by a glowworm lamp, when BLAM! The Mother of All Acorns lands in his dining room. Needless to say very few of those tulip bulbs ever came up.

Here Tuppy has folded K's laundry. (My cats just sit on the laundry.):D Photo provided by K.

A friend sent me this picture of a bus, and after some digging I found the credits for it: Artwork by Magda Sayeg (Photograph by Cesar Ortega) In this crocheted masterpiece, artist Magda Sayeg yarn bombs an entire bus in Mexico City. Considered to be the mother of yarn bombing, Magda did her first solo exhibit in Rome at La Museo des Esposizione in the summer of 2010. Here is Sayeg working on the bus: I also discovered that yes, there are yarn taggers. And this is a "tank tag": And there is helpful advice on this blog: http://twilighttaggers.blogspot.com/2011/03/how-to-yarn-bomb.html Do you think they will start to check ID before they let us buy yarn? *cackles*