September 2008                          Issue 19        

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the Dollmaker will now INTRODUCE  the WEE MEN!

    The Wee Men

The first thing you notice is the nose. Wait!

That doesn't quite look like soft sculpture.

That's because it's not. The first Wee Men have sculpy heads.

Later the Wee Men will have resin heads.

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Each Wee Man stands firmly on his own base.

Once again, these new characters use the same wooden doll bodies

which Beverly Taylor made for the Mini-Wee Dolls.

The Wee Men are the same size as the Mini-Wee Dolls-

They just lost the flat faces.

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Wee Peeple Doll Constructions 

introduces Joel Cyzak, Builder of the Wee Men Dolls.

Joel's got a job with Wee Peeple Constructions as long as he wants one. 

His work truly reflects his interest in Japanese and Chinese history and attire.

Joel's Wee Man Army of Samurai Warriors, Shamen, Kings, Wizards

and Greenmen characters all reflect Joel's studies of Oriental costuming,

 headpieces, weaponry and armor. 

Here the Dollmaker has sketched in the faces. She will use acrylic paint

to finish the facial details.  These Wee Men Dolls will be introduced

at The Texas Renaissance Festival, starting two weeks from now,

on October 11th, 2008.

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The making of the Resin Cat Heads

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You know how those Catpeeple Dolls are...

all that meowing and caterwalling... especially late at night...

OK! OK! said the Dollmaker...

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First we start with a sculpy head.

In each pair shown above, the sculpy heads are on the right

and the resin heads are on the left.

Personally the Dollmaker likes the natural tone of the sculpy better, but sculpy is easily

 broken and can't be dropped, (it has to be carefully shipped too...we found that out

when we stacked and packed up the Wee Men and their hands broke off in the boxes!

 The hands are much reinforced now, but the Dollmakers did learn the limits of that

 material) whereas the resin is a form of plastic and one would have to

 "get medieval with it" to break it.

The Dollmaker is really getting savvy these days with her mold-making techniques.

Always the recycler, she used plastic lids for the bases and glued down paper towel

rolls to serve as cylindrical molds which would fit close to her original sculpy heads.

You can see the little heads inside the translucent mold rubber.

These are the molds shown with their original sculpy models.

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This is a cast resin head modeled from a small soft sculpture head.

The head, poured in an open-face mold like this, has a flat back.

This allows the head to be glued to the flat little Mini-Wee doll bodies.

Yes, on the second attempt, the little fabric head was thoroughly sealed with varnish

 before it contacted the mold rubber. The first head (without enough varnish to seal the

 porous fabric) is still in the mold- it won't come out. The mold rubber just penetrated the

 fabric and so the head just stuck right to it. oops.

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Shannon Avalon started making Shannon's Angels when she was nine years old!

That was eleven years ago!

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Shannon's army of adorable angels are back again too! 

But this time there are A LOT more of them!

In two sizes

(small and large)

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Here they are- Shannon and Joel,

 working for Wee Peeple Doll Constructions

It was a busy summer!

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Don't forget about 

The Yarny Things!

They will be at TRF again too! Yay for the Yarnies!

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in this issue............

The Dollmaker's True Story

(one version...)

                        Once upon a time, a wayward little Dollmaker, (who at that time might have vaguely suspected that she was- but didn't actually know she was- a Dollmaker yet,) found herself living in the wild and wooley coastal village of Galveston, an Island resort. She mostly consorted with gruff but friendly old fishermen and ferrymen- who never could figure out how she had bluffed her way into getting a job as a deckhand on a ferryboat, and though they all shook their heads in disbelief, these "rough types" accepted her presence after a while, and regarded her as one of them (more or less) with raunchy good humor and unmerciful teasing.

Well, it wasn't just that the uniform fit her badly- both too tight and too baggy... it was just real obvious and others kind of politely noticed it too... that she just seemed out of place...kind of ...clueless... Her jovial old fishermen buddies would say- What are YOU doing here? You have a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree! You're an idiot!

Always kidding around! They were quite a bunch of characters!

All this encouragement got her to thinking, though. Doll-making. hmmm. Back in college, she had really taken a fancy to Doll-making... she wondered... hmmm... maybe she should buy a sewing machine... maybe make another Doll... maybe make lots of Dolls... maybe she could even sell them...

Wow.

That was in 1980. 

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So the little Dollmaker did buy the sewing machine and did make a bunch of dolls, and she did sell them, and one day, tearfully waving farewell to her dear old comrades at the ferry, and armed with 32 dolls she had made from scrap fabrics, she set her little boat adrift on the much wilder Seas of her Dollmaking Career.

It wasn't long after she quit her job at the ferry before she REALLY felt like an idiot because being a Doll-maker was kicking her butt! It was not really that easy to just go out and sell dolls. But, though the rising and receding Seas of her Dollmaking Career often left her little ship high in the dunes, the Dollmaker was not to be swayed from her course. She now had a new bunch of friends... the Flea-Marketeers! These buddies were hip to the selling scene. The Dollmaker was taken under wing. They were a jovial group. They would say, "What are YOU doing here? The Flea Market is no place for dolls like that! You're an idiot!"

The poor confused Dollmaker, who never took a business course in college. What was she to do?

Her new friends knew exactly what she should do, and they told her-

"You need to be in the Texas Renaissance Festival!"

The Dollmaker, not being from around those parts, had never heard of a Renaissance Festival.

That was in 1983.

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      However, once again, the humble (clueless) Dollmaker did listen to the sage advice of her friends who knew so much more about what she was doing than she did. She applied to

the Texas Renaissance Festival. 

She was told that there was a stern and powerful King- 

one King George- who ruled over his Kingdom with great discrimination- (that is more or less what she was told), and in those days the King himself presided over the Application Procedure... so it was with fear and trembling that the little Dollmaker arrived to present her dolls to the King.

That day, twenty-six years ago, the great King gave a nod, and one of the most important decisions of the Dollmaker's life was made- she was now officially a participant in (even then, the biggest Renaissance Festival in the country)... the  Texas Renaissance Festival.

The only problem- 

she still had no idea what a Renaissance Festival was!

She had never heard of one, much less attended one.

Joyce, the craft coordinator at the time, gave her a location (an "Arbor Area"), and a set of rules, which included- wear a costume.

Wear a costume. Right. What kind of costume? 

Well, that was easy- the dolls were magical, so- she and her husband dressed up like Wizards. Wizards? Yes, Wizards.

They went to the Halloween section of Walmart and bought big black witch hats and decorated them with astrological symbols (in gold and silver glitter paint!), and the Dollmaker made them a set of long flowing black robes- matching of course.

They looked positively ludicrous, but, bless their hearts, they didn't know it.

The fact is, all these twenty-six years later, the Dollmaker still cringes when she recalls that during an interview with Texas Highways Magazine, she invited the Interviewers to come and take pictures of her at her new location at the Texas Renaissance Festival, which the writer thought would make excellent copy; and the happy photographer snapped lots of pictures of those hideous black outfits and worse yet- published one of them! (See December 1983 article published in Texas Highways Magazine of the Dollmaker in her black astrologically symbolic witch hat! oh groan!).

That year the Dollmaker made new friends- her fellow merchants in her neighborhood, who jovially suggested, "You might want to dress like a shopkeeper, you look like an idiot!"

She aquired a green leather vest from Lewd Lloyd that year, to the relief of everyone in the neighborhood, and she and her husband built a shoppe the following year.

There was one good memory of those "Wizard costumes" that first year though, as the Dollmaker fondly remembers: It was the day that Real Musgrave, Hap Hendrickson, and Don White (all of whom were also dressed like Wizards!) cordially invited the Dollmaker and her husband, who qualified, as Wizards, to join their newly formed

All-Wizards Kazoo Marching Band 

and march in the parade playing

"We're off to See the Wizard, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz" on kazoos. 

(What a bunch of characters!) 

In fact, that was the first of a long series of memorably bizarre occurrences at the Texas Renaissance Festival, most of which the Dollmaker would, at best, not print, and at worst, flat- out deny. In spite of all that, and to this day, the Dollmaker is still having a jolly time participating in the Texas Renaissance Festival and will happily attempt to serve you should you wander into her little Doll Shoppe there.

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The New Kitchen Witches!

Another cool way to use the resin heads........

....some of the new Kitchen Witches

even ride spoons and other kitchen utensils..... oh dear!

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We are
"barreling" at breakneck speed toward the Texas Renaissance Festival,

Opening Day being Saturday October 11th....

We are SO grateful that the hurricane did not destroy our faire.

(The Office roof did blow off, but besides that, there was very little damage. Hallelujah!)

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Come and see all the new Doll Constructions!

Come to the Renaissance Festival, Shoppe # 145

Wall Hangings      Mermaids      Wee Men

New Resin Heads and matching Hands on a variety of Dolls

including the Wee Cats

Angel Ornaments        Yarny Things       Doilies

Stone, Resin and Plaster Goddess Sculptures

Portals to the Unknown... (Dolls heading through Doorways)

Beadhead Dolls          Mini-Wee Dolls and Mini-Owls

Lots of familiar Soft-Sculptured Dolls too.

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If you observe, you can then create.

See something.

See what the world needs to see.

-anonymous

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Til next time.....

...and as Dear Cousin Marie

would quoth forthwith:

Greetings and felicitations to you, m'lords and m'ladies:

It is with great pleasure I look forward to thy Presence at the Faire.

I shall apply myself to the task of serving your lordships and ladyships with great diligence forthwith. 

  'Tis with much love and admiration for 

thou and thine that I humbly and with haste go now to prepare for our meeting.

   Hence I shall now conclude with naught but a wish

for thy continued well being, adieu. 

May thou always abide in happiness, m'ladies and m'lords, and may the fair winds

always be near thee, at thy back, providing thee and thy loved ones with many joyful 

pleasantries... and may abundant merriment abide with thee all henceforth,

and bequeath

future fullsome memories of yore. 

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phew! That was great! (applause! More! More!)

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 and 

Cool Text: Free Graphics Generator

 

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