Her hair was flat and messy. She was over dressed. Her kids were cute, but didn't really show up. So, I wondered if I could give her a new look.  I have a different eye than I did when I originally made this doll in 2015.

I removed the quilted skirt/ruffle thing hanging at the back, the shawl and necklace. I wrapped her arms with another layer of green to cover the patterned fabric and simplify the form. Then, I moved one child up to her shoulder so that it is easy to see. Her new hair is dark brown instead of black and pulled to one side to balance the child. The yellow ribbon repeats the color of the child's clothing below. I realized that her hands were begging to hold a book, so I made one, using bright colors to reference other colors in the piece.

Here is the new look!

This is the end of the first year of trying to blog rather regularly. The practice has helped me maintain some focus and motivated me to keep moving along so that I have something to share. That alone made it worthwhile. My thanks to anyone has checked in now and then to see if anything is happening.
For 2020,  I plan to post a blog entry twice a month on the second and fourth Fridays.

I have figured out that Art Dolls are my main thing.  They amuse and inspire me. All the fiber and mixed media tricks I have learned can come into play and there is still much to learn. Having said that, I won't be limited to dolls. I might get involved in something else, and that's OK, too. 

In the past 10 days I have done several things to gear up for a new year of doll making. First, I pulled out a number of notebooks that I've kept over the past few years. These tend to be very messy. If an idea hits me, I make some sketches and notes...right next to the grocery list, or whatever.  The process of culling and organizing these was interesting and has given me lots of "new" ideas.  Then, I dug out the inventory leftover from the past few years. I can see why some of this stuff has yet to find a home! There is one large bin to be explored and I hope to find some better stuff in there. Finally, I emptied my boxes and cabinets of all the treasure that I have saved for doll making. This was fun and made a pretty big mess in my studio. I found a box of parts: hands, feet, legs and so forth, that had never been used or had been salvaged from an unsuccessful project. The dolls pictured above and  below grew out of the parts box this week.  

The next step was to register for the Open Studio Tour that takes place in our community in mid-May.  This will be a new experience for me. I sincerely hope that the panic I am feeling right now will translate into some wonderful new work in 2020!