So I finished beading the cabochon, which I thought looked pretty good:
With the bead edging, the cabochon is now almost 3" in diameter.
But I started getting the sense that it was going to be way too big for the design as I’d originally planned it, especially after putting lace picots around the edge of the cabochon, and stringing the loops on top for the necklace. And, indeed, that turned out to be the case:
Doll is approximately 6" tall.
“There is no excellent beauty that hath no strangeness in its proportion,” said Francis Bacon, and I tried using that as a rationalization, but it didn’t work. The bottom line is that this doll looks like Balloon Head Jane. It would have been possible to pull it off if she had a more whimsical expression, but she has a soft, pensive, finely detailed silver face that doesn’t lend itself to oddball humor. (This is something I’ll have to take into consideration in designing future dolls with her face.)
She also doesn’t feel like February to me, so I’m going to pull off the lacy picots around the edge of the cabochon, and refringe her without the arms and legs, at which point she’ll turn into a straightforward pendant.
This means I still have a February doll to make, which is fine since it’s the very beginning of the month. And I learned quite a bit with this experiment — I can now bead a cabochon without fear, and that is a very useful addition to my design skill set. I am also charmed by the fringe, and I think the fringe body would be quite cute on another, much smaller doll head, so that’s something to think about for the future.
Now back to the planning stage. (You may have noticed that there was no sketch for this doll. Bad idea. No more dolls without a clear illustration of where they’re going!)
It may sound a bit peculiar, but beading is very much like scholarship — a little inspiration and a lot of disciplined follow-through if you’re going to get it right. And when you’re headed in the wrong direction, there’s no point in going on that way because you can’t fix an incorrect assumption by piling on more ornate arguments (or stitchwork, in the case of beading). Quality is cumulative. That’s why I backed off my original attempt to start the February doll with a thick, square glass bead and revised the concept so that it did include the bead, but in a much more manageable form — a properly curved round cabochon.
The intermediate product looks pretty good, I think, now that the base and bezel layer are complete:
Murano glass bead, silver charm, polymer clay, 4mm Czech fire polish beads, 15/o round Toho beads, approx. 2" in diameter
As Eakin mentions in Beading with Cabochons, it’s important to bring the thread around and around, through all the beads in the bezel layer several times. Before I did that, the circle of silver beads looked a bit crooked, and now it’s nice and fully rounded.
I’m looking forward to getting to the backing and edging stage tomorrow, since that will bring me closer to creating the fringe, where the doll will really take shape.
I’ve been dying for an excuse to try beaded cabochons of the sort that Jamie Cloud Eakin features in her wonderful book, Beading with Cabochons. So February’s doll will feature my first serious attempt at the form.
I started with a square, thick glass bead, of the sort which Eakin warns beginners against. The problem is its straight, thick edge:
Murano glass bead, approx. 1" square & 1/3" thick
(I tend to be foolish about such things.) Eakin, of course, was right and I made a mess that had to be picked apart before trying again with a more sensible cabochon. I loved the bead, though, and I wasn’t willing to give it up since it’s an integral part of my February design. So… I created a polymer clay cabochon around it:
Black polymer clay with silver embossing powder.
And then I glued February’s face to the bead with jewelry cement. And, voilà! A 2″ round cabochon with sloping edges, exactly as Eakin suggests.
After gluing it to Lacy’s Stiff Stuff and giving it a coat of matte varnish to protect the embossing powder, it’s ready to bead.
Next installment will describe my adventures in creating a base and bezel layer….
6.5″ tall, polymer clay, Toho 11/o round beads, Toho bugles, ceramic hands, nickel face plate
I’ve finished my first month’s journey with Bead Journal 2010 and it’s been quite a learning experience. The January Doll took the whole month to design, build, and finish properly, though it was interspersed with other jewelry-making and marketing tasks. It’s a more fully expressed merge of fine art and craft than I’ve managed before, so I’m looking forward to stretching as much on each new month’s doll. And because I’ve learned so much from reading other artists’ journals, I’ll talk a bit here about the process by which January evolved. (Some technical notes are included at the bottom of the post, for those who asked.)
The original sketch for my January Doll.
Each doll is a journaling exercise for me, so January expressed my feelings about moving from Berlin to Bern, and about being surrounded by mountains and snow in a place that’s beautiful but far too cold and too dark most of the time. Fairy tale addict that I am, the Snow Queen provided good imagery and strongly influenced my first sketch. You can see by the final image that my doll is more matronly and somehow more solid than my sketch. As I was sculpting her the image started to change in this direction because I wanted her to resemble my form more than the idealized costume sketch I’d first come up with.
Though I make friends quickly enough, the beginning weeks in a new town are often lonely, and I wanted January to express that. Silver, white, and deep turquoise feel to me like colors that together express a combination of cold and stillness, of being apart: metal, ice, clear water. But January is somehow serene in her apartness, again reflecting my feeling of being isolated, but also of nesting into my new in my own time, without being hurried or anxious. The richness of her dress is really a metaphor for the richness of inner and outer resources with which I’m blessed.
If you’ve followed January’s development, you know I started by sculpting her head and torso. There is a wire armature holding head to body, waist to hips, and both arms. She’s also made in layers (naked body first, then clothes added very much as they would be if they were made out of cloth and draped over). It’s important to plan the connections for the wire armatures before starting out, so I think about how I’ll attach things like her hands, her sleeves, or her beaded skirt.
Note the wire on which the starting length of beads are strung, anchored into the polymer clay.
A couple of people asked me about how I was going to attach the skirt. The photo was taken before the back was completely finished, so you can see how it works. Before I baked her body, in Stage I, I inserted a thin wire strung with the beads that would serve as a skirt base, stretching from hip to hip, where her behind would have been. This was necessary because once I started adding beads, I could no longer bake the doll, so a stable platform had to already exist before beading. Then, once I was ready to add the skirt, I used a Russian netting technique to make the ruffles you see on the front of her skirt. To finish the back, I glued a carefully cut piece of ultrasuede over the bare polymer clay, with two tiny holes cut out for the pin.
After arriving in Bern and checking out the local scene, it seems clear that what the city needs are some polymer clay and beading courses! I’ve been wanting to teach a course on making polymer clay charms for a while, and I developed a new project just for the class. Here’s a photo of an example bracelet and pendant set that students will make in an afternoon…
Students will start off with the charm blanks, and learn to stamp, emboss, and brocade clay. I think it’ll be a lot of fun, with room for students to show their own creativity and individuality. Now I need to advertise and see who signs up!
Though I’ve had a cold over the last couple of days, I couldn’t resist working on the January Doll between sneezes. Her new sleeves are white iridescent Toho Treasures, and silver 11/o round beads. They match the skirt, which is coming soon.
The sleeves, incidentally, started out with dangling beads instead of ruffles on the edge, but my husband correctly noted that they obscured her hands, and so I went back in with the needle and turned them into loops.
Progress on January’s doll continues with the addition of several more polymer clay layers. I embossed the white clay with a rubber stamp and brushed the top of the stamped area with pearlescent white acrylic. Then I rolled it flat again after stamping and painting, and then stamped and painted again to give the “material” more texture. The blue clay was kneaded in with silver leaf and some more pearlescent white acrylic to give it the sparkling effect. The silver centerpiece of the head-dress is also made with leaf, rolled on top of white clay. Now she’s ready for her beads!
Sky blue and pearlescent white Toho Treasures will be used to create her sleeves and cover her arms, draping over the silver gloves. The same colors will be used for a fully, swishy, skirt that will spill out from under her girdle. And I’ll bead around a cabochon with tiny 15/o Toho round beads to create the final touch for her head piece.
As you may notice, my January Doll is a full-figured woman of some substance. That’s how I’m feeling this month — like I don’t have to pretend that I’m less than I am, or younger than I am. I feel serene and peaceful and comfortable in my own attractiveness. It seems like a good start for the year.
The polymer clay foundation for my January 2010 doll.
Here’s a photo of the first stage of my January Doll, created for the 2010 Bead Journal Project. The dolls for each month will share the same face, though colors vary between silver, copper, and gold. January begins with a polymer clay foundation in Fimo doll porcelain. The next step will be another polymer clay layer, out of which I will create her head-dress and bodice. The sleeves and skirt of her outfit will be richly beaded, and her head dress will be augmented with beads. The beads I’ll be using are Toho Treasures, freshwater pearls, and Miyuki crystal drops, and I’ll use bead netting and coraling on her skirt to make it full and swishy. The end product will be wearable as either a pin or necklace.
Dolls always look a bit creepy to me in this stage — they remind me of the replicant-maker’s workshop in Bladerunner. I do try to make my dolls anatomically correct, so that when I cover them with clothing, it drapes properly. This doll has a flat back, but a 3-dimensional front and you can see the armature wires sticking out so I can attach her lower arms, and the groove around her hips to hold the circle of beads from which her skirt will descend. Her large head-dress also needs an armature. It’s important to plan doll-making in advance so you’re not left wondering how you’ll attach her other parts…
My first post of the year is about the wonderful Bead Journal project, founded in 2007 by Robin Atkins. This project invites artists to keep a journal in beaded format, with one entry a month. Members are given great freedom in the forms they can choose, and I’ve decided to use that freedom to the fullest, by creating a beaded doll every month to represent myself. The dolls will be mixed-media, and I’ll be using polymer clay, found objects, beads, wire, glass, paper, and anything else that seems to fit. Each doll will have the same face, but I suspect the end results will be quite different each time. At the end of the project, I’ll create an installation piece that incorporates all the dolls. (But don’t ask me what form that’ll take yet!)
You can follow my adventures here, and they will also be posted on the Bead Journal Project 3 Blogger site. We’re not allowed to post pictures on the Project Blog (some members don’t want to be influenced by other artists’ choices), so you’ll be able to find both descriptions and images of my project here.
it’s important to bring the thread around and around, through all the beads in the bezel layer several times. Before I did that, the circle of silver beads looked a bit crooked, and now it’s nice and fully rounded.
and giving it a coat of matte varnish to protect the embossing powder, it’s ready to bead.
