Meet me circa 1996 or so. Don't you just loooove the bowl cut?! I know I did...
I know you were taken away with my beauty in the last image and because of this you may have failed to notice my homemade sidekick, Cynthia. Now that you and Cynthia have been formally introduced let me explain my thoughts on the arts as a child.
Art: anything that was created by you that had at least three different mediums involved. Mediums were: (basically anything I could get my hands on) most commonly paper, fabric, yarn, Sculpey Clay, and lace held together by: glue, tape, toothpicks, tread, tinfoil, pipe cleaner, or anything else deemed sticky enough.
I always considered myself quite the budding artist. As a child I used to create memorable drawings of such things as: 'The Scary Mommy,' 'A Girl Turkey Mermaid,' and 'A Girl Dinosaur in a Purple Bra.' I knew I had something going on so I started making even more creations and then telling my mom I would rip them up if she didn't buy them from me, needless to say I earned a lot of nickels. I would even line the longest hallway of our house with my work and charge my family to see the 'art gallery'.
After a few years of this I moved on to sewing and creating dolls. By now I was around 8 years old and apparently had free range of the sewing closet and the store room that was chalked full of art supplies.
My first creations were, well, how do I put this nicely... interesting. Here is one doll made of yarn and the other made of paper and tape. (I think the yarn one was me trying to emulate the corn husk dolls I had seen, why did i think corn husk and yarn were close enough to the same material?!)
Next I got a little more resourceful and the tube sock doll was invented. With this there was also progression, first a lonely head, next a full body, and last a doll that actually didn't have the seams on the outside and even had feet.
Then something magical happened in my life, I found Sculpey. Sculpey is a moldable clay that you then bake to set. This 'helped' my creations a bit but they also became fragile, hence the one poor curly headed girl that only has one foot. But then I found out that their were Sculpey molds which gave me perfect hands and feet and I could even paint the nails!
(don't you love that awesome Christmas dress with puffy sleeves?!)
Then later I skipped the whole doll thing and tried out just dresses and pillows. My sisters still give me a hard time for the large pillow. I hadn't yet figured out how to hide a sewn seam so for this pillow I found it easier just to hot glue it shut. Now my pillow has a nice hard lining :)
I can't believe I made all of these things. All of the ones that I showed here have not seen the light of day since I boxed up all my stuff when I was 16 to move in with my sister. I did come accross two lonely dolls in a box last fall when I was looking for something, and boy did they make the most wonder stocking stuffers for my sisters! I love how one of them had questioning googly eyes and the others arms were about half the width of its head. Priceless.
I can't wait to see what I am going to find when I really go through all of my stuff in a few months...