Two Little Mucha Babies: Splash the Sea maid and Little Su the Cook

Hello luvies! Happy Monday, I hope yours went like magic.  The last two weeks here have been crazy hectic.  Got my apartment painted and some things fixed up by the manager and building owner. So there's been lots of people coming and going.  Haven't got much done in that whole while, outside of a new paper doll and lots of sketches and some drawings that are currently on the colouring table.  Including one for Summer Of Colour run by the lovely and talented Kristin of the wonderful Twinkle, Twinkle blog. (Which I highly recommend you go check out for some delightful and inspiring art awesomeness!) Which sadly I missed because I just can't seem to draw fast enough. *laughs*

So today I bring you two little paper dolls.  I'll start with Splash, the little sea maid.  She was created for Cameron of Paint Myself Pretty during her Mermaid swap last year. I'm still so in love with the piece she sent me.  I thought I had already had this little girl up on my blog, but when I did a search, I couldn't find it.  And I'm much happier now, knowing that I've corrected it. Ha ha, yeah!  Since I've been busy with my book project lately, and had no time to create something new, I was also going to submit this to the July Auction for Femme Thou Art Collective .  I missed that too darn it! My laptop hasn't been feeling well lately, so I couldn't get it posted in time.  But I have next month to make up for it.  Splash is the largest out of my dolls, probably due to her very large tail.  Her tail is sort of based on the movements of a washcloth underwater.  You know the kind you used to play with as a kid at bath time.  And she holds a small trident, ready to jab in the bottom anyone out of line. *laughs*  The background is one that I had on my USB file and can't remember where I got it from...but it suited this little maid very well.

Second little doll I have for you is Su:

Su is from the children's manga, "Shugo Chara Chan!" (English Translation: Guardian Character Chan!) There are four of these super cute characters in the book.  I chose Su because she has to be the most girl-y and sweetest one out of all of them, and well, she also happens to be green, which is one of my favourite colours.  She loves to cook, eat and clean...but I think eating comes out on top for her.  And boy, is she ever the master little chief!  She can cook anything, a skill I can only dream of.  Now, unlike Splash or any other of the little dolls, she's my smallest.  I couldn't make her as tiny as she is in the books, about 10 inches, I think, but I could bring her about as close as.  Even with that she'd still be larger than the manga character. *laughs*

I made a little wire whisk and a green bowl, to match the egg she hatched from (yes these little girls are hatched from very tiny eggs in the story), full of whipped cream.  For the background I used an opening title page from "Curly Locks" from one of my children's rhyme books.  The saying at the bottom really goes well with Su's personality and describes her to a tee.

Well, that's all for this week my dear bloggie friends.  Thank you always for coming by to visit.  Wishing you all a wonderful, creative and delicious week. Strawberry Cheers!

A Birthday Gift Basket and a WIP drawing

Woo hoo it's June! I can't wait for the days to turn warmer and hit the beach with my sketchbook again.  I think what I like best about summer is its long days of sunlight, where at almost 10 pm the sun is still just setting. Ahhhh, I'm so excited for summer in all its green beauty.

Anyway, as I work on the final edits to the short story, I'd thought I would share what I did for my mum on her 66th birthday on May 20.  I wanted to do something really nice for her this year, as last was rather tight and I couldn't afford to give her anything in way of a present.  This year has been better, so, I took about a week to decide what to do for her, and came up with the idea for a gift basket after seeing some pretty ones in the store.  I made her write up a list for me of some small things she might like and went out for a day of shopping.

Here's what I came back with:

Far Left to Right:

A Journal from Papaya at the local book store, a gorgeous sea grass basket that I just could not pass up for making this, as you can see Reese's Pieces, Marzipan chocolates, socks( yes, socks....she liked them that much), Darjeeling black tea, a very pretty ankle bracelet that she uses as a wrist bracelet, Indian Chai scented candles, Lilly of The Valley Soap from Crab tree and Evelyn, a little treasure trunk, a awesome square class mug and a little blue bird candle in a sweet cage.  As well as some fancy paper, ribbons and yellow and pink roses to decorate the basket with.

I started off with wiring the roses into the basket:

Please forgive the mess in the background, I was later going to put up some bamboo blinds to cut out some of the hot sun my apartment gets. *laughs*  I wish I had picked up more roses, it would have looked nice to have had the entire rim covered in them.

I then wove through some white crepe paper and also wound it around the handles, then added the first layers of tissue paper.  I forgot to pick up the floral foam, so I added paper to the bottom of the basket to lift up the gifts inside.:

I placed the little marzipan chocolates inside the treasure box....which wasn't that hard and I found that since they weren't going to be travelling very far, I didn't tape them down:

I later took out the jewelry and draped it over the chocolates, to make it look like actual treasure.

I forgot to take pictures as I was going along trying to pack the basket.....which I did several times over!  Getting everything to fit nicely was harder than I thought.  But, after the fifth attempt at it, I finally got it right and it came out like this before I wrapped it up with some fancy cellophane:

Finally I added the cellophane and the fancy ribbons:

I attached the card I bought for her. I should have made one, but I didn't think of that until I had, like, no time to make her one. But, I thought this was much prettier:

I also took some time to make her a bouquet of Anemone, pink tea roses, hydrangea and ivy, with a tiny bit of bear grass:

All together, she was so very happy when she got her gifts:

Happy Birthday Mum! Here's to a great year and more to come!

We later had some very yummy chocolate cheesecake, white wine, rice pudding, went for some coffee and watched some movies in the evening.  Quite a good birthday for her, the closer she gets to 70 the more grateful each year that I become that she is still here with me.

For right now, I'll leave you wonderful people with the next drawing I'm currently rushing to finish, as it will be up for auction at a group I'm now apart of called Femme Thou Art Collective .  It's been a pleasure getting to know these other wonderful artists.  The auction in June is called "Life springing from Decay".  Here's a WIP of what I came up with, I'm still inking it:

I'm doing another gift basket for a friend who also had a birthday last week...it's so much fun to create these baskets.  Wishing you all a wonderful, creative week ahead! Cheers!