Behind the scenes

Recent past photo of my doll work vs the digital sketch. I try to stay as close as possible to the original sketch, sometimes a few tweaks must be made.

Slowly starting doll work again

Mostly concept stuff. Currently inspired by Marchesa. Using metallic water color paints to color in a sketch I did. Helps me figure out what the gold will look like on the finished doll. I'm super excited about this one.

What's been going on...

Hello everyone,

I am finally getting around to posting an update, it's been a while but I had so many stressful things happen in the last month it was hard for me to focus. As some of you already know I started having a bad cough due to the MSC sealer I use on my dolls. Even with the cough I was still trying to complete my commission list but finally I decided to stop. It's been a few weeks now since I last sprayed a doll (Victoria's Doll), and my cough is now almost gone. To avoid my cough getting worse I decided to take November off, mostly to let my lungs recover and also my dad's surgery last week (cancer). I still have two customs at home that I just got around to finishing up, one is going home today and the other is going up for auction.

The rest of November is looking like things are going to be much better. My dad is recovering from a successful surgery and I am starting to get my studio in order so that I am able to spray again. Also I have been inspired by Andreja's blog posts. She has been experimenting with different kinds of sealers that are less toxic than MSC and I definitely want to give them a try too.

I am getting back on track and I really can't wait to finish redesigning my studio so I can get back to working on dolls. I really appreciate everyone's support of my work.

Edit:

Just adding on a bit more info about my MSC woes for those of you who use the stuff and are concerned. When I first started having problems I thought it was because my mask was too big ( male size). I purchased a smaller mask made for women thinking it would be a better fit and keep the fumes from leaking into the mask. I tried it on, it fit perfectly, tested it out, there were no leaks. After a couple of weeks trying it out my cough was still bad and it would hurt to breath. I decided to do more research on the subject and I finally realized that one of the big problems was the poor air circulation in the room. I'm so stupid for ignoring the warning signs on the labels "only spray in a well ventilated area". There is nothing well ventilated about my room. So that huge cloud of MSC spray that would rise up into the air and spread all over the room was falling back down covering every single inch of my room in a white dust. I simply assumed that the spray evaporated once in the air but it doesn't. So all those long hours I spent in my studio with out a mask (because I wasn't spraying) I was inhaling all those MSC dust particles. Since I've learned this I have only been going into my studio to clean (with a mask on). It's a very slow process because I have to remove everything from the shelves and individually wipe down items to get the dust off. But I did notice that after a few weeks of staying out of my studio my cough improved and I can take deep breaths again without it bothering me. As I mentioned earlier I am now taking steps to properly ventilate my room to let the fumes and dust escape. So if you do any kind of spraying, whether it's outside or inside please wear a mask. And if you do spray indoors make sure the room is well ventilated. Don't ignore the warning labels on the aerosols sprays, I did and I had to pay for it!