So who wants this on a t-shirt??

Over and Out,
Mother Earth

Besides the main poses of all the girls, I’m trying to generate alternative artwork and styles for Galaxy Girl usage. I’m doing versions of them all chibi style, or as they used to call it back in my day, Super-Deformed (or maybe they still do, I am SOOOO old…) Anyway, here are some Venus sketches based on the very first SDGG version of her I did a few years ago.

I don’t know how I’m going to finalize these versions. Here are some experiments.

I know, I know, they don’t look all that different, but it’s subtle. The first is thick and thin line built in Illustrator, the second is also built in Illustrator, but the line weight is even throughout with hard, flat edges, and the third is a vectorized version of my hand drawing, a little more organic and sloppy. But is sloppy charming? I don’t know. The 3 on the bottom are the same, but with a differnet outline color. I can’t decide which version I like best.

Over and Out,
Mother Earth

…is done! I only got to have her complete for a day before she was ripped from my hands!!! She is off to China to be reproduced *sniff* Big ol’ thanks to my Mom who embroidered the head scarf for me.

I don’t know how many folks visit this blog for crafty purposes, and of those who do, I don’t know how many would be interested in hearing about stenciling techniques. Back in the eighties stenciling was the craft thing to do. All the moms I babysat for had it all over their houses, and I did it an awful lot in Girls Scouts. But from what I can tell of this modern craft revolution happenin’ with chicks my age, there isn’t a whole lot of it. So for those of you who might be interested, Jupiter is a good bit more labor intensive than the other girls in the stenciling department. I hand stencil everybody’s faces and wheels and shoes and stuff with plain old acrylics, but Jupiter’s scarf and pants demand more! As many of you know, acrylics dry pretty crusty, which is fine for a firmly stuffed face or the tiny details on a wheel, but Ms. Jup’s pants want to be soft, and don’t want to crack. So I use these Jacquard Dye-na-flow paints to stencil the pants. They’re really great! Though they are a paint, they work like a dye and the fabric stays soft and plyable. I got them for Christmas from my professional textile artist mother-in-law. (Thanks Eva!!)

So Jupiter’s pants have taught me a couple of tricks. First off, I’ve found a custom stencil paper I like. It’s not totally perfect, but the benefits outweight the drawbacks. It’s called Duralene. It’s like a sturdy Vellum. The pros: 1) it’s transparent, so it’s easy to trace drawings. 2) water does not make it curl!! So you can use the stencil over and over and it always stay flat and the edges stay crisp. 3) You can PRINT ON IT with a ink jet printer!!! The cons: 1) It’s expensive. 30 bucks for a pad of 25 9×12 sheets 2) the printing process ain’t perfect. The ink smears, which can mix with your paint while stenciling. But if you wipe it down with a paper towel before you use it, enough is left over to see your lines without taintin’ the paint.

Also, in regards to the Dye-na-flow paint. As far as stenciling with it goes, it bleeds. I embroidered a stem stitch around the edges to hide it, but then I discovered that if you mix in a good amount of Jacquard Textile colorless extender it helps an awful lot. Technically, according to the manufacturer, the extender for the “Textile” line isn’t supposed to mix with the “Dye-na-flow” line, but hey, it worked for me.

Here are some pictures of how hard it was!!

Over and out,
Mother Earth

Here is a first glimpse of a completed 18″ doll!! I had a lil’ Milky Way completed a while back, but she had to be shipped off before I could get any photos, so here is a Venus! Pretty cute, huh? A lot of people I have shown her to say they like the little ones better than the big ones. I can’t discriminate, though.

Work is still under way on lil’ versions of the other girls. Here is some of the progress I have made: the embroidery on all these little faces. I shot them next to a full size Milky so you can get and idea of the size comparison.

In other news, the Plush You show at Schmancy in Seattle was last night. Three of my hand made Galaxy Girl dolls are for sale there (the only handmade ones available for purchase ever,) so if you’re up in Seattle between now and November 2nd, and you gotta a hunk a cash burning a hole in your pocket, go buy one!! Or at least go see, anyway….

Over and out,
Mother Earth