Quite a challenge!

No art progress today, but I did a project last week that I didn't write about, so here it is.

After moldeling several animal fairies I decided to try a human - or, in this case, humanoid - one. I had a pair of human doll eyes in my stash of little glass eyes, and it seemed time to use them. Rather than using special doll clay for her, I mixed a light flesh color that was half regular Fimo Soft and have Fimo Soft Translucent White. I probably should have test-cured a small piece to make sure it was what I wanted, but proceeding with that sort of care is not one of my strengths, so I just went for it assuming that all would be well. And it turned out fine. Whew!

Well, the face was SOOOOOO difficult. I kept adding clay then taking clay away. After modeling all around the eyes it just didn't look right and I took the eyes out. (Ouch!) Then a repeat of the whole debacle. Eventually I got a result that I could live with. My assessment was that she was so ugly she was almost cute. The pointed ears hopefully would identify her as an elf so the viewer might not necessarily expect a normally appealing face!

After so much work on the head I decided to cure it before I continuted with the body, so I added a piece of copper wire up through the neck so that I could be sure that the head and body would be firmly attached to each other.

Compared to the head, the body was a relative breeze. I read a tutorial on making hands several weeks ago on http://www.oakguild.com which turned out to be very helpful. I "dressed" her in a leaf (polymer clay leaves, that is) skirt, top, and hat. As always, I brushed on mica powders before curing. After varnishing, I added a seed bead anklet, a Swarovski rhinestone toe ring on the foot that doesn't show in the photo, a rhinestone accent on her hat, and the vintage glass butterfly that she is holding. I forgot to add the antennae before I cured her, so I had to drill tiny holes in her head and glue them in. They're crystals and seed beads threaded on thin head pins.

Her hair is made of feathers. Her wings are skeleton leaves glued onto Fantasy Film (http://www.artglitter.com) then protected with Diamond Glaze. I sprinkled some of artglitter's beautiful glitter colors on the first coat of Diamond Glaze while it was still wet.

I'm pretty happy with her overall, but I wish I could have done a better job on her face - next time. I have some ideas for improving my modeling process, so we'll see how they work out!