Porcelain artdoll, a specter, a white ghost that's been haunting my desk. Like always, I've been working on this doll for awhile. There are so many steps needed to create a doll like this and then when it's finally finished there is always more to do. Washing her hair and dress, taking photos, editing photos and preparing to share the doll online, washing the doll again and trying to find words to present alongside the doll.

Sometimes, okay a lot of the time, I have a difficult time coming up with anything to say. So today I'm going to share a poem that I think suits this doll.

LENORE —

AH, broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll! — a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear? — weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read — the funeral song be sung! —
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young —
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

"Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her — that she died!
How shall the ritual, then, be read? — the requiem how be sung
By you — by yours, the evil eye, — by yours, the slanderous tongue
That did to death the innocence that died, and died so young?"

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel no wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath "gone before," with Hope, that flew beside,
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride —
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes —
The life still there, upon her hair — the death upon her eyes.

"Avaunt! avaunt! to friends from fiends the indignant ghost is riven —
From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven —
From grief and moan to a golden throne beside the King of Heaven: —
Let no bell toll, then, lest her soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damned Earth;
And I! — to-night my heart is light! — no dirge will I upraise
But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days."

—Edgar Allan Poe, 1849

This playscale porcelain artdoll, the ghost, is made up of 19 pieces of porcelain and assembled with springs. Her dress is silk and cotton with a few beads and is carefully distressed. Her hair is suri alpaca.

Awhile ago I made a bee themed doll. She's been hanging around my desk, keeping other dolls company, and I've slowly been making little adjustments to her here and there. I think it's finally time to offer her for sale though so she's now on etsy.

Available on etsy:
etsy.com/listing/1061327619

I have changed my instagram and twitter screen name to lm_meo
There are a few other websites I have accounts on that I've also changed to the same name but these are the most notable ones.

Why? For consistency.
Early on my preferred online name was meow or ladymeow, after I got my website meowness was also a preferred name, but these names are often being used by other people. I would often be slow to get an account on a new website and by the time I did my preferred names were all used up and I have to find a way to vary it somehow. This made it so all my screen names were different. Annoying! lm_meo is a little less likely to be used by someone else, it's fairly short and easy to spell, and it includes LM. LM is my initials for both my real name, LadyMeow, and my doll lines Little Minion and Leka by Meow.

So now I'm lm_meo.

Hey guys! No, I'm not going anywhere or retiring from dolls, but I am retiring some of my older doll molds.

So after all this time my Meka dolls are finally coming to the end of their run. 50 tiny dolls is an awful lot, no matter how small they are, and I'm looking forward to finally putting the molds to rest. Custom orders are now closed for these tinies but there are currently 8 finished Mekas available in my etsy shop and there will be 1 more added when I have her dress finished and that will be the last of them. It's been a fun little doll to make but I'm ready for something new.

I'm also having a farewell sale for my older doll molds, Body I and Body II.
The price for the custom dolls will be discounted until the end of the year for anyone that would like to order one before I destroy the molds.
They are odd sized dolls and moving forward I want to focus on making properly scaled 1/6 size dolls in edition to the tinies.

You can find my available dolls on etsy:
etsy.com/shop/meowness

Looking forward to sharing more about my upcoming dolls later!

So to break up the monotony of posts about available work I thought it would be fun to show the process of making a sculpture that I recently finished. It's another unicorn!

In the past I would mostly choose polymer clay to make fantasy creature but I've been wanting to try something different. Partly because raw polymer clay makes my fingers break out in blisters and my skin has become more sensitive to it over the years, and partly because I have some other materials sitting around that need used up. One of these materials is this stuff called Celluclay. Let me tell you more about this stuff.

Celluclay is an instant paper mache, basically grey paper pulp and dried glue that you mix with water to make a clay. I have had a bag of Celluclay since I was a kid and somehow managed to not loose it or get rid of it even though i never use it. I never use it because every time I've tried I find it really horrible to work with. It's sticky and lumpy and somehow when I try to smooth it out it always ends up sticking to my fingers more than where I want it to stick. But, not wanting to waste it, I've held onto it thinking maybe someday I'll have a use for it. Don't all artist have extra supplies they never use? Then just recently it struck me! I can use this stuff to bulk up a sculptures form before going over it with a smoother more workable clay.

In sprite of my complaining the Celluclay paper mache does have some advantages. First of it's cheep. You can save a penny by using it under a more expensive clay. Secondly it's strong. Surprisingly strong! I've broken X-Acto knife blades trying to carve into this stuff and have never had that happen with polymer clay.

Enough of that, let's make a unicorn!

The smoother clay, the clay I use to finish and detail the sculpture, for this unicorn sculpture is called LaDoll clay. It's an air dry clay that also has paper pulp in it but it is very smooth and relatively non-sticky. I've used this stuff to sculpt ball jointed dolls and find it really pleasant to work with. LaDoll is not a particularly strong clay so it benefits from having the stronger Celluclay form to stick to. And they do stick very well to each other.

The next step, after I was happy with the shape of the unicorn, was to get it ready to paint. I primed it with many layers of gesso and then sanded it smooth, and then repeated that step a few times until I was happy with the result.

It was then spray painted white, even though it was already quite white, to give it an even color. I wanted to keep the detailing on this sculpture fairly minimal and soft so I used just some light chalk pastels for a bit of shading and painted the eyes with acrylic.

After that I sprayed it several times with mate sealant and let that dry before brushing on a bit of gloss for the horn, eyes, and hoofs.

The final step was to add some hair to that bald little unicorn. I chose to use suri alpaca because I wanted something fairly straight but also very fine and soft since I thought it would best compliment the soft and minimal style of the unicorn.
All done!

After making this unicorn I really want to try doing another and I already have ideas about some things I would like to do differently. We'll see how it goes.

Hi guys!

So it’s been quite awhile since I’ve been able to finish one of these little guys but this one finally made it to completion.

A tiny 5” tall, this fairy sculpture is made from polymer clay over wire, acrylic paint, feathers, fantasy film and just a bit of glitter.