Happy spring everyone!

Today I have a small green fairy doll to share. I don't know if I've said before or not but green and blue are my favorite colors to use for fairy creatures. It also feels appropriate for this time of year.

This months new doll isn't exactly new. She's been hanging around my work bench since last September finished but not quite ready to go. This doll has been one of the most difficult to photograph but in the end I did manage to get some photos that are true to life. Good enough at least. I'm not sure if it's just me but I always feel like dolls look quite a bit different in person then they do in photos no matter how well the photos turn out. I suspect it has something to do with scale. Or maybe it's just the difference between a three dimensional object and a two dimensional image. idk. Also for something more creative I did an edited version using an image from NASA since when I was making her I imagined that she is a fairy from outer space.

This playscale porcelain artdoll, Cosmic Fairy, is made up of 19 pieces of porcelain and assembled with springs. Her cloak is is hand embroidered and beaded. Her hair is llama fiber.

To conclude the series of ghost dolls here is the second tiny one. She has the same style of dress as the last tiny ghost, and she also has gray hair, they both even have gray-blue eyes, but I think this one looks quite a bit different.

Garden Under Lightning —

(Ghost-Story)

Out of the storm that muffles shining night
Flash roses ghastly-sweet,
And lilies far too pale.
There is a pang of livid light,
A terror of familiarity,
I see a dripping swirl of leaves and petals
That I once tended happily,
Borders of flattened, frightened little things,
And writhing paths I surely walked in that other life—
Day?

My specter-garden beckons to me,
Gibbers horribly—
And vanishes!

—Leonora Speyer, 1921

Last month I shared "The Ghost" so now I'm going to share a smol ghost. Whenever I make a large doll I always have a couple smaller projects in the works at the same time, to make sure I don't have a lot of empty kiln space, and sometimes I like to make smaller dolls with a similar theme as the bigger one I'm working on.

So keeping with that theme I'm going to share a poem for this doll as well. And since this doll is smaller the poem I've found for her is shorter.

I Am Like a Leaf —

The silence is broken: into the nature
    My soul sails out,
Carrying the song of life on his brow,
    To meet the flowers and birds.

When my heart returns in the solitude,
    She is very sad,
Looking back on the dead passions
    Lying on Love’s ruin.

I am like a leaf
    Hanging over hope and despair,
Which trembles and joins
    The world’s imagination and ghost.

—Yone Noguchi, 1921

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