I never know what goes on in my studio after I turn out the lights, but I suspect parties, especially when I find scenes like this in the morning. This baby jumped a good two feet from her perch five feet above the floor, She is still smiling so it must not hurt - yet. She also dropped her pink pumpkin and paci, but does not seem very worried about them.

I stuffed limbs and heads of the three in the crew and also Kimi who will be playing Jesus in a Christmas scene. I was delighted to find a BB body that had the cuffs for full-length legs. Then I discovered the full length arms but decided to sew the arm caps down so they made cuffs. I felt very smart to overcome that problem. After I got the whole thing together I saw the only position the legs would assume was this froggy one. Kimi needs front loading legs. I do not have any and I do not want to wait for an order.

Then I found this body and also found that I could position the legs in a more natural position. Success! Not quite. Then I saw

That big hump in the back which I have seen before on BB bodies. I took off the head, pulled out the filling and sewed a big seam in the front! Idiot! That seam needed to be in the back. So I redid that and removed the front seam in the studio. As I was catching my breath I remembered Werner had brought home mail at noon. I was shocked when I pulled out this package from Tina in China,

I carefully photographed the box from all angles in case the merchandise was damaged. Suddenly I could hear music boxes, and laughter as I pulled out

one of the babies from China that I have had my eye on for a very long time. She started out priced at $159. and slowly the price, after many auctions settled out at $118.00. I set my mind to pay only 50 - 55 dollars. Bid on at least twenty before this dropped into my price range.  Now she was here! Look how well packed she was with all limbs encased in extra sheet foam. Included was a real bottle and she had a magnet paci. I loved her clothes and felt so happy discovering each facet of her. People bitch about 'factory-painted' but they use air guns and get marvelous graduations in their colors. The skin is not hard like the USA baked heat-set colors but stays soft and pliable.

Ta-dah! Here she is in all her glory. With the paci gone you can see and delight in her smile. I love the frilly pink on her outfit. She even came wearing a diaper! Someone has been peeking at Western box openings and had included so much with her. No one would have know she came all the way from China. I loved her as she is. I was not tempted to tear her apart and reconstruct her as I was the other two dolls from China. 

I am very happy with this new face on my shelf to watch over me. Tina, you did a great job with the baby and her packaging. I think the box had gotten wet and that is why it caved in so. But you had also packed her in that lovely plastic bag with hearts on it that kept her dry and happy.

I was so excited about the new baby, how shall I name her? that I had a senior moment and forgot to put the roast in the oven at 4. At six when Werner came down for dinner, the oven was cold, the dish was still in the refrigerator. He graciously agreed to have supper at 8. Suddenly I had more time to finish my blog so went back to the studio to photograph Kimi getting his boy part glued on.

He sure makes the baby from China look good. I felt so smart that I  was able to drill holes in the poly clay so I can sew it fast tomorrow. Feeling smart and delighting in a new baby I only had to order, and my day is complete with the roast in the oven.

One of the Cheetah Children is going out as my art on the sidewalk. I never could get her neck to look right. Yesterday I did get it hooked on securely but it looks too weird to be on a therapy babe. With the print on the card I see how fuzzy the photo is with this camera. I have been thinking that it is 5 years old and maybe there is a sharper one now. I see it is not only my eyes late in the day but those photos are blurry - too blurry for even the web.
I cleaned up all my messes as I usually do when I finish a crew. I felt very satisfied with my work and use of time. I took some time to think about what I am doing, where I am going, and what I want from the future. I do recognize that making the babies gives me great happiness. Every part of the process feels right, except the hassle finding places to give them away. So I made new effort to post Lester on Reborns. com and hope to add new babes in the next few days.

Meet the new crew! That is Holly standing on her head (so the glue on her eyes soaks down through the cotton instead of running out the neck). Next to her is Lilly (2 ls this week). I wish I could paint more security and serenity on her face. Next to her is a Ching child. I only have two kits left so it is time to keep an open eye for a good price on that one. Sometimes, recently, I have seen they have been selling for almost $60! Before I never paid over $20.

The other day Sus asked me to make a brown baby Jesus for a Christmas event at Gualala Arts. I had a picture in my mind of what I wanted, but did not know if I had the talent to color it and root the mohair. While searching for the new crew I found 3 kits of Kimi I had bought for $9. each.

There was the brown skin, brown eyes, brown mohair on a tiny kit. Then I looked in my small stash of bodies and found a BB body with front loading full legs! Again while resting and thinking I decided that baby Jesus need a real male part. Looking in the basket of weird stuff I found the little one I had bought on eBay. Perfect! I feel so cared for by finding that everything I need is here. Nothing to order and agonize while waiting for it. BB had earlier put the Blaze babies on sale at this price and I got to it too late and all were sold out. If I had gotten Blaze she would have been blonde with blue eyes. See the Universe was taking care of this project already weeks ago.

Wanted you to see how the Cheetah Children at getting along without one of their gang. Claire seems pleased to know she has found her purpose in dollydaze but the two boys act as if they are missing someone.

Meet the Cheetah Children! From left to right we have: popular newborn from the Chinese small baby, Seraphina, and Sarahphina, and Claire from BB. I loved little Claire's face and ordered her once some months ago. When she arrived she was so tiny she gave me the willies and chills so for the first time in all my reborn buying, I sent her back. Then about a month ago when WR was on me for having too large babies and running out of room, I tried again to work with the tiny babies. Week by week as I pick the crew, I would shove the tiny ones off together in a box because I did not want to make them. I was also against making babies that would immediately involve making tiny clothes for them. I was not going to pay $20 for a tiny outfit. With these bodies I feel I do not need to make clothes for them. Flannel diapers and that is it. I was so pleased with these that I wanted to show them to the members of the BB doll forum. As I looked at what they are posting and talking about tonight I realized they would not be interested in these. So I am admiring them all by my yawning self. I am pleased that I got 3 of them done today. I am going to have to do the Chinese one over again as she has full-length limbs and they really do look weird in the caps. It would be easier to just give her away in the "flood the sidewalk with art" project. Tonight I did prepare Angelic to go to Sacramento with Ling-yen. It suddenly dawned on me in the afternoon how problematic she would be to make into a therapy reborn. They eyebrows are too dark, the hair is all wrong, she has a magnet and is weighted very heavy, The coating on her lips was already peeling off. Off to the sidewalk with her!

Another one to go to the sidewalk is this one.

I bought the head on eBay and stripped it but could not get rid of that orange mouth. The buggy eyes are not restful or kind. Also she has 1/4 limbs and so is in a Beraunger body. I would not want a therapy patient trying to live with her. This is the end of my buying dolls and kits on eBay. I like much better the kits I know and love at BB.

I forgot to tell you that the other day the bananas arrived from Amazon so I could make some bottles for the monkey folk. The puppy seems rather interested in the idea this morning. Today was body making day so I sewed up two because I already had one on hand. I put it together and made Claire into a fat man!

We were all laughing but she wasn't. She was very put out with me so I quickly put together one of the smaller bodies I had made today. She looked a lot better but the expression on her face did not change but she was making nicer noises! I had forgotten how much testing there was to a new baby body size. Using my old method of trying a misfit body on someone else I moved on to the newborns from China that I got on eBay.

I thought maybe her too-big body would fit one of them  which are a about 3 inches bigger.

That newborn look seems even dumber on a muscle guy. As I sat and stared at this guy the words "cheetah child" kept slipping in and out of my brain. There was nothing to do but go into the overly-sunny hot living room to cut out and sew a cheetah body.

Tah-Dah! The Cheetah Child! this sure saves having to sew clothes for such a small baby. His nice soft almost-furry body is exactly right for cuddling. It was too late in the day (even more so with DST) to cut and make more bodies but I began to figure out how many babies I could make in this fashion. I have another little baby from China I remembered. Her blue body was way too long and she would be great as a Cheetah Child. Then I remembered I had borrowed her arms when the ones from Bountiful Baby were too wrong - thin and white - for Lefty. Now she needed them back but he is already adopted. I let my mind just loose and roaming when I remembered that I had two dolls in that size. The boy, with a nasty look on his face, had two good arms. As I took them off while sipping diet root beer another idea came into my mind. Here is the result.

It could be I should not be left alone in the dark in the studio. I used to make dolls like this when I did the porcelain pieces but so far I have been fascinated enough by the art of making a reborn that I have not allowed myself to do this. Hmmm. I am having way too much fun!

I have messed around so long making my choices for this display for the Coast Highway Art Collective that I suddenly realized that Barbara will pick it up on Monday. I wanted to go over each piece to make sure they were going out in tip-top condition. So today was given over to these five babies.

I thought my white wall would be so good for photographs and now I see it has turned funny-colored and the white stork nest gets lost on it. Oops I am having a senior moment and have forgotten the name of this baby. Oh, it is Jackie / Jackson.  I love the gentleness of this face.

Regina is such a heavy big baby it will take a strong young woman to carry her about. Looking at her here I am wondering how I can part with her. But I was shocked at how heavy she was when I lifted her down to check her strings.

Little Raine has always sat in this swing but today I noticed how small she was and that I really need to keep the lighter babies. At the last moment I traded out Raine and put in this one that I did last weekend that has the stemmed eyeballs and all the problems that brings. On his bib it says, "Some bunny loves me." so I had to give him a rabbit. It works well with the spring and the blossoms.

I had such a good time with Cookies while getting her ready I was asking myself the old question, but then realized I have an unpainted Cookie who is softer and more baby-like. Still I find her so touching when I think of all the baking she has gone through to get this color. So the painted Cookie goes out into the world for the holidays.

Squirt Ching, who got his lips painted a bit darker later in the day, traded in his black kitty for a gray one. I think people should have fun sticking a pacifier in his mouth. I do have a lot of these Ching kits. I just had an email from Sus at Gualala Arts asking me to make a baby Jesus for a nativity scene they will have in December. They want a brown baby so I will concentrate on making him Jewish.
I got the tags made for the "flood the sidewalks with art" action on Friday the 27th. I was pleased with how they turned out.

FREE
to a good home.
This doll failed the

REBORN THERAPY
program but still
seeks someone to
LOVE.

Please accept this
as part of the “Flood
the Sidewalk with Art”
project as we artists
give away our art on
Friday 27, 2015.

On the back of the tag I pasted my business card.

I was surprised how docile Evelyn was. I had the feeling she was very thankful to get her body back. She laid so still while I retired all her strings. We had such a good time this morning. I was very thankful that her eyes were in the right place and the glue did dry transparent. I put her on the photo-shoot stand, but in the afternoon got busy with visitors and forgot about doing it.

I stuffed the limbs of the three early preemies and had planed to put that blue body together but instead I just enjoyed  having Harmony and her friend Nancy and Ling-Yen all here sitting around talking about dollies. Tomorrow I hope to sew little bodies. From the blue body I made a pattern I hope works for all of them. They should be 10 - 11 inches long.

The other day this head arrived in the mail. I do not remember bidding on it but it looks like the kind of baby I would bid on. It was a Bountiful Baby kit that had some terrible experiences. All over were gray chalky paint places where the heat-set colors were not cured enough. The lips and tongue had the thickest layers of paint that I have ever seen on vinyl. I used nail polish remover to get as much as I could off and I was able then to repaint it with the Derwent colors. Rather pleased with myself and the head I began to insert the eyes. I could not believe my ill-luck. Again were the sockets for stemmed eyes but these had been on fire. Evidently someone tried to back the baby after inserting the eyes. Cinders were all over. I do not know what burned but it made a huge mess by melting into the vinyl. At first I thought those black spots were bugs or eggs but it turned out  they were only charred something. I felt better when I got 99% of it dug out and wiped away. Parts of the socket near the eye were still in place so I packed the sockets full of fuzz and stuck eye balls in through the fronts. After soaking everything in glue I left good enough alone. I stuffed the arms and legs of the body, the firmer poly-fill worked great!and then I tied those funny short legs and arms on. The torso I will stuff with with the premium poly-fill so she is cuddly. I never want to see a stemmed eye socket again in my life. I will be more careful to ask before I bid.
Something bit me on the neck and then crawled down to bite me again on the inside of the elbow. Want to take a shower! It was a tick! I thought I had killed it but when I put on my other glasses to see it more clearly, it had walked away!

My first job this morning was to prepare the 5 babies for Equinox, our local nursing home, By late afternoon I had the box already for Harmony to pick up and deliver tomorrow. As you can see I need more blanket fabric. One baby, with her own kitten, got the blanket with paw prints. These were all small babies so they fit fine in the polar fleece blankets which are a tad smaller than the hospital blankets from Sandie. I was delighted to be able to use the box from Bountiful Baby!
Then I checked to see how Mary's eyes were. I could almost not believe the left one was again wonky! I added more glue to it, put it where I thought it should be and set her in the sun. We will see how rambunctious she gets at the dolly party tonight and if the eye will slide out of place from her dancing. I wanted evidence that I had them in properly so I took this photo. Now that I see it I not sure the eyes are right. Now the right also looks out of place. I am trusting that all those glue smears will dry translucent by morning.

Got an email from G. in Japan that the box with the babies arrived in perfect condition. Was so glad the customs people did not tear them apart'.

The UPS man brought my calendar proof from Vistaprint. My only error was I thought Easter was in April when it was in March so I had to change out the photos and captions. I also changed the December photo so a much happier baby is shown. It felt good to get that order off and out of the way. I am very eager to show off by sending those calendars out. I have two more babies to prepare for local art giveaways. I am wondering if Mary with her wandering eye wants to take part in one? The idea is that artists place works they have made out on the sidewalks and people can pick up and take home whatever they want. The big day for this action is Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving). It was done last year with lots of happy people. This year our local artists plan to join the fun. Maybe Mary too?