The artist for the third doll of this series is Mercedes Wachter, of San Jacinto, California.
Mercedes' theme for this doll was cherished things... or the things that are important to us.
While Mercedes picked an ocean theme, and Linda picked trees, I chose spirit to be the theme for my contribution to this project. So much of my life has been spent soul-searching and trying to establish a comfortable "place" for my spirit, that I felt I needed to express that.
I used a mix of Sculpey III and Premo polymer clay to create the face and feet, both of which were made using molds. The feet pretty much remained as-is after I took them out of the mold, but the mold was only a starting point for the face, which I remodeled to my liking. I find it difficult to work at such a small scale, which is why I decided to make use of the mold.
Following the lead of the other two artists, I'd originally intending to only put the head on some feathers, but the piece somehow took on a life of its own and evolved into what you see here, mostly because the material that I used to evoke sky/clouds (the fiberfill) ended up looking more like a dress, especially after I added some ribbon.
The journal arrived as sheets of paper fastened together with three metal rings. I was amazed that the pages had survived without too much damage but decided right then that I would make covers. I used some Sculpey III to make them, stamping on the outside surfaces for texture and then rubbing mica pigment onto the surfaces prior to curing, after which both sides of the covers were rubbed with Future floor polish.
I had fun adding to the journal, the opportunity to go shopping for new papers never lost on this artist! ;)