Girl Power

There’s one good thing I like about the newer Disney princesses. They’re misfits and strong-willed, they kick butts, and they get things done. After being snottily told by my downstairs neighbor that I was weird, I feel like I have a few things in common with some of these princesses. If I’m not weird, I wouldn’t be who I am, would I?

This collection of Disney Princesses is for a little girl turning four. I sincerely hope she will see beyond the pretty outfits and gleaming castles and learn to be just as fierce and independent as these ladies!

The Goonies

How’s this for a 80’s nostalgia? The Goonies!

This set features Sloth, Chunk, Data, Mouth, and Mikey. Boy, painting this set brought me back. My childhood was all about biking all around town and getting into all sorts of trouble. Even though I grew up in Flushing Queens, there’s the Fresh Meadows Park nearby that kind of gives the illusion of being in the wild if you ignore the traffic noise and the diesel fumes while you’re pretending to hunt of prehistoric animals or treasures in there. It was as good a childhood as one could get growing up in New York City. Years later, when I was teaching kindergarten in Manhattan, I was shocked and sadden to find that one of my favorite kids didn’t know what a forest was. Luckily in second grade they’re taken on field trips to Alley Pond Park, which was also near where I grew up so I was mollified.

Spirited Away

Believe it or not, my mother was the person to introduce me to all things Miyazaki. She came home from her errands one day and gave me a video tape from her Chinese video rental place.

“Here,” she said as she also attempted to shove a bao into my gullet, “watch this. You’ll like it.”

The video tape in question was “Kiki’s Delivery Service.” Although my mother and I are two very different people, she knows me like no others. She was using the word “binging” in the context of “cramming TV shows” before it was being applied to anything other than an eating disorder and had me watching the entire original Japanese version of “The Ring” miniseries (there were about 60 episodes or something insane like that) in one weekend, so naturally I immediately popped it into the VCR, knowing this woman gets me. Boy, she was right. I did enjoy the movie tremendously. The artistry, the details, the story. It brought a hardened New Yorker such as myself to tears. After that, every time she’s in Taiwan, she would hunt for the latest Miyazaki masterpiece before it was barely out of Japan and I was hooked for life.

Even though I try to stay away from painting dolls based on animation, I couldn’t turn down a chance to do one of my all time favorite Miyazaki films: “Spirited Away.”

This one features No Face, Boh the cranky baby, YuBaba and YuBird, Chihiro, and the Kashira (the trio of heads that bounce around).

When this project was proposed, I immediately dug around in my supply drawers and found something that would be the perfect representation of the three heads. It took some sawing and sanding to make them all fit. Most people believe I stand around all day painting dainty little things when in fact I have a Dremel at the ready, fully charged at all time for emergency adjustments, a belt sander downstairs, and a box of band aids nearby for any power tool-related injuries. Even though “traditional” nesting dolls sets aren’t quite as trying to make, I do enjoy these challenges now and then to break things up a bit!

Harry Potter

Once a year I get a request to paint a set of dolls based on a little girl’s latest obsession, which is, quite frankly, very flattering. Although I don’t exactly produce dolls, I do recall, as a child, my bedroom had a wall of shelving units that I literally cluttered with knickknacks. Some were toys, most were miniature rooms I made out of Kleenex boxes, but a majority were ornaments that made dusting day a real headache. The point is, there are children out there who appreciate receiving ornaments as presents rather than toys and I look forward to this time of year when I get an email from the little girl’s mother.

This, apparently, is the year of Harry Potter. I’ve done a mega set a few years back so I was happy to repeat a few of the characters and adding three new ones. This set focuses on the students themselves.

When Harry Potter was at its height of popularity, I was a school teacher then and was amused to find all the girls in my classes were VERY attracted to Draco Malfoy, so I wasn’t surprised that he would be the first doll. Most girl appreciate a bad boy, I suppose. Hermione’s all about girl power, so’s Ginny and Luna, the two other new additions. Harry and the slovenly Ron are also in the mix, almost as an afterthought.

In the first Harry set I did I was asked to paint the characters’ accompanying creatures. That’s done again for Harry and Ron, but with the others I played it up with wands and broomsticks and also the time turner again for Hermione, an artifact I kind of wish I have so I can finally sit down and eat my lunch!

Stranger Things

I was fortunate enough to take a few weeks off from painting this year. Didn’t do anything too exciting, just the usual visiting the family and baby-sitting my niece and nephew thing. I’ve never been one to treat children like children so I taught them the art of binge watching Netflix shows. We did nearly an entire season of “PeeWee’s Playhouse” in one sitting. It was a compromise because the kids refused to watch “Stranger Things” with me. They threatened me with tears. Then again, these are the same kids who were freaked out by Pan-Kun and James, the chimp and English bulldog team that went around Japan doing human tasks, so I had to table this highly anticipated show of the summer until they went home.

And boy, they don’t know what they’re missing! Even though I have many many sets to work on when I got back, I stole some time to paint the Stranger Things set…that is how obsessed I am with this show. Hey, once a fangirl, always a fangirl.

There’s Hopper, Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, Lucas, Dustin, and of course, Eleven.

My Little Pony

I had to admit I lost a few nights’ sleep thinking about this challenge presented to me: A My Little Pony set for a birthday girl. But as always, when you leave something alone, a solution will nearly always present itself.

After this was painted, I was all smug and got ready to work on the next item on the list when I happened to look at the notes about this set and realized I got the line up of the ponies completely wrong. The buyer was beyond understanding and was even willing to take this set as is except that’s not how I roll. Luckily she made a suggestion that got me to stop tearing my hair out and I made some minor adjustments:

Of course, there was another complication that came up when I thought this set was done and dusted and that had been yet another oversight on my part…what on earth was going on in the ol’ sweatshop?! In the end everything worked out and my takeaway from the many trials and tribulations is to ALWAYS CHECK EVERYTHING OVER TWICE. Or thrice.

Return to Oz

 I’d been utterly intrigued by this movie as a child, mostly due to the shockingly creepiness of it. I was thrilled that someone actually made a horror movie for children! Even so, I was reluctant to tackle this project because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it justice. But someone asked me to paint a set just as I was getting the itch to and was actually starting to compile the photo references needed to get me started.

It was clear from the start that other than Dorothy, I had to paint Jack Pumpkinhead, Mombi, the witch with a collection of heads that she switch up to suit her mood, the dastardly Nome King, Mombi’s henchman, a Wheeler, Ozma, the Queen of Oz, and of course, Tik Tock. I thought about the Gump, which is a moose head attached to a bed and brought to life by a magical powder but couldn’t figure out how to work him into this set. The buyer made a mention of it and you know I don’t like to disappoint. The simplest solution is to do this:

Problem solved!

Some details:

The Wheeler, Ozma, and Billina the talking chicken.

The Nome King wearing Dorothy’s ruby slippers and Mombi with her mandolin.

Nightmare Before Christmas

When I was asked to paint this set, I thought about saying no, but only for about a second. “Nightmare Before Christmas” was one of my favorite movies and I wasn’t sure if I could do it justice. The characters all have very distinctive shapes to them that I didn’t think it would translate very well on nesting dolls. But I liked a good challenge now and again and here it is:

Left to right: Oogie Boogie, The Mayor of Hallowee Town, Sally, Dr. Finkelstein, Jack Skellington, and Zero.

Some details:

Sally’s vision of the Christmas tree before it was burned to smithereens.

Jack’s snowflake.

Oogie Boogie’s snake-filled dice.

The two faces of the Mayor.

Zero with a little jack-o-lantern for a nose.

The Wizard of Oz

A while back I did my own modern version of The Wizard of Oz wherein the characters all wore sport coats and looked pretty stylin’, but a part of me always wanted to paint the original MGM version but never got around to do it. I was asked recently to paint this set for a birthday present. Did I have to think twice about it? You bet your sweet caboose I didn’t!

The largest doll here isn’t Dorothy. It’s actually the Wizard, who was so big I couldn’t fit him into the shot.

This one was customized for the birthday boy:

Some close ups:

 

Here’s Toto peeking out of Dorothy’s basket.

The Wicked Witch with her Flying Monkey.

Just to give you an idea how tiny the witch and the monkey were…

Yow! This is one photo I dare not show my optometrist for fear of being given a lecture!

Now, if someone is to ask me to paint my favorite version of the Oz stories (the trauma-inducing “Return to Oz’), I’ll totally be up for it!

Flowers in the Attic

Talk about a blast from the past! I had a look at Lifetime Channel’s remake of “Flowers in the Attic” and thought that someone ought to do a matryoshka version of the main cast. Then I realized that someone had to be me since no one is nutty enough to do so. The book itself brought me back to seventh grade where all the girls were passing around the VC Andrews novels like an autographed New Kids on the Block cassette tape. I wasn’t popular enough to be in the loop, but eventually I got my hands on a copy and was hooked for life. “Flowers in the Attic” was a perfect blend of teen angst, gothic overtones, cheesy melodrama, and enough taboo to keep me wanting more. It was, truly, the Twilight Saga of our time minus the vampires and werewolves and lots of incest.

I based my set of Grandmother, Corrine Foxworth, Chris, Cathy, Carrie and Cory on the book version, not the dreadful film debacle or the made for TV movie so I had to go back to my tattered copy now and again to refresh my memories, not that I’m complaining, although I could use a newer copy of the book!

       

Yeesh! Wouldn’t you love to have HER for your grandmother? A whip-happy Bible toter!

Here’s Corrine the mother with her poisoned powdered donuts and a nervous pearl-playing hand.

I thought it would be funny to have Christopher holding a copy of the book they starred in.

Cathy in her ballet clothes with flowers she and the others made out of paper to pretty up the attic.

Really, what tales of horror and confinement is complete without a dollhouse metaphor?

At first I was a bit daunted by the prospect of painting such a tiny dollhouse on the Carrie doll, but it took only 20 minutes tops.

Cory with his banjo and Micky, his pet mouse.

I revealed to a few unfortunate souls who happened to wander into my sweatshop while I was painting these and the reaction varied from nostalgia to guilt to unbridled horror. What’s your take on this once shocking novel?