ABCs of Life According to Dolls

The theme ABCs of life for my August small group trade was slightly outside my comfort zone. Why, I don't know, since in my life as a 9-5 person I get paid to write. Maybe it seemed to profound, too hard to choose a meaningful word for each letter of the alphabet. Some letters had to many inspirational words, others were kind of a stretch.

My friend Karen sent me an awesome small, handmade book with illustrations and words for each letter, which set the bar pretty high. I puttered with cutting big letters out of cardstock & fumbling with mini books, but was not happy with anything.

I had an inspiration--finally--I pulled out a copy of "Beyond Paper Dolls" by Lynn Perrella. http://www.lkperrella.com/cgi-bin/itsmy/go.exe?page=5&domain=1&webdir=lkperrella
The cover art was the springboard for my idea, which I combined with faces inspired by artwork from Mary Jane Chadbourne's online course from Roses On My Table called "The Imaginarium - Anthology of an Art Doll" http://desertdreamstudios.weebly.com/blog/collaborative-junctions I didn't take her course due to time and space constraints, but watched the progress on her facebook posts.

 My concept was to print 26 words on silk and have them suggest clothing for paper dolls.

I made six pieces in all, using a background of my own collage/printmaking, and adding reprints, on cardstock, of vintage paper doll parts and other vintage images, attached with brads. Washi tape with vintage images, tapemeasure and ABCs were mixed into the collage. I used some images from The Graphics Fairy.

I wasn't 100 percent thrilled with the end product...I loved the faces and most of the body parts, and liked the background, but the words on silk didn't quite work the way I envisioned them, so on the ones that I am mailed off to my art group, I hung the words on the bottom, more like a prayer flag than a clothing effect.