Pages

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

For Sale: Newborn baby girl OOAK - NOW SOLD

This little girl is looking for a new mom. Please read the terms carefully.


Angelic is a life size, big, newborn, robust and healthy girl! She measures about 21" tall  (if her legs were straight), and wears 0-3 months clothing. She has 3/4 arms and full legs and full body plate (no gender)! She also has a magnetic pacifier and painted dark hair! I think her head is 14" around. This is one of my best sculpts, the detail is out of this world!!!
I had plans for her but decided to sell her as an OOAK instead and start from scratch on my other "plans" lol.
She will come dressed in a red and white navy style dress with matching hat and white lacey socks.
Her price is 1400 Euros or near offer. I can also offer a layaway with half now and half in 30 days.

Please note layaway payments *are stictly non-refundable. I will be happy to help you sell her and have someone take over said layaway if something happens though*

Yes, I know in the pics I haven't painted her legs but I really need to sell her quickly as something has come up. I assure you, she will be fully painted in no time! Also her other arm is still cooling in the oven but the new mommy will get pics of her dressed and ready tomorrow. I can ship next Monday as my dad is in the hospital again and I am not sure I can go earlier :(



**  My American friends, please keep in mind that your government in fear of terrorism has ordered customs to do thorough checks on all incoming parcels. This causes delays that are out of my control. I would suggest you upgrade to Express (EMS) but it will be 50 Euros more. This is their actual price, I do not charge anything over shipping. **

Click the pictures below to enlarge.

Thank you for your time!!
 








Angelic

Well, I went ahead and baked the head... I had the arm and the leg (won't use the leg) in storage from earlier in the year and I made a body plate to do with it...

I was aiming for super newborn baby, like a day old tops... Now I see I need to make some changes but ok :) I wanted a slightly round faced, chunky, robust, healthy newborn... What do you think?? Kit worthy?

Sunday, May 15, 2011

When the (sculpting) innocence ends...

Sculpting has been a part of my life since I was 7 years old. I have always been "creative". You might know me best for my sculpting but in fact I am also into photography, into scrapbooking, into drawing and very into organizing parties and Cooking/BAKING!!! (don't want to toot my own horn but I have several deserts I am famous for in my social circle).

Anyway, at first, you start off with stars in your eyes that WOW you can create THAT... if you manage to sell your work WOW again, people want to spend money on it! And it goes on and on and on like that...
Now you are a successful, professional artist, congratulations... and that's just about when the innocence for me ended.
I have started becoming VERY critical about my work. I have always been a perfectionist at heart (even though sometimes time restraints won't let me get a sculpt to where I think is best - for instance when you have been working on a sculpt for a few months and it starts drying out), so this newfound self-critisism is not helping.

I did all the preparations including having special molds done for my first self-produced vinyl kit, only to chicken out at the last moment thinking it is not a good enough sculpt afterall...
So I started over, going a completely different direction (chunky newborn as opposed to scrawny preemie)... and I am still going...and going. I had a set of limbs I had made for another head earlier in the year but since they turned out a little small, for that head, I put them aside... they seem to fit this head quite nicely though so I might be using...might being the operative word here.

I see the sculpt and sometimes I feel very good about it, sometimes I don't like it and I keep thinking of so many other artists out there, younger than me (and a lot less anal about it than me lol) getting kits out like it is nothing... and I am STILL looking for the "perfect" one. Is there such a thing? Have I become too old (or too wise???) to just close my eyes and "jump" and enjoy the ride? Why am I looking for assurances so badly? Is it because I put food on the table doing this? Why am I measuring and re-measuring, changing and re-changing my sculpt?? Have I lost my "wind" or my inspiration??


Why do I need a computer to tell me that yes my sculpt is more or less symmetrical and also, yes I do need to move that ear and the fontanel a little bit... why do I *need* it so badly?
Is it because making a vinyl kit is so expensive?? Or it is because I am suddenly chickening-out??
Or is it maybe because I want to provide YOU, the customer, with something extraordinary??

Maybe I need to remind me of what I tell my students... sculpting comes from the heart, not from technology... So I will make me some coffee, put on my favorite music and sit down quietly and fall in love all over again with that little baby waiting on my work desk... and I will whisper sweet words into her/his still unfinished ears like I do with all my babies, and dream about the baby s/he will be once put together, and not think of how much money s/he will cost me or wonder if I can pay the therapies I am several months behind at, with the money I might make from the kit in the long-run.

To be continued...

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

From one moment to the next...

For me, it is mind boggling how life altering things can happen from one moment to the next... in the blink of an eye even... You would think that something that would unravel the fabric your life, even for a finite period of time until things start looking up again, would be big... it would take some time in the making... it wouldn't happen "just like that", snap of the fingers, in a flash....

SNAP! Last Sunday, I was having a great Mother's Day! The boys are finally old enough to know it is Mother's Day and to prepare for it in their own way. If you think I am being silly, I think I deserve a Mother's Day (as do all mommies I know!) ... and yes I am looking forward to it... I am looking forward to the hand-made cards with the barely recognizable hearts (could just as easily been a rectangle!) and the 5 year old handwritting of "I love you mom!"... This Mother's Day, hubby joined in (very unlike him; if you have known me for a while, you will know hubby never gets a present, never surprises me with anything... ever!) and he had arranged for his mom to look after the boys for a couple of hours so we could see a (gasp!) a movie! In a real theater!

SNAP! Just minutes before we were due to leave, the boys were playing in their room when I hear the wail of doom, the kind of wail a child lets out only when in a lot of pain!!
Cody had thrust (accidentally) a toy water-gun in John's eye. I calmed him down, couldn't see anything was amiss, put some antibiotic drops in his eye and patched it up thinking it was nothing... Afterall, it had happened before and I knew the routine.

We didn't sleep all night that night, with John being very uncomfortable and scared... at the break of dawn, I grab John and take him to the ER where a resident saw us, couldn't do a full exam (didn't put any fluorescein in the eye), because John was so uncomfortable.. but didn't think to put numbing drops in the eye either... He put some (of the same) antiobiotic drops in his eye and patched it up and off we went.

We didn't sleep on Monday night either... again at the break of dawn we were at the hospital AGAIN... his eye was starting to swell and he was worse.
This time I was a little more forceful and a more experienced doctor came in, put the drops in to numb his eye and again we got some antibiotic drops and a patch...

Come Wednesday (today) his eye is now the size of a small lemon, bloodshot red and has some sort of green discharge (that the doctor insists are just normal eye secretions). This time I was VERY forceful, openly accused the doctor that he didn't listen to me yesterday when I told him his eye was worse and we got seen by the the big head doctor.

The cornea abrasion is "severe" and I didn't let them use the same antibiotic again since not only it didn't help, his eye is worse. So they used something else.
We will go back tomorrow... PLEASE PRAY HIS EYE IS BETTER!!!!!

Here comes the SNAP! part... his cornea was cloudy visibly. I am TERRIFIED he will lose eyesight or require surgery :( I can't even wrap my head around how something so insignificant could potentially be life altering for John... A million bad thoughts are running though my mind... worst case scenarios that leave me with frozen blood. It might be the lack of sleep, I can't think straight, all I can think of is... "they were just playing... it was an accident"...

Realistically, stupid accidents happen in the blink of an eye all the time... You stepped off the curb a second too early... You tripped going down the stairs... My friend's totally normal child is permanently disabled because he choked on his own phlegm and was without oxygen for a few minutes...

Things you can't prepare for, can't predict... All the medicine is locked away, all the chemicals too. I lock the door, there are bars in the windows. They are still in 5 point harnesses. I never put them in the front seat of the car. I never lose sight of them in the playground not even for a minute... SNAP! The toy water gun might cost my son his eye... it has already cost him a world of pain and discomfort, it has unravelled our day to day lives, my work and we live off this stuff...

I fear those SNAP! moments ... yes something GOOD might happen justl like that and for a lot of people it does... but I fear them because ALL good things in my life came about after a LOT of pain, a LOT of work, a LOT of heartache... nothing that matters was ever handed to me EVER, not a pregnancy, not a good job not even something as trivial as some "me" time... so yeah, I fear the SNAP! moments because as the Greeks say "The (bad) things that can happen in a moment, can't be done in a whole year".

Please PRAY for healing in John's eye without scaring. Please PRAY that when we go back tomorrow, his eye will be better!!!
Thank you!

Sunday, May 08, 2011

Happy Mother's Day!!

This was posted in my Cerebral Palsy mailing list today and it sums up beautifully what I wanted to say...
Happy Mother's day to all my friends...and especially to those with a special needs child... To Becky, to Tracy, to Ina, to Mary, to Liz and Patrice.... to all of you... to all of us...

by Lori Borgman

Monday, May 12, 2002

My friend is expecting her first child. People keep asking what she wants. She smiles demurely, shakes her head and gives the answer mothers have given throughout the ages of time. She says it doesn't matter whether it's a boy or a girl. She just wants it to have ten fingers and ten toes. Of course, that's what she says. That's what mothers have always said. Mothers lie.

Truth be told, every mother wants a whole lot more. Every mother wants a perfectly healthy baby with a round head, rosebud lips, button nose, beautiful eyes and satin skin.

Every mother wants a baby so gorgeous that people will pity the Gerber baby for being flat-out ugly.

Every mother wants a baby that will roll over, sit up and take those first steps right on schedule (according to the baby development chart on page 57, column two).

Every mother wants a baby that can see, hear, run, jump and fire neurons by the billions. She wants a kid that can smack the ball out of the park and do toe points that are the envy of the entire ballet class.

Call it greed if you want, but we mothers want what we want. Some mothers get babies with something more.

Some mothers get babies with conditions they can't pronounce, a spine that didn't fuse, a missing chromosome or a palette that didn't close.

Most of those mothers can remember the time, the place, the shoes they were wearing and the color of the walls in the small, suffocating room where the doctor uttered the words that took their breath away. It felt like recess in the fourth grade when you didn't see the kick ball coming and it knocked the wind clean out of you.

Some mothers leave the hospital with a healthy bundle, then, months, even years later, take him in for a routine visit, or schedule her for a well check, and crash head first into a brick wall as they bear the brunt of devastating news. It can't be possible! That doesn't run in our family. Can this really be happening in our lifetime? I am a woman who watches the Olympics for the sheer thrill of seeing finely sculpted bodies. It's not a lust thing; it's a wondrous thing. The athletes appear as specimens without flaw - rippling muscles with nary an ounce of flab or fat, virtual powerhouses of strength with lungs and limbs working in perfect harmony. Then the athlete walks over to a tote bag, rustles through the contents and pulls out an inhaler.

As I've told my own kids, be it on the way to physical therapy after a third knee surgery, or on a trip home from an echo cardiogram, there's no such thing as a perfect body.

Everybody will bear something at some time or another. Maybe the affliction will be apparent to curious eyes, or maybe it will be unseen, quietly treated with trips to the doctor, medication or surgery. The health problems our children have experienced have been minimal and manageable, so I watch with keen interest and great admiration the mothers of children with serious disabilities, and wonder how they do it. Frankly, sometimes you mothers scare me. How you lift that child in and out of a wheelchair 20 times a day.

How you monitor tests, track medications, regulate diet and serve as the gatekeeper to a hundred specialists hammering in your ear.

I wonder how you endure the clichés and the platitudes, well-intentioned souls explaining how God is at work when you've occasionally questioned if God is on strike.

I even wonder how you endure schmaltzy pieces like this one -- saluting you, painting you as hero and saint, when you know you're ordinary. You snap, you bark, you bite. You didn't volunteer for this. You didn't jump up and down in the motherhood line yelling, "Choose me, God! Choose me! I've got what it takes." You're a woman who doesn't have time to step back and put things in perspective, so, please, let me do it for you.

From where I sit, you're way ahead of the pack. You've developed the strength of a draft horse while holding onto the delicacy of a daffodil. You have a heart that melts like chocolate in a glove box in July, carefully counter-balanced against the stubbornness of an Ozark mule.

You can be warm and tender one minute, and when circumstances require intense and aggressive the next. You are the mother, advocate and protector of a child with a disability.

You're a neighbor, a friend, a stranger I pass at the mall. You're the woman I sit next to at church, my cousin and my sister-in-law.

You're a woman who wanted ten fingers and ten toes, and got something more. You're a wonder.

Monday, May 02, 2011

Change of plans...

After a lot of thought, I decided I won't produce Sweet as Sugar in vinyl.
You know me, I always nit-pick and I don't think the detail wil pass on to the vinyl... and I want a LOT of detail into any vinyl I invest on out of pocket.
But have no fear my friends... I know you were excited ... I have picked another sculpt to be a vinyl this year. A big, chubby wubby newborn!!!! :)
I will keep you guessing a while longer though :-P but I will share pics soon...very soon...

I Designed My Own Blog at Sour Apple Studio DIY