Never done this before... huh...

Something really weird happened to me the other day...
I was not feeling so good, I was under a lot of stress... I did NOT have a good birthday the day before and I was very low. I didn't feel like celebrating, life had thrown a couple of wrenches in my plans' gogs...

Hubby was working ... on a bank holiday. Because this is how it is now in Greece... they can make you do whatever they want... it's their way or the unemployment highway. Thankfully, the boys were at their grandma's and it's a very RARE treat she agrees to watch them for a bit... at one point she had even asked me for money in order to spend a few hrs with her grandkids.. but let's not go there now. She had them for a few hours and I was thankful.

I sat down after cleaning the house to watch a little TV and as it often happens, my hands wandered to my clay. I wanted to sculpt a baby that was something in between realistically cute and dolly-looking. Something like my BJDs, a little stylized. I wanted something I could reproduce in resin, put in a nice box, print a certificate for but also make it fun for collectors to play with and dress and knit for and make furniture for...

I did the body first... a little girl. Then I did two chubby legs...and two chubby arms...
No problems there. I am a pro when it comes to this. With absolutely no desire to toot my own horn I can tell you that I can do miniature arms and legs in my sleep by now... remember, I have been doing this miniature clay thing since I was 7 years old... that was 27 YEARS ago ;)

The head... ah the head. Now THAT'S trouble for me. Something between realistic and dolly cute... Round cheeks, ok got that... rolled my clay into a ball, then into a head shape. The body and limbs were already baked so I added my head/ball onto the neck, made adjustments to the size.
Fun to play with  = awake... eyes... hmmm, no eyes down here, they are all at the studio. I only had my "emergency sculpting bag" and a few scraps of clay with me.
Ok, I will try the clay eye thing...
Cute? Hmmm, button nose then... and a friendly expression... And then... I have NO idea how it happened but somehow, without much trouble at all, I had this baby looking up at me. Smiling, open eyes, round cheeks and button nose... with chubby limbs that were very realistic and detailed... and Mollie was born.

Something that hasn't happened to me before.. .with little trouble and no pause, I sculpted something that I consider difficult for me. An awake cute baby and with clay eyes too.
Huge plus... all my Ellery Kish clothes fit her!!
I wonder if this takes me a tiny half-step closer to becoming like my idol, Martha Armstrong-Hand... no, not really, but could I dare to think that maybe, just maybe, when she was my age, and she still had a long way to go, she too thought like me?
Oh how I wish I were as good as her... or if I could maybe, become as good with lots of practice and time?
I never thought I would have an "aha" moment with awake, clay eyed babies but apparently I did... huh... who would have thought?