I want to share with you the French street theatre Royal de Luxe. They work with giant dolls. I saw an article about them in a Belgian magazine talking about a performance they did in Antwerp. Imagine how cool it is to see a giant elephant walking through the city! The website for Royal de Luxe is http://www.royal-de-luxe.com/

Of course you can watch the performances on you tube. Like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXr15K2uSc

Ricë Freeman-Zachery did a great job writing an article about me in Art Doll quarterly.  Husband Ton said that it is one of the best articles ever written on me.  Thanks Ricë!

In the last issue of the leading German Doll Magazine Puppen & Spielzeug this four page article was published about me AND an article that I wrote about NIADA. The article about me was written by Ruth Ndouop Kalajian, a pleasant person to work with. In the headline she calls me the Storyteller.  Nice!

Always nice to see an artist at work. Especially if it is my friend and fellow NIADA artist Reina Mia Brill!

I found this very interesting website of Dutch artist Eric van Straaten that I want to share having some mixed feelings about it. The work is 3D printed, very interesting. I would like to see a 3D printer working maybe even try something for myself. But……it is plastic and I don’t like the material although it seems to work for this artist’s pieces. Then I thought: OK we all can stop doll making now because this work is so much better than what we do. But later I thought: wait a minute, this Eric van Straaten has a specific signature. That means that if I or one of my fellow doll artists would start working in this technique the result would be completely different. Remains the fact that I don’t like plastic.

One of my friends in Prague told me that you could forecast the winter cold by counting the brown skirts of an onion. Few skirts means not a cold winter and many skirts means a cold winter. We were joking about buying onions grown in China so we only could forecast the winter weather in China It would be great to know if the winter will be extremely cold. We are still doubting about getting our car winter tyres.

Yesterday I had to clean a lot of onions for a meal so I remembered this story. I checked the bag and YES: made in Holland! So I started peeling and counting.

This is what I found, all in the same bag:

two onions with 4 brown skirts

one onion with 3 brown skirts

two onions with 2 brown skirts

three onions with 1 brown skirt

A bit confusing. So I guess our winter will be the same as usual: a few cold days, a little bit snow and many gray days. Or, as we say in the Netherlands: `Het kan vriezen, het kan dooien` (It could freeze, it could melt)  meaning we will see what will happen.

I changed myself into an Avatar with Photoshop after finding this tutorial on internet:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU31giMd624&NR=1&feature=endscreen

It was meant to do this with my students but I wanted to try it myself first. It is not perfect and it is quite a lot of work but it was fun to do. The tutorial shows step by step how to do this. The tutorial is in English.

At a Doll Show in Prague last weekend I saw those two living dolls. I was told that the girl on the left is dressed in steampunk style. They tried to explain me the concept of steampunk. Something with Jules Verne and industrial revolution. As far as I know the style of the girl on the  right is gothic lolita. Correct me if I am wrong. I like them both.

Left of them my friend Ankie Daanen is just visible in the crowd.

Someone sent me this picture of a street artist making a 3D drawing. Really amazing! I wonder if it only works from one specific point of view.

Yes! New piece finished. I finally could use a lot of this really beautiful silver lace I was collecting for ages.
I made the piece for the special NIADA theme exhibition “Up in the clouds”, hoping I understood the theme right.
The piece is called Fighting the Clouds (2) because what else could you fight on a toy horse The 2 means that I used the theme before.