Thursday, September 23, 2010

The WEG Diorama Project

In February I was asked if I was interested in taking part in the Breyer WEG diorama project. I was asked to make the team of dolls for the marathon driving set-up. Unfortunately I don't have any good photos of the dolls. I took this quick photo and one of the back just to make sure they were what was wanted, then I changed something on them, didn't take new photos and they left. Jennifer Buxton (who also worked on the project) did a wonderful post on the project with some great photos of the dioramas in progress. I would love to see more photos and photos of the finished dioramas. I won't be attending the games so I can't get any myself.

Everyone that worked on the project was sworn to secrecy until Breyer had signed off on the entire project and released the info to the world. I have known for months who at least some of the other artists were on the project (group emails have email addresses and I guessed a lot from that) but I couldn't talk to them about it because of the secrecy ban. February to the end of September is a long time to wait when you really want to talk about something. It's so exciting that finally we can share what we did. I am more excited to see the finished projects. I LOVE miniatures of all kinds and some of the details are simply amazing.

Oh, I also can't take credit for the title of this post that I blatantly ripped off from Jennifer Buxton this morning. It was perfect, I had to use it ☺

Saturday, September 4, 2010

More fun with rebuilt dolls

Out-of-the-box Breyers are at best usually not super and at worst, they are broken. I have to spend a good amount of time remaking parts because something broke, the doll doesn't sit properly or some other basic flaw in the doll. But really, it is a toy and you can't expect all that much from a toy. So I do some special doll surgery and make a toy into a collectible. How fun! Today I wanted to share a slightly rebuilt doll that was redone just to make her more fun, not because she was broken or couldn't sit properly. This is Kellie.
Kellie is a new in-flight jumper doll. She used to be Kellie the lower level dressage/jumper doll but when she wasn't snapped up in a couple of days I really wanted to try making on of these in-flight dolls... so I partially took apart the completed doll and "fixed" her. I can't take credit for the how since my good friend, Joan Yount, actually came up with the way to do it. Kellie is a pretty neat doll and if she sells, OK and if not I think I will have to keep her. I got this Stone jumping horse so I could try making some in-flight jumpers and have something to model them on. Now I am thinking I will have to show this jumper at the next live show I go to and enter as many classes as I possibly can with her. It is an interesting challenge that has gotten my creativity working overtime. So far I have come up with 5 or 6 classes I can put this jumper in, lol. I am so amused by that. She might not do the best of everyone but it certainly will be interesting to see what I can realistically get her to do and do well. I will of course make sure to take photos at the show and post some. The show is not until mid-October though so I might have to talk about photo showing before then. I haven't done any photo showing for 2 or 3 years at least and this morning I sent off my entries for the MEPSA September OF qualifier. It will be the first time ever doing performance in a photo show and I am pretty excited about it ☺