EBSQ Halloween Doll Challenge

Whew, it's been a busy fall around here....

But, I was able to squeeze in a small, but fun, project. The 'Art Doll' message board on the EBSQ forums hosted a Halloween Doll Challenge this past month. Despite my bestest intentions, I put if off for ages yet still managed to pull something together rather quickly at the last minute, at least enough to squeak by and enter a piece just under the wire: http://tinyurl.com/5qfwv6

Behold, the 'Halloween Witch Cat'.... standing tall and erect (at a petite 6 inches), with her witchy hat tucked under her arm....

She was sculpted with papier mache and paper pulp. It's a little funny how it all came about actually. While I had wanted to participate in the challenge, and adore anything Halloween and always have, I just couldn't put my mind into exactly what I wanted to do. Naturally, my 'solution' was to stall and stall (plus, like I said, it's been pretty busy around here as of late).

Finally, scouring my studio for inspiration the other day, I came across three wee 'eggs' I'd made with leftover Celluclay pulp several months ago. I had about a third cup of pulp left after completing a project back then. Pulp doesn't keep obviously, and since I hate wasting anything, I simply fashioned three little balls. Which then dried. Pretty useless as is -- however, when I ran across them, I got the bright idea to use them as starts for little sculpted 'heads' of some kind. Adding more pulp to one of the balls, on impulse I fashioned a little cat's head. A reasonable start, cute little head-- but, I still had to come up with a body/a pose/a theme. And I was running out of time. Rifling through a bag of toys I'd sorted this past summer, I found a small odd-and-end plastic figure thingie (likely from a Happy Meal or some such? Though we are veg and have never in our lives purchased a Happy Meal) which was likely destined eventually for the landfill, and decided to use it as my internal structural armature. I attached my cat head (not he easiest thing to do, actually), and further fleshed out the figure and pose with papier mache, enclosing her neck (the neck being the head of the plastic toy figure), adding her witch hat (which was a little projection on the plastic toy figure), shaping and filling out her right arm, adding/attaching her left arm, and just overall going for a 'folksy' sort of look.

All in all? Not too shabby, I dont' think....