Shotgun

I'm in the passenger seat headed into the beautiful country setting that is home to Mom. In between gaping at the scenery I'm sitting here blogging. It's been years since I've gotten to be the passenger. I'd developed the nasty habit of having to be in control all the time. Getting sick this year seems to have cured that and I've been riding shotgun for months now. I know I'll have to get back behind the wheel again soon lest I let my anxieties take over and decide never to drive at all. In the meantime I'm enjoying being able to calmly watch the world move by.

That is kind of the mind set I've been in lately and aside from brief neurotic moments of "oh my god you aren't doing anything why are you not doing anything NOTHING IS GETTING DONE!" I've been pretty alright with it. It has allowed me to work on my current doll with a certain calmness and confidence that leaves me pretty happy with the results. I may even be finished with her in a week or so. Here are a few sneak peak iPhone pictures of progress.

Plans for the Birthday Boy

I'm so excited, tomorrow is Cyd's birthday and we're going to Playland Not At the Beach. I have a serious love for vintage games and curiosities, as does my husbantypecreature just another reason we get along so well (when we're not bickering lovingly of course). He has always had a love of all different forms of magic and has just recently started to hone his skills in Magic and Mentalism. He's started a blog over at http://cydsmagicandmentalism.blogspot.com/ if anyone is interested. Writing is new for him, but I think it would be great for him to share some of his wonderful imagination with the world. There is bound to be tons of things to inspire all day tomorrow. We're going to Cafe Gratitude for his birthday meal to munch on some fabulous raw food goodness. Of course, the thing I'm really really excited about? I get to stop by Dick Blick Art Supply on the way there! That's enough to have me giddy for days! I'm going to have to be good and keep to a reasonable time limit since it's not my birthday being celebrated, but gosh I could spend hours in there. (yes I said gosh, I might add golly too). I'm hoping we both come home tomorrow night with a whole lot of inspiration and maybe a little extra push of energy to do something with it. Certainly feeling happy can do wonders for fighting fatigue. I hope everyone else is having an inspirational weekend.

So today I leave you with two things that have beautified my week.



My white roses are blooming and smell AMAZING!




The Jasminmonster taking over everything, which also smells AMAZING



What spilled out today

*I know this blog says Art Dolls and More, the more part is the part where I feel that I want to share the story of my existence as well as my art. So, I hope I don't bore you to death!*

It's been a rough week. For someone who is often waylaid by evil health boogie men, I never ever not even close to ever get used to it. It's been so beautiful out all I want to do is go out and start my yearly garden. After I plow through the mess from last years that is. All my body wants to do is be functional for about an hour and then go back to sleep! Silly body, doesn't it know that I have things to do? Besides all the fun stuff I'd like to do there are piles of things that have stacked up while I've been down. The thing is I am actually looking forward to tackling them since cleaning often sparks my creativity and stomps on the inertia that often keeps me from working on my art. All I can do right now is wait until the body decides it's had enough rest to give me some productivity. I'm sure it'll be any day now.

The health news is eh, I am not at the point where they'd call what's going on with me kidney disease just Microalbuminuria which my Dr thinks we can get back down. It had spiked pretty high from previous tests, but we'll see how that goes. I've been put back on regular insulin since my blood sugar is being very stubborn. I have never minded taking my night time shots of NPH but I have always always hated having to take fast acting insulin and deal with sometimes having to take shots in public. It's uncomfortable for me because i don't have any desire to give myself a shot in a dirty public bathroom. I usually try to take them discreetly at the table, but I've had that get really embarrassing and awkward due to some peoples ignorance. Not to mention all the carb counting and worry that I'm going to screw it up. That's okay though we do what we have to do, and I believe it makes me even more aware of what foods I'm putting in my body. So hopefully things will start to get better.

I have a referral in to an OB/GYN to discuss the possibility that the Essure implants that I have may be causing some of the symptoms I have developed over the last five years. I am not the physically strong person I used to be and I am in pain and completely fatigued almost all the time. Apparently this has happened to a lot of women that have had the Essure procedure done, so we'll see where that goes. It may require some surgery, but if it might help me start to feel like myself again it would be worth it.

In the meantime I've realized that I have to return the focus of my life intensely to my physical health for a while. I have a tendency to be very hard on myself over the things I am passionate about whether it be dancing or doll making or anything else. I am never happy with the amount of work I produce while I am struggling with other things. I always want to be able to throw my whole heart, body and soul into what I am doing, often at risk to the rest of my wellness. It's one of my lovely quirks. I think it will be very important for me right now to learn that little thing called balance. What a hard lesson to learn for someone who often lives to extremes. That seems to be the focus of the year. I've already admitted to myself that I can't currently be a belly dancer. That cut pretty deep. I am so grateful that I have another art that I love and can put my energies into.

On my foot I have tattooed "Meanwhile, I keep dancing" the second half of the quote "I get up. I walk. I fall down. Meanwhile, I keep dancing." to constantly remind myself that no matter what life throws at me I have the ability to "keep dancing", and that's what I do.

Movement

I've started to get a little energy back over this past week and have done a little bit of work here and there. I've decided it's necessary to be gentle with myself for a while and no go crazy if only a little bit of work gets done here and there. Of course some of these dolls waiting to be born don't quite agree with me. We'll have to go ahead and see who wins. I know I'm not the only one that has arguments with my art work am I?

The current doll I am working on will eventually be a hybrid Geisha/Hannya. There are a lot of thoughts behind this doll. I'm not quite ready to discuss all of them at the moment. One thing I will say is any choices that I am making that aren't 100% accurate to Japanese culture have been weighed and balanced and I've made the choices for a reason, because they are part of this doll's story. I'm looking forward to when she starts to come together. Right now she's got a head, a Hannya mask, some feet and shoes. Here are a few rough iphone pictures for now. My iPhone likes to make my work look a bit sloppier than it actually is, just as a disclaimer :)

Mask, and Head sculpted and baked

Hannya painted

Feets! Geta not baked at this point.

I'm alive I swear!

If I seem to have fallen off the face of the earth it's because I kind of did. Back in March at some point I started not feeling so well, but I was in a pretty productive creative mode so I wasn't paying too much attention to it. One Wednesday I woke up coughing and thought "where the heck did that come from" at first I thought it was just allergy irritation, but i quickly realized I also had a fever. I'd been so focused on things I needed to get done that I just kept telling myself it was a little cold. A little cold that laid me flat out with every muscle in my body hurting. Long story short I somehow wound up with pneumonia! That hadn't happened in a really long time. The problem is that even when the pneumonia cleared up I still didn't get better because I have asthma that is triggered by illness so now I'm still here fighting lovely asthmatic bronchitis. I got to find out that ProAir inhalers hate me and cause more coughing fits then they fix. So far I think I've been sick since somewhere in the middle of March, and I can't get anything done because I'm so tired and everything is irritating my lungs. I've been ordered to remain indoors as much as possible. My poor kitties have been banned from my room, and I've had to bring in a few air purifiers.

In the meantime my other health issues are haywire as well. My triglycerides have shot up to 3500 again and my cholesterol is 450. My A1C has actually come down which is good. But no one can figure out why it seems that these medications I've been on for years for the familial hyperlipidemia have stopped working. My doctor left for vacation last Friday afternoon a few hours before my urine test came back showing that hey yay I may be in the first stages of kidney disease. I'm not focusing on that right now though because I haven't spoken to any of my doctors and I think I probably need to have a 24 hour urine test to confirm. My vitamin D level has come up to 21 but that is still pretty low. My bones and joints are being butt heads this week too. To top it all off my lower back went into the lovely spasms I get last night and I'm just hoping it decides to stop sometime soon.

So I'm kind of on hiatus from life at the moment hah hah. I'm hoping maybe this week I can muster up some energy to go back to work on the doll I was working on. Though she needs some sanding done and I can't really do that right now. I'm looking forward to it though! I hope this entry hasn't been too morose, I just wanted to update and say I'm still here! Too much time on the computer is giving me headaches so I've been spending a lot of time sleeping and reading. I guess you can't complain too much about that when you are a bookworm like me!

Hopefully I'll have something more interesting next time!

Hi I'm Tina

I was just rewriting my Etsy profile when I realized that I'd never really done an introductory post here, so I am going to share that profile here for fun.

Hi
My name is Tina Lynn Ellis . I reside in a small town  just outside the San Francisco Bay Area. I am a make of Art, a constant re-decorator and a belly dancer.

I'm currently focusing my efforts on the creation of my OOAK Art Dolls. I made my first dolls when I was 11 or 12 as Easter gifts for my Mom and Step-Dad. I'd scrounged up some old socks, raided my mom's craft room and it was on.Some awkward looking sock bunnies were born that day. I didn't come back to this particular art form for quite some time.

In 2008 I heard a little voice in my head and before I knew it I'd created my "first" doll. I was hooked almost immediately, but took my time getting to know my creations. Now, here I am enjoying every moment of hard work I put into each doll. They all have such unique and individual personalities sometimes I wonder if I'm part of the process at all!

The name of my shop, Night's Vision has been with me since the late '90's and really is a statement on where and when I feel my creativity comes from. I have been a night owl my whole life and find that those moments of creative impulse, the "vision" comes to me in the middle of the night when everything is quiet and peaceful. Who knows what lurks in the dark next!

I'd love to hear more about some of you!

Look a picture!

It's been a strange week around here. I've been feeling pretty icky for a lot of it, and wound up having to do something I hate to do...nap. Ok, let me rephrase that, I love to nap what I hate is being forced to nap because I feel ill. It brings to mind times in my life when I've had to nap daily because I was in such poor health. I like to pretend I'm relatively healthy now. The truth is this winter weather is kicking my butt! I have a pretty severe vitamin D deficiency and that got diagnosed in the middle of summer when there was tons of sun! Needless to say, even with prescription doses of vitamin D , it's really hard to keep it up when there is no sun at all! Of course there is more going on than that, but I could blah blah blah forever on that.

The thing I hate the most is that it interrupts my flow of creativity. I feel ill, and I am unable to work on things and it kind of stops me in my tracks. Then it takes a while for me to get back to it when I feel well. I spend a lot of time planning in my head, but have trouble getting moving. I'm also noticing that when I am in planning mode I"m a little err...bitchy. I feel easily irritated and want everyone to leave me alone, including my cats! Poor things they get put out of the room all the time. I'm starting to notice it as a pattern, oops.

I finally got moving a little bit yesterday and got all the fabrics together for my next doll. She's going to be interesting and I will probably bleed, or burn myself at some point during her creation. :) Above is a picture of all the gorgeous fabrics I'm going to be using! That's somehow going to turn into a Kimono. I started sculpting the head last night and wound up scrapping it twice before getting on the right path. So now her head is all baked and ready to get prepped for painting! It feels good to have something accomplished.