Doodle gifts

It is no secret that I'm a compulsive doodler, and I love a good challenge and a reason to do a large doodle.  So I recently made three gifts by/for family relatives.  One was a gift from me, and the other two were 'commissioned' by a family member for her adult children.  I wanted to share the results with you.  Sorry the photos aren't great; I don't really have a good setup for photographing artwork in my home and its frustrating. If I try to make the mat look bright white (which it is), the drawing colors look washed out to me.  Plus some of the markers are metallic, which is tough to photograph.  Anyhow, the pics above are a couple of closeups.  The entire pieces can be seen below.  For the first two below, I was given a list of items and names to include, and the rest was up to me.  The required items were a challenge!  Celtic knots and crosses, unicorns, lions and tiger - none of these things are typically in my 'wheelhouse'.

 I did the one below for my adult stepdaughter and her family as a gift from me.  Because it's already framed in this shadowbox frame, it doesn't photo well at all. 

 And here's the other two, in their frames.  My medium of choice for these sort of doodles is Flair pens, a black Sharpie, and some wonderful metallic gel markers.  I don't usually pre-draw with pencil, but I did need to do that for the Celtic knot and cross, the lion and tiger, and the unicorn. 

Let the Force be With You this Holiday Season!

Yes, it's Princess Leia in gingerbread.

Let me explain.  It is that time of year, when I spend a good deal of time focusing on a major art project, knowing that the results will all be eaten within a little more than a week's time.  I broke out the cookie cutters (I even bought a couple of new ones), got out my husband's mother's gingerbread recipe, and turned our kitchen into a gingerbread cookie factory. After more than 7 hours of decorating over 7 dozen cookies, the cookies are done.  Before baking, I cut some windows out of some of the houses.  I didn't know what to do with the leftover teeny hunks of dough, so I baked them.  When the cookies had baked, it was obvious that a couple of the hunks of dough looked just like Princess Leia's hairdo, so with a little royal icing, Leia became a gingerbread reality!  Another lump became the blond beehive (below right) and a weird-shaped piece became my favorite, the crazy orange hairdo on the left.

The windows were cut out of some of these houses and also out of the train locomotive.  It's hard to see in the photos, but crunched up Life Savers were baked into the openings, and they melt and harden into little stained glass windows!

The train, by the way, is made from some new cookie cutters that I purchased on a whim.  It's my first time using the cutters and I rather like the result. 

My other new cookie cutter is a snowflake.  I went gung-ho with blue and white icing and sugar sprinkles, and they are so very elegant-looking next to the ridiculousness of most of my other cookie decorations. (Note below, with the snowflakes, a couple of little green alien men and what we fondly call the "diaper-babies".) 

I also used the snowflake cutter a week ago while making Hanukkah cookies.

I have a giant gingerbread man cookie cutter I used to make the three dudes below.

Below are the more 'usual' size gingerbread menfolk.  Note the kid with the curly red hair - his hair is also an add-on of an extra hunk of dough.  The shape of the dough could also have become an awesome football helmet, now that I think about it.  Oh well, maybe next year I'll decorate with professions - football players, doctors, ballerinas, explorers, teachers, artists, pirates, firemen...  Ooh I really like this idea!

And here's all the womenfolk.  The white bun on the gal in the bottom row is also a dough add-on. 

My small 'boy' cutter can be turned upside down for cute reindeer faces, as well as the little boys.  By the time I got to decorating the boys, I was out of patience and time.  I have no idea why the baby on the upper left appears to be wearing a diaper made out of a double-ended carrot.  It definitely wasn't intentional!

Below are a few more houses, a couple of feet, and hands posed in the Vulcan salute. (We need to be sure to give equal exposure to both Star Wars and Star Trek!)

Let the Force be With You, and Live Long and Prosper!  

 Thanks for stopping for a visit.  I hope you have some artsy things planned for this holiday season!  If you would like to see last year's gingerbread ridiculousness, including a gal in a polka dot bikini, you can check out the last year's post about them, HERE.