Phinnea and Rosalinda

Cotton candy pink. It's what I was thinking about. Phinnea and Rosalinda volunteered for the job.

These 2 sweet girls are pretty much done all over in various shades of pink. Phinnea is a rabbit. Rosalinda is a rat.

Something about pink brings out the sweetness in things. Even rats.

These 2 girls are hanging out at the mouse house today. They will be in my shop momentarily. I hope you can find the sweetness of pink in your week's ending.

Nutmeg and Anise

Meet 2 more of the Spice Girls. This is Nutmeg and Anise. Some of the little brown rayon rat girls, I have called Spice Girls, because I like the names of spices. The last 2 were Cinnamon and Spice.

These girls are dressed in shabby lacy dresses. They are sisters and both have pinkish purple plaid flannel limbs. Their heads and torsos are made from the nicest German rayon I have found yet. It is Schulte. It costs a bundle. It is soft and just a lovely cinnamon brown.

Nutmeg's dress has a bit of pink staining throughout. She is quite a shabby girl, but likes to stay a bit fancy when she can. Both girls have brown painted short boots.

Anise wears a peachier dress, with a bit of creamy beige worked in.  Both girls have lacy overskirts, which is very feminine.

 

I can't tell you how much I am enjoying these little ratty critters.  I love them all.  I am having a lot of fun putting them in the little room box for their photo sessions.  I don't even have to try very hard.  To my eye, it all just looks right.  I have never been one who likes strictly beautiful things.  I like beauty mixed with a bit of comedy.  Always.  Rats in finery.  I just love it.  Hard to explain what jazzes me up about them, but they feel like everything I love about art dolls.  So, I persist.  Maybe it's a call to see beauty in what isn't obvious.  Hope you can see beauty today, somewhere where you didn't expect it.

Piano Jam

Ellis and Brigitte are the only ones hanging out at the mouse house at the moment. It was a quiet evening last night and they decided a piano jam was in order.

This is Brigitte. She is a lovely cream rabbit girl. She is wearing a fancy boysenberry silk dress with lace and tulle layers, with a vintage lace neck wrap. She is quite fond of her friend, Ellis. Ellis is a mouse.

He is a very cute, obviously dapper, cream mouse wearing a very striking 3-piece silk suit in autumn colors.   He is a man of good taste.  He would like to impress Brigitte with his piano playing skills, so he asks her to sit down while he plays a tune for her. 

She leans back on her seat and gets comfortable. She just knows she will love his selection.  He is, after all, a man of good taste.

He takes his jacket off so that he has better movement. He is quite confident and at the ready, as you can tell.  Brigitte loves the tune Ellis plays for her. She is quite impressed. She is very pleased and would like to play him a tune as well. She asks him to sit down.

Of course he does. He is quite a gentleman.

He sits back to enjoy a relaxing piano moment.

Brigitte takes her seat at the piano and plays a lively march tune. Ellis is surprised by the tempo, but quite pleased.

She has him. She can tell. She sits back down and watches as he leaves the room. Most likely he is going to brag to some of his friends about his good taste in ladies. 

I hope you are having a good start to your week.  I have cleaned up this blog a bit.  I noticed that it has been so long since I last edited the list of blogs I follow, that some of them had since turned to pornography sites.  No kidding.  Eeep.  Hopefully I have that under control and those sites deleted.  :)

The Hare Sisters are Dining Out

 I have set up my little rat dressmaker's shop now and it's time to have some clients.  The 3 hare sisters came in over the weekend and wanted similar dresses in different colors, as they will be dining out, and love to look the same, but prefer different colors.  The hares are a lovely shade of nut brown and they have long ears, making them a bit more stately than the rats.  They fit the same dresses and can sit in the same chairs, but their ears take up more space than the little mouse ears.

The 3 hare sisters, Rita Mae, Claudine and Katrine have decided that they will choose cream, blue and pink as their dress colors.  The rats worked hard and gave each girl a lovely elegant dining out dress, made from a satin devore of rayon and silk.  The bodice of the dresses have a layer of cream colored cotton lace and a bit of white silk gauze at the neck, for a bit of fluffy frou-frou.  The dresses have an underlayer of the same silk gauze as a bit of petticoat.

Each girl was given a head wrap to complement their lovely ears.  No good French hare would like to be out on the town without one.  Keeps the breeze out of the ears, and adds a lovely festive element.

The hare sisters seem happy with their dresses.  They are ready to go.  The rats had a busy day and the shop can be swept and the lights dimmed.

I trust you are finding creative things to do as well!

XOXO

Cindy

Rat Style - All Dolled Up

The Fancy Girls

I have not blogged in forever.  I don't know what has gotten into me today, but I feel like blogging!  So here goes.

Aggie

I have been working for a month on little mohair animals.  Bears and rabbits mainly.  This past weekend I got the idea that rats in fancy dresses would be just the thing.

Aggie

I knew I wanted them to have skinny limbs.  Rats don't have fat arms and legs like bears.  They have wiry limbs.  So, I drew up a long pointy nosed pattern and added in some skinny legs and arms.  The legs should have boots and heels, I thought, so I gave them that as well. 

Little Debbie

I have been messing around with traditional teddy bear making stuff - cotter pins and disks.  They make the limbs move, especially the head, around and around.  The rats should have movable heads, so I gave them those.  The legs and arms, since I like to pull them in tight and because they are quite skinny, I gave button twist joints instead, and put vintage buttons on the outsides of each limb. 

Little Debbie

The rats are between 5 and 6" tall.  That is roughly dollhouse scale.  They are probably a little fatter than most dollhouse folk, but it seems like the furniture fits them pretty well. That led me, of course, to look into making my own dollhouse setting for them.  

Francine

That will have to come later, as I did order a bunch of stuff for a roombox, but it won't arrive for another week or 2.  Hopefully I will be sharing that with you soon.

Francine

So anyway, back to the rats.  I gave them fancy dresses, which all good ratty girls should have.  The contrast is lovely, in my mind.

Martha

Fancy dresses for ratty girls.  I hope to make a bunch of them and then offer dresses for them in addition to the ones they come with, so that they are more like a small doll - with changeable clothing.  I think they will need other things as well.  Perhaps hats and maybe furniture.  We shall see what I come up with, but I am a little inspired at the moment.  It brings back childhood memories or little mice dressed in finery.

Martha

I have included some photos of the girls.  Hope you are all having a lovely season of creating!

Dancing the Can-Can