Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Kathryn Anna Bride Doll

Kathryn Anna is ready to get married! She is all dressed up in her custom-made, one of a kind, bridal gown, which I specially designed and created.


She has beautiful "diamond" earrings, which perfectly match her wedding ring.


Although it's not visible, and she's too much of a lady to show you, Kathryn also dons a blue garter under her gown. 
I designed and handcrafted her veil and bridal bouquet accentuate her ensemble.

Now all that's missing is the groom!

Sunday, July 22, 2012

We Love Camp Hollyhock!


This is a picture of the beautiful dress I recently bought at Camp Hollyhock, a super-cute shop in the Sellwood neighborhood, in Portland, Oregon. The sweet ladies who run it are a mother-daughter team, just like Momma Cat and me! We walk by their shop a lot and I have been coveting their dresses for quite some time. Today, I finally sold a doll that I made and bought one. Here is a link to their blog so you can check it out for yourselves:

http://camphollyhock.blogspot.com/

Their unique and beautiful clothing is made from things like vintage sheets and tablecloths (I love making things out of repurposed materials). Each piece is one of a kind and a lot of their stuff can be layered, or mixed and matched to create different looks. In addition to clothes, they make really pretty accessories and jewelry. I just wish I could buy it all, but I would have to sell an awful lot of dolls to make that happen! You should definitely check it out if you have a chance, and support a great local business!

-Baby Cat

Monday, July 16, 2012

Look what Momma Cat found for me in her attic!

Momma Cat and I were looking through her attic for an air conditioner when she found this: a kit for making cute dollhouse furniture!


It is dated 1974 (older than me), so the wood stain that comes with it is very dried out and I will have to replace it. Other than that, the pieces all appear to be in good condition and I can't wait to try it! 

I also have a few projects that piled up in between blogs, and I will try to post them soon! 

Until then,

Baby Cat



Thursday, July 12, 2012

Laura Bride Doll

This doll was designed and created by me specially for our cousin's wedding.  Laura is a lovely young woman whom we've only had the privilege of meeting twice.  I was very impressed by how sweet and pretty she is.  I just needed a tiny, little excuse to make a doll for her.  Then she got engaged!  Yay!  The Laura Bride Doll was born! The doll has since been shipped to Connecticut to await the happy day.  I can't wait to hear how she and her new husband like it.  Unfortunately, I may have to wait for a while since the wedding isn't for another month or so.  Oh well........

Laura Bride Doll has little earrings, and a hand made headpiece with a veil ...


She has a little blue garter with a rose on her leg....


She also has a lovely custom made bouquet.....


Here she is in her designer bridal gown ready to head down the aisle.  She has butterflies in her tummy......



You look beautiful Laura! Have a happy wedding, and may you and your groom live happily every after!

This doll was so much fun to make that I had to make another one, who you will see on this blog shortly.  There are just a couple of finishing touches to be made to her and then she'll be ready for her photo shoot, then onto the blog!  I hope you are as excited about meeting her as I am to introduce her.

Please leave me a comment and let me know what you think about my doll and our new blog.  


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

How to decorate your home when you have no money to spend on it

What do you do when you love designing and decorating, but are a college student with no steady income to support such a hobby? Well, if you're like me, you'll peruse Goodwill and ask your family and friends for donations of materials they may not be using. Next you will reuse, repurpose, and put your creative skills to good use.

My boyfriend and I found this little table at Goodwill. It was inexpensive, and is sturdy and rather cute besides the disturbingly greenish hue of the fake wood top. I briefly joked about painting it to look like a stop sign due to its octagonal shape, but in the end decided to make a table cloth for it.

Momma Cat often has pieces of fabric left over from projects, or sometimes people give her nice fabric that they are not using and she saves it until one of us has a good idea for a project. I asked her if she had anything she was willing to donate and she produced this lovely flowered print which, quite frankly, is exactly the kind of thing I would have chosen for myself. I love black, white, and red together, especially when the red is used as an accent color as it is here. The fabric is knit, which is kind of a strange fabric for a table cloth but so far it works very well. Really, as long as it is washable, I think any fabric should work.


This table cloth was incredibly easy to make. All I did was tear off the ragged edges to make an even rectangle, fold and press the edges under at about 1/4'' and then fold and press them under again at about 1 1/4'' and stitch it all the way around to keep the edges from unraveling. The candles which you see on the table were handmade by myself and a very dear friend about three Christmases ago.


I get frustrated almost to the point of throwing things and cursing when I try to put on my makeup at a bathroom sink with no counter on which to spread out my arsenal and I keep dropping eyeliner pencils all over the floor. I cannot behave that way, of course, because I am a lady, so I decided to construct this shelf out of some reclaimed wood that my sweetie had stashed in the basement. I didn't have to buy anything for this, as I just took out the screws that were already in the wood and reused them in the construction of the shelf. My amazing aunt and uncle gave me the most wonderful tool set for my birthday a few months ago, and I have enjoyed putting it to use on furniture projects such as this. I still plan to paint the shelf so that it doesn't get soggy sitting on the bathroom floor. My dad volunteered a bucket of primer he had sitting in the basement, but I keep forgetting to purchase a paintbrush and have yet to decide what color I want to paint it.


Last but not least is a project from awhile back. You know those plastic rings that are left over when you finish a roll of scotch tape? Instead of throwing them out and spending money on fancy napkin rings for your table, a bit of ribbon can transform those little plastic rings into stylish napkin rings! If you want to know how, I made a video tutorial (actually my very first ever video tutorial), which can be viewed on Youtube:


Well, that's all for this post. It is getting quite long because I tried to cram several projects into it at once. I hope you like it, and that it inspires you to get creative and save some money on your home decorating solutions!

-Baby Cat

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Baby Cat and I are busy coming up with new projects and new posts for this great blog.  Yesterday we spent a considerable amount of time downloading pictures from my camera, only to have me lose them somewhere, or delete them (I'm not sure).  We were finally able to insert a picture representing us into our profile.  We decided to use photos of our dolls, because that's what we love and that's what we like to make.  

The doll with the dark brown, almost black hair represents me, Momma Cat, because she somewhat resembles me as a very young child.  The other doll represents Baby Cat, because again, she somewhat resembles what Baby Cat looked like as a very young child.  Both of these dolls are part of an extensive and on-going doll collection that we plan to share with you over the course of time.  We hope you love them as much as we do. 

We also hope you love our blog and leave us comments because we are very interested in what you think about our creations and our collection. 

- Momma Cat
 

Friday, July 6, 2012

!!Our Brand New Blog!!

Laughing Cat Creative Enterprises is a combined effort from Kay and Assunta Cicalese.  We are a mother and daughter team who've been working together for the last twelve and a half years.  We each previously had our own blogs alldolledup1.wordpress.com and peculiarcrochet.wordpress.com, but decided that since we love working together so much, we want to blog together too.  So welcome to our new joint effort.  We plan to share our creations, original patterns, craft ideas and all things creative.  In addition, we will occasionally showcase one of the many dolls in our collections.