A Workshop with Judy Barclift

I belong to a doll group which last month, hosted a workshop given by Judy Barclift, who is a fabulous California sculptor.  She sculpts in a way that is very realistic, yet has her trademark style as well.  She gave the workshop using polymer clay, which I hadn't tried sculpting a face in yet.  The workshop was to make a "Jack on a Stick," a pumpkin or decorative squash head for Hallowe'en.  The class was fun and we learned a lot.  While my own sculpting does not approach hers, I still was pleased to get a pumpkin character, whom I thought looked French.  I added some of my own trims, and found that I had sculpted.... a French onion seller! 

He is a dapper older gentleman who
sells onions in the french countryside.

Ah yes, we had many good times  togethair.......

And here he is, relaxing back at home. 

Vintage Compacts - Reflections of History

I recently got involved with collecting vintage ladies' compacts.  It is kind of a fascinating hobby, because they are like bits of history in your hand.  There is the influence of style, and advances in American manufacturing are reflected in each decade's worth of compacts.  

I never really thought about compacts, or even makeup much, until this summer.  Maybe the boudoir doll got me interested in them somehow... it was her influence.

Here is a Thirties vanity I am starting to arrange, with two bullet boudoir lamps and some vintage enamel compacts... plus, movie star pictures and the head of the boudoir doll, looming on the right in the background. 

Here are some Seventies and Sixties compacts I purchased and cleaned last week:

They harbored fifty year-old powder...which I have no intention of wearing, smelling or breathing.   I always wear a respirator when I work on cleaning out compacts.  I also wear cheap latex gloves, and plastic goggles, and throw my clothing in the washing machine afterward.  AND take a shower.  

The way I clean out pressed powder compact such as these is:  I use a bent-out end of a heavy duty paper clip to push the powder cake pan out of the compact - there is a little hole on the back of the compact, where you can insert a paper clip wire or some other thick wire to push it out.  Then I put the powder pan inside a thicker-type clear plastic bag, such as a freezer bag.  Keeping the bag as closed as I can, to control the powder, I reach inside the bag with a stick or paintbrush end, and start pressing down on the powder until it breaks up.  The powder breaks up under pressure, but it is under control because I am breaking it up inside the bag.  I turn the pan over to dump powder into the bag, take the pan out and  put it into another bag I have ready, and ziplock shut the first bag.

Then I might have to scrape the pan quite a bit with a plastic end of a paintbrush to get the powder off of the bottom of the pan.  I do this inside the second bag.  I couldn't have done it all inside the first bag because there was so much powder in it, I wouldn't have been able to see what I was doing and it was a mess.  The chisel-end plastic ends of paintbrushes work well, they don't seem to scratch the paint off the aluminim trays (a blue chisel end is pictured above). This takes several minutes.  Then I turn the pan over of course to dump out any more powder into the bag, take out the pan and ziplock the bag shut. Toss the bags but don't put them in the bottom of your garbage can or you could have a powder explosion when a big bag drops on them! 

Then with most of the powder gone, I clean the pan more, wiping it off several times with 7th generation cleaner or some kind of mild cleaner.  Then the pan can be put back in the compact, which has been wiped with the spray cleaner.  I never have problems with a mild cleaner discoloring the plastic.  Sometimes if there is a lingering perfumey odor from the powder, I put the compact in hot sun in the backyard to bake off the odor. That works sometimes to take the smell away.