An Urge to Make a Doll

It's Pinocchio! I saw this doll and fell in love with it. The artist Ankie Daanen has created a bunch of beautiful dolls. She is a popular artist in all the doll art magazines. She sells a Pinocchio doll e-pattern on Etsy if you want to give it a try.

I've been working on this for the last 3 or 4 days. It goes pretty slow because I have to let the paper clay dry before moving on with the next stage. I make each piece in stages. I've been making dolls for a long time so this is not new to me and I have my own way of doing things. I like to put paper clay over wood to give it additional strength. These pieces are hollowed out to keep them lightweight and help them dry faster.

I've made polymer dolls over a wire armature but paper clay is a whole other medium to work with that has its own set of rules. First of all, I make my own paper clay from a recipe by Jonni Good of Ultimate Paper Mache . This paper clay is rock hard when it dries and very sandable. They look really rough at this stage. The mechanics aren't pretty but the pieces are really strong. I use wood glue to hold the pieces together when I join them.

I thought I would join the knees and elbows with little wooden balls to bend at the joints but I wanted the hips and shoulders to be attached with a pin straight through. 

I made his little hat and it started to dry out while I was shaping it over a styrofoam egg so I just left the crackled surface because it looks a little like knitting! I didn't plan it that way but O.K.

This clay dries so hard you can whittle it into shape with an xacto knife and drill it too. You can sand it but I find that scraping it with the back of my xacto knife smooths it out pretty good and a few layers of paint sanded in-between with a piece of brown paper bag really makes it pretty.

The next step is to put it together just as soon as I get all the meat on the bones. 

Red & Pink Beauty

I saw these graphics on thegraphicsfairy.com and knew I just had to make another Valentine journal. This is from the Tokens of Love pack. I may have added some more of my papers and postcards to it also.

 

Oh these colors are so pretty together. I love the pink, red and red-violet in these. I hand dyed this ribbon and put a faux wax seal on it. I used dimensional fabric paint to give the seal some 3d looks without covering up the print.

I dragged out some more of my charms that I traded in a charm group years ago. I learned a lot about making little jewelry pieces in that group. I have jars of these still.

I put a lot of pockets and postcards in this one. I got some cutout felt pieces from the dollar tree. You have to get those as soon as they put them out or they disappear quick.

I had to take the paper samples and make pages out of them that I could use. And I also used a paper set from etsy from a seller named CottonTwigTX, Valentine Papers.

I did use a lot of fabric lace and trim on this one too. 

 

I used a heart graphic to make my tattered letter paper for the signatures. I made six signatures of four sheets of paper and a red, pink or white doily heart.

The graphics are adorable. I love that little angel in the envelope so I made it into a pocket.

I also used my leftover paper strips like you would use washi tape but I totally loved those vintage postcards! I got those off of etsy from BlossomPaperArt.

Oh Marie! Love Those Shoes!

I've been a big Marie Antoinette fan since way back. Love the frilly, love the girlie stuff and I love to make beautiful things. So I went gaga when I first saw these Marie Antoinette paper shoes about 14 years ago. I used Anna Griffin papers and die cuts to make mine.

First a little background. There used to be a Marie Antoinette mail art swap group on Ning 13 - 14 years ago. I was a member for a short time and really enjoyed making and trading all things Marie on that group. I think they moved to a new group hosting platform years ago but I really haven't kept up with them.

But I found the pattern again and cut out a modified version in these Anna Griffin papers and die cuts. I just brought the sides in a little at the middle and made the heel a lot shorter. You can make the shape of the upper several different ways. These are gorg! 

I remember Terri Heinz from Artful Affirmations who had a shoe swap in that group back then. I love her site and even though it's no longer being updated, the site is still up and you can go get her FREE SHOE PATTERN for her Marie Antoinette paper shoes there and cut them out yourself. She even has a video showing you how to put them together and you can also find it on her YouTube site Joyful Compass that's still up.

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So I decided to drag out my old shoe pattern and make a few little pretties. Anyone can take her pattern, (it's free) and modify it and make their own version of Marie shoes. I was inspired by Terri to make these. She gives you options for modifying them on her YouTube channel and shows you how to put them together so I'm not going to reinvent the wheel here. Just go watch Terri's video and she explains all you need to know.

I used my Anna Griffin papers and Beautiful Birthday Concentric die cuts and a few others to decorate. I think Anna Griffin is coming out with her version of these shoes soon. I also found some pretty bling at the Dollar Tree. Love those big faux jewel stickers! Go stock up on those while you can. I only found them at two out of four stores I went to! I used gold foil paper decorative die cuts I already had to make these and made some extras to cut up into shapes that fit the top of my shoe. I modified Terri's pattern a little to shape them and make them flatter but you could make them thick and put heels on them if you wanted to.

I really played around with these. They were so much fun. I made a journal with some Marie Antoinette shoes in it too! It's almost done.

I also did a freehand pattern of the shoe in the size of 2-1/4" that is cuter than anything. I made them into paper clips! They are so cute I can't hardly stand it! I will be giving that pattern to my crafty friends if anyone wants it. Get the .pdf pattern here. 

Hearts and Flowers Valentine Journal

This is the first of three journals I've made or am working on. This one has a lot of thegraphicsfairy.com vintage graphics in it and I love it!

I used a little bit of everything on this journal but I really liked the pink and red lace that I had to work with.

These charms are just adorable. I like adding them to the top corner of the main page.

I had some pink Valentine paper that I hadn't used up so I wanted to reduce my stash. It's not easy to make the papers you have all come together but they worked for this one.

I found some beautiful heart shaped prints on thegraphicsfairy.com and just cut out a shadow layer from shiny foil paper for the edges.

I have collected a lot of satin ribbon bows from my Anna Griffin purchases and have a lot of leftovers from cards I've made. 

You can see some leftover Anna Griffin project pieces I put on the back. I don't like to over decorate the back of the journal because I want it to lay flat.

I also used some flower cutouts I had leftover and I used some flat back red pearl beads for decoration.

I like to use glitter around the picture edges too.

This graphics fairy set of graphics came with a sheet of Valentine words so I found a way to use them too.

 

I thought this one was the prettiest one I made but I think the next one I just got finished might have outdone it. I don't know why I'm making all these journals but it makes me happy so I'm going to keep going until I want to make something different than them. 

Blue Jay Winter Journal

I actually finished this one back in late summer but it just didn't seem the right timing to show it so I waited until winter.

The graphics are from thegraphicsfairy.com. I started out making a tag with the instructions and then it just kind of grew into a junk journal.I think it's one of the original 3 or 4 that I did using the sewing machine.

I made the white sparkly paper out of wax paper, kleenex and thinned white glue like my grandmother used to make it.

With the first few journals I made with envelopes, I tried to use the windows and make things "peek" out of them incorporated into the design.

I put the pieces of the writing and print paper together and just printed them out all at once as a generic printed piece for most of the background pages.

I added six signatures to this one and splattered the blank pages with some blue shades of ink.

I added pictures of children playing in the snow.

Instead of cutting the pictures out and gluing them on it's a lot easier to position them on the background paper and print them out in one shot.

On the very back page I made a snowman peeking out of an envelope window. This was the first fat journal I made. Little did I know they would get a little fatter as I went along.

Now I add dimensional ribbons, jewels, cords, special effect glues and glitters and sometimes I add a charm to the top corner of a journal if I have one that would go with the theme.