Important Items

My mother, my daughter and I went to a doll show together yesterday.   I found this darling book which features photos of John Wright dolls.  I can't wait to read it to some little people!  Maybe I'll force my 13-year-olds to listen to it tonight.  They owe me.  This doll show was especially exciting for me because I got to see dolls made by two of my favorite internet doll-making buddies - Jan Conwell and Martha Bishop.  Martha's website is http://www.maboriginals.com/.  Jan's is http://jdconwell.blogspot.com/.  Their dolls were SO beautiful!

Three little ladies - shards found in the mud - have found a home in my home.  I love giving life to these shards.

My newest doll - I feel so happy when I have a doll to work on.

I figured out what to do with my doll shards.

I decided to try my hand at cotton spun ornaments.  I started with little doll shards like this one:

I bought the shards from a lady who had ordered them in bulk on ebay.  They had been buried in the mud of Thuringia, Germany, behind old doll factories for many, many years.  Most of them are from the turn of the century. Some of them had Thuringian dirt in them - very romantic.  Thuringian dirt.

First, I painted the heads and put some finish on them so that they wouldn't chip.

Then I made wire armatures for the bodies.  Next, I wrapped the armatures with cotton roving, which I got on ebay.   Here's what it looked like at this stage:

I need to work on making the cotton more even.  Oh well.  This was my first attempt.  I'm also going to try different sources for cotton roving, to see if they vary in quality and texture.  After the wrapping, I painted the cotton with thinned acrylic craft paint.  I've also read that you can dye the cotton.  That would probably be very pretty.  Then I glued on the heads with tacky glue and decorated the painted cotton bodies with little bits of fabric, wool roving, crepe paper, buttons, and lace.  Then I sprayed them with glitter spray to make them festive.   They range in size from 2" - 5".  Here are my Thuringian shards, transformed into little holiday children:

If you want to give cotton spun ornaments a try, but you have no idea how to start, Martha Stewart has a couple of tutorials that helped me:
Cotton spun Easter bunny
and
Lucy's ornaments

Also, do image searches for cotton spun ornaments and you'll come up with plenty of photos of adorable ornaments.

I haven't ordered anything from this website yet, but it looks like they have LOTS of spun ornament supplies: Blumchen and Company

Happy Holidays!

Beautifully Old

My two china heads - a good friend sent the heads to me.  They were in need of some love and attention.  Both have broken breastplates, but as you can see, their hearts are full!

Nobody has to know that they aren't perfect under their clothes.  Aren't we all flawed?

Husks and Shards

I spent the day dyeing corn husks for the doll class.  Aren't they pretty?  I can't wait to show the little girls!

My mom and daughter and I went to a doll show last weekend.   I bought a bunch of broken doll heads.  I was thinking of making little doll ornaments for a Christmas tree.  If I start now, I'll have a bunch by the end of the year.  I want to fix the Helen doll.  Her pieces were glued together with some old, weird glue.  It was definitely an old fix.  I need to figure out how to get the remaining glue off of the pieces.  Then I need to find out what kind of glue to use to piece her back together.  She came on a cloth body that looks original.  I'm looking forward to giving her new life.

Sweet little china head and her weird sister

Edyth O'Neill gave me a little broken china head.  She became a real doll this week.  She's very happy.  Her name is Nan.  The dress fabric is from an old quilt top scrap that Edyth found on a scavenging spree.  I still need to give her some boots.

Here's Nan in her birthday suit, with her patched shoulder plate visible.  Her sister is a strange Queen Anne style doll that I'm making.

Here's the shard.

Nan, before restoration.

Rescue of a paper mache boy doll

I found this little blond paper mache boy head at a vintage shop for cheap. With some paper clay to cover holes, a bit of touch-up paint, a new body and a cute outfit, he has turned into a real doll. He has become good friends with his Dixie Workshop pal.

Doll shard and EFA

Dolls from the Washington on the Brazos museum

They're both wax dolls. Supposedly, they are from the 1830's or 40's. They have such sweet expressions.

Edith Flack Ackley dolls?

I bought one at a doll show and found another at an antique mall. They really look like Edith Flack Ackleys to me. I mean, it looks like the makers used EFA patterns to make the dolls. But there's no way to really tell, I guess.

Incredible Find

This was my "Find of 2009." She has Maud Tausy Fangle's signature near her hairline. She was in an estate in Uvalde, Texas. I wonder who she belonged to. She's in perfect condition. It seems like she must have been put away in a box for years.

Poor Little Girl

I found her in a box under a table at a doll show for $15. I'm going to make a separate bodice with arms that I can tie/snap onto her torso to restore her to life.

Composition and paper clay children

The doll in the blue is my first really big doll. She's holding a teeny doll. My cracked composition doll is watching over them. I love my composition doll. I bought her for $30 when I was a kid at a doll shop that used to be on Knox Street in Dallas in the late 70's. I have always loved the crazed, cracked composition and the yellowed eyes and the fuzzy hair. She's unmarked. She has little teeth. She came with the dress. It looks original because it fits her to a tee. That doll shop was like a wonderland. It was in an oooold store that had an upstairs gallery and walls and walls of glass cabinets with old dolls in them. The floors creaked when you walked.