Delphine Completed

This has been such an enjoyable project because I have been under no pressure to get it completed in between quite a few summer visitors and social occasions. Sometimes deadlines are the enemy of enjoyment!

"Delphine" (not sure if this is really her name, but it will do for now) is complete and I'm quite happy with the outcome. Just to remind you, I made her to wear the antique baby shoes given to me for my birthday a year and a half ago by my sister Linda. I wanted her to be a bit special, so I painted her head with oil paints - there is just that little added something using oils instead of acrylics. 

"Delphine" is a 22" (56 cms) jointed cloth doll with a sculpted cloth-covered head. I made her wig from lincoln sheep fleece. 

She is wearing the combinations and smocked dress that I posted about previously and I have added commercial cotton baby socks, a petticoat which I trimmed with a crochet edging, a winter coat with stitched detail edging and hand-knitted mittens, scarf and beret. She's dressed for mid-winter, even though it is high summer here right now! A little shoulder-bag with an embroidered hankie inside completes her. 

Galah Baby?

 I've just completed this "galah baby" in recent days - another foray into oil painting heads. Why galah baby? Well, that's not her real name - she doesn't have one yet, but I've always loved galahs for their wonderful colouration and, well, their galahness. So the colour choices I made in the dressing of this new child.........soft greys and muted pinky mauves just reminded me of galahs, hence the "working title".

She's wearing a smocked grey cotton dress and knits from angora yarn that was gifted to me a while back. The doll has a jointed cloth body with a one-of-a-kind head sculpted from air-dry clay. To this I added a cloth covering, treated it with a special sizing mixture and then painted it with oil paints. There is a certain luminosity which comes from oil paint that you simply can't replicate with acrylics. I also like the fact that you can push the paint around for a long time before it dries. This doll also has painted hair.

I stained the muslin body with thinned-down acrylic paint mixed to match the head colour and there is a bit of blushing on the knees, hands and feet. The neck has a flange joint and it is attached to the body in such a way that it has side-to-side movement.

Here are a few details:

Smocked dress front

Crocheted slipper

Wired hand is posable.

Crochet edging on the petticoat

Fuzzy hat detail

And just for fun......here is a galah!

Some New Work

Although my doll-making has tailed off a bit due to the commitment I have made to renovating my house and garden, I'm still constantly making them, albeit more slowly.

Firstly, I have this brother and sister pair in their winter woollies. They are both about ten inches (25 cms)

Most recently, I completed this little child - she about eight and a half inches tall (22 cms) with jointed shoulders and hips and needle-sculpted fingers, toes and knees. In a departure (or maybe a return) I painted this doll's head with oils. I do love the different, translucent look of oils over acrylics. It is somehow more subtle and sympathetic. I'd almost forgotten how much I loved to look. 

It was looking at the recent work of Susan Fosnot an American cloth doll maker who makes exquisite oil-painted dolls that inspired me to re-visit oil-painting my dolls. More to come, I think.

Here she is - so much fun to make!