Miniature Santa Au Naturel...

A few years ago, I designed and made a small (doll-house scale) Santa Claus doll. I gave him as a little extra thank-you gift to one of my wonderful eBay customers. Anyway, I always meant to make another and just recently found my original pattern. The clothing pattern is missing – so I’ll have to redraw that.

I have a copy of a great old book, Dolls to Make for Fun and Profit, and the author, Edith Flack Ackley, recommends stitching small dolls by hand, so that’s what I did - and it was actually easier than following pencil lines by machine on something this tiny. Santa is a little less than six inches tall so he's just the right proportion for a 1/12 scale dollhouse. His arms and legs are wired for flexibility and I ran dental floss through the body to attach them. Next, he has to be gessoed and painted.

Santa Gloves Technique

I usually just needle sculpt the fingers of my Santa dolls, but wanted to try stitching individual fingers. Those narrow seams can be tricky to turn and frustratingly fragile, but I think I’ve come up with a compromise of sorts. On these hands, I only stitched the lower portion of the fingers separately; the upper parts of the fingers are just needle sculpted into the palm. I think this technique gives the illusion of long separate fingers with a lot less trouble. I’m making a gardening Santa and wanted him to appear to be wearing work gloves so I painted the hands with a coat of black gesso; then sanded them before painting with acrylic paint (which was also sanded). The hands were sculpted from a suede type knit fabric so the look and feel is ever so slightly fuzzy.

Recycling Old Vinyl Doll Bodies

There are new articulated replacement bodies available for Gene Marshall doll collectors to upgrade their old beloved Gene dolls for more pose-ability. I just performed that easy operation on one of my dolls and was wondering what people do with the old bodies. I belong to a Yahoo group for Gene dolls and someone in the group suggested adding Styrofoam or wooden eggs to the necks and turning them into mannequins to display extra outfits. I found an abandoned needlesculpted cloth cat head (from a pattern in an old dollmaking magazine) and placed it on the neck of the old body. Perfect fit! Now, I have to figure out how to finish it. I will either add cloth ears and then paint it or I will add paperclay on top of the cloth and refine the sculpture a little more before painting.

Anyway, here are a few photos of the muslin-sculpted head. Check out that overbite!

Hope everyone is having a safe and happy holiday!