Large Doll - Part 5

I have been busy on the doll project this week.  To begin, I'll add a quick recap of the project so far. 
I cast a paper mache' head on a Styrofoam head, then removed the head from the mold.  I had to take the cast piece off in three pieces, which I put back together and added more layers of paper mache'.  The next step was to build up the facial features, which took several days.  That brings us up to today's blog post.  Readers can go to my blog and view previous posts to see the step-by-step pictures of the process.


This past week I started painting the head.  I have never found an acceptable flesh color pre-mixed.  Many of the colors are too light and pink or have too much of an orange or reddish tent.  I try to mix my own colors to get the flesh color I want.  However, I am rarely satisfied with the result.  The problem mainly is that human flesh is not one color, some areas are darker or redder and there are shadows that change the temperature of the color.  The other problem is that most acrylic paints dry darker, but some dry brighter than they are when wet.  It may look as if I have the perfect color mixed, but one dry it turns out to look differently.  I have to tell myself that this is only a doll, and good enough will have to do.  I am making a doll, not painting a masterpiece.

The first paint on the head was a coat of medium thickness opaque gesso.  Paper mache' is not a smooth medium.  Despite being sanded, there will be some areas that are not entirely smooth.  In some ways the rougher texture actually helps the face look more authentic.  A completely smooth plastic face never looks real.  The thick gesso helps fill in some of the pits left that remain after the head was sanded.   The gesso also creates an opaque layer that covers up the printing on the newspaper that was used to make the paper strips for the paper mache'.

My first color mixing attempt was a little darker and had more sienna in it than I wanted.  That was okay because this was only the base coat.  I mixed a second color adding some pinkish white.  The mixture looked dark when it was wet, but dried lighter than I had anticipated.  I spent a few minutes debating whether to give the paint a third try, but ultimately decided to work with what I had.  It was not that far off, and I was worried about making things worse instead of better.  Besides, I was using up quite a bit of paint in the process.

When I mix paint for a large piece like this head, I mix up a large batch of paint.  First off, I do not want to run out of paint in the middle of painting the piece.  Since this is a mixed color, my chances of reproducing it close enough to match are slim.  Also, I need to have enough paint to touch up any painting errors made while painting the features.  This means I may have to plan on keeping the paint around for several days.  When I am finished painting for the day, I spray the paint liberally with water, cover the paint tray in plastic wrap, and keep the whole thing in a plastic bag.  The paint will stay moist for several days.  I spray it each day to make sure it stays wet.  Trust me, you will need it sooner or later.

So after the base coat and the final skin color, it was time to paint the features and highlights.  I added some pink color to the cheek area.  I found that the color wanted to stay darker in some areas where there were a few pits.  To address that issue, I dry brushed the color on the cheeks and then wiped it with a damp paper towel.   I kept dry brushing and wiping until I had an even layer of color on the cheeks.  I am not sure that it will show up as well in the photos as it does in person.

I spent some time debating on the eye lashes and eyebrows.  I had originally considered purchasing a set of false eyelashes and cutting them down to fit the project.  I decided against that because it might look odd to have eyelashes, but painted on eyebrows.  So I ended up painting on the eyelashes and eyebrows as well.  The eyebrows were the real nemesis.  I would paint one and the other would be off.  I'd correct that and then the other would look wrong.  The eyebrows were too light or too dark.  I think I must have painted in the eyebrows about four or five times.  That is when the reserved flesh color really came in handy.   Finally, I had to decide whether it was time to fish or cut bait on them.  When I had them to a point that they were good enough I decided to quit, even if they were not how I wanted them to look.

The painting was finally declared complete.  I still had to put a couple of coats of sealer on the doll.  The photos were taken before I added a satin sealer.  It came out okay.  I admit I was sweating that a bit.  Once, long ago, I had a project and the sealer for some reason was not compatible with the black paint, even though it was made by the same company.  It stripped the black paint off the project.  Unfortunately, I could not remember which type of sealer it was, a varnish or an acrylic sealer.  I have a number of sealers in the studio and I was worried about the project surviving intact.  It would have been frustrating to have to start painting all over again.  Fortunately, the sealer worked perfectly.  At this point I am calling the head complete other than the hair.

Readers might notice that the head does not have any ears.  I did not add them to this project because the planned the hairstyle will cover the area.  The styrofoam head I used as a base did not have ears.  I would have had to build them on after I removed the head from the mold.  The cut to remove the cast piece from the head would have sliced through the ears, making for a difficult rejoining of the sections.  Once the hair is on, you will not notice that they are missing.

The doll looks a little strange being totally bald.  Her hair will not be added until later in the project.  Readers may remember that while creating the sun bonnets for my scarecrow centerpiece I made one that was too large for that project.  At the moment that bonnet is covering the bald head of my doll.  It is a little large, but I could see it working in a project of similar size.  Perhaps at some point I will make a doll head centerpiece that features that bonnet.  It is not what I had in mind for this project.

One little curiosity came up on this project.  You might notice it in the last photo.  The cast head is about half an inch shorter than the head it was cast upon.  The face is a little broader that can be accounted for by a few strips of paper mache'.  You might wonder how this might have come about.  It is because in the process of removing and re-attaching the pieces of the head.  As I mentioned earlier in the project, the paper mache' pieces tend to bow inward or outward when removed from the mold.  Flexing the pieces to make them line up again changed the shape of the head.  The head is rounder rather than narrower.  It is not a game changer for the piece, just something that made me take notice.

Readers might remember that one of my goals for the year was to try to create a Halloween piece each month.  That might have been a bit a bit ambitious.  I finished January's piece at the beginning of February.  I have been working a my February piece, but I suspect that it will carry over into March.  It is good to have a quick project to work on while carrying on a long term project.  It keeps me from getting bored with the piece.  My next blog post will be about my February Halloween piece.  Check back on next Sunday afternoon for that blog post.

Large Doll - Part 4

The last two blog posts I had been blogging about a relatively short term project.  Now I am back to blogging about my long term project: a large, almost life size doll.  I guess this doll would be about the size of an eight year old child.  When I blogged about this last time, I had just completed casting the head in paper mache', removing the head from the foam head and removing the head from the mold.  I had also put the pieces of the molded paper mache' back together.  Since then I have worked a bit more on the project.  New readers can go to my blog,  folkartbycaroljones.blogspot.com, and scroll back a few posts to see the information on how the head was created from previous posts.

The paper mache' head had a slight bump that indicated where the nose was on the face, but other than that it was relatively featureless.  My next task was to create the features.  I used more paper mache' strips to build up the nose and mouth.  This was done in a series of layers and some balled up paper for the external nostril shapes.  The areas were built up until I felt that they were raised up enough for the features to be seen.  In the photos the built up strips are darker than the head because the flour paste and strips are still wet.

At this point the mouth looks a bit large.  It is important to remember that the muscles that surround the mouth are seen, but are not part of the red of the lips.  You have to add in some of that musculature in order to make the lips look right. 

The next step was to create the eyes.  That took a little bit of time to get right.  I had to have the eyes sized correctly in relation to the size of the head and also to the size of the mouth.  As a general rule of thumb, a face is five eyes wide.  I also had to figure the size of the iris of the eye.  A dime was too large to just trace around it.  I had to use a compass and make a small circle the that I could trace for the iris.

I also had to build up the upper and lower eye lids with paper mache'.  From previous dolls I have found that it just does not look quite right if I just paint on the eyes and the upper and lower lids.  (My painting skills are not all that advanced that I can make it look right with just paint.)  I added a couple of layers of paper mache' around the area of the eyes to build up the upper and lower lids.  That little bit of depth that was created makes the eyes look more realistic.

The eyes did cause one problem.  I sketched the shapes I needed and cut the pieces out of the newsprint scraps with scissors.  This was okay for the lid at the eye, but it created a hard edge at the outer areas of the lids.  I ended up sanding down the edge, but it still left a little bit of a line.  If I were to do this doll over again, I would tear the outer edges so that it would have a deckled edge that would blend in better with the face.  Oh well, live and learn.

This doll head has a slight tilt to it, as if the doll were looking slightly to the left and downward.  I like this because it imparts the idea of motion; as if something has caught the dolls attention.  Many dolls are made so that they stare straight ahead.  That make the doll look to still and artificial rather than lifelike.  The tilt created a challenge in that the doll's eyes are on a slight tilt rather than being able to draw them in on a straight line.  I hope that they will look natural rather than cock eyed. 

After all the features were completed, I took advantage of a warm day to go outside and sand the doll head.  I hand sanded it with 220 grit and 400 grit.  I was concerned that if I had used a palm sander that it might cause too much vibration and tear the head apart.  There were some areas that I wish had been sanded better.  Maybe I will try the palm sander on a future project.  However, this is a handmade doll, and I am willing for it to show some flaws rather than trying to be too perfect.  (Not that I have to worry about this coming anywhere near perfection.)

The rest of the time I had for crafting was spent on musing and researching.  The head is moving towards completion and it is time to start thinking about the armature that will support the body.  As you might guess, the armature will be made from PVC pipe.  The questions that I had were how to make the armature to hold the pose I wanted and how did I plan to anchor the doll so that it could stand up.  There was much to learn.  I looked at everything from simple 90 degree pipe joints to building fully articulated manikins.  There are many ways to accomplish the objective.  Then it becomes a question of how much work I want to put into it and how much expense do I want to incur in the creation of the armature.

The musings covered everything from how to pose the doll to how much muscle definition I wanted to create in the doll.  My original idea was that this doll would be a dancer.  To make that come out anywhere near right, it is going to take a lot of work.  Dancers tend to wear outfits that  reveal stature and muscles. What type of costume for the doll? 

I also considered things such as what materials will I use to form the body and hair?  How much is this thing going to weigh?  Is this project biting off more than I could chew?  Will I be able to pull it off?  Should I give up and just work on making a witch for Halloween?  What am I going to do with this piece after it is finished?  All this and more has been passing through my brain for some time.  I will be blogging more about the choices I have made as the project moves along.  As choices are made, some doors open and other doors close.  Each choice narrows down how the doll will look. 

I will be blogging more on this project in the next blog post as well as the progress on the doll.  Check back on Sunday afternoon for the latest updates on the doll.
  

A Cute Autumn Centerpiece - Part 2

In last weeks blog post I blogged about wanting to cut expenses on a project and how I made the base for the project.  To recap for new readers, I made a ball from foil and papier mache' for the head.  The base was Styrofoam packing material glued into a 4 inch clay flower pot.  A dowel connected the two pieces.  Raffia covers the entire project with more raffia added for hair.  That was the gist of the post anyway.  You can check last Sunday's blog post (2/04/18)  If you want to see step by step photos.

Today I wanted to blog about making the features and the bonnet.  The inspiration project for this had one way of doing things, but I came up with alternate means of making the objects.  I was trying to use up odds and ends that I have around the studio rather than purchasing new materials for the project.  After all, if you have something you can make do with, why spend more money?

My solution to making the eyes and mouth were to use scraps of fabric left over from other projects.  However, fabric alone was not firm enough to hold its shape well.  I solved this project by using some Stitch Witch fusible to fuse two pieces of fabric together.  I placed a piece of the Stitch Witch between the wrong sides of two pieces of fabric and fused according to the manufacturers directions.  Once the fabric had cooled, I traced the shapes onto the fabric and cut them out.  The fused fabric was stiff enough to hold its shape.

I cut out the eyes from a scrap of brown fabric and the mouth from red fabric.  It wasn't until I started making the nose that I ran into a situation.  The shape did not seem to work well for the nose.  I did not want to introduce another shape or color to the face.  I was stymied for a few minutes, and started playing around with a piece of raffia. 

Playing with the raffia led me into making the nose from raffia.  I started by tying a regular knot in the center of the piece of raffia.  After that, I tied a series of what I believe are called surgical knots.  You begin it by looping your fabric and wrapping the material as you would for a regular knot.  Then you wrap the other end of the material around as well.  When you pull on the ends, the knot tightens into a flat knot.  I kept tying these knots until I had a series of knot long enough to make a nose.  When the desired length was reached , I pulled the remaining raffia to the back and hot glued it down. Then I trimmed off any unused raffia.

Once I had the features made, it was time to hot glue them to the scarecrow head.  Before I did that though, I gave the face a good trimming.  Raffia has little pieces and shreds hanging off each piece.  The face area was very rough looking.  A little judicious trimming helped give the face a smoother appearance.  Once I had experimented with the features until I was happy with the placement, I glued them down with hot glue.

The final bonnet attempt.

Last week I had blogged about making the hair into pig tales.  That pulled all the hair forward.  When the bonnet was glued in place, it made it appear as though the scarecrow had a thick head of hair.  The raffia is a bit wispy, and when the hair was left straight it looked a little straggly.  I folded small bunches of raffia in half, tied them with a single piece of raffia and hot glued the bunches around the head.  Once the hair was put into pig tails, I gave it a trim to even it up a bit.

A working hat would have a wider brim.

Then, it was down to making the head piece.  The inspiration project used a piece of black burlap cut into a circle and glued to the head.  I had some very nice brown burlap, but there was no color contrast, and besides, it is in my project cue and I did not want to be cutting it up for this project.  I tried cutting a piece of black fabric into a circle and gluing it to the head.  It was limp, and looked like someone had just stuck a piece of rag on the head.  I tried folding it and stuffing it with some of the raffia I had cut off when trimming the head.  It really did not look very appealing.  I tried turning the circle into a beret and stuffing it to make it look as if it were made from a heavier material.  That was another non-starter.  I had to take a break for a bit and think about it.

Sometimes, if you take a break and just give yourself a little breathing room, the answer you seek will find a way into your mind.  That is what happened in this case.  I was at a quilting sit-and-sew and a lady showed me some blocks she had made of a 1930s quilt pattern called Sun Bonnet Sue.  When I came home I was flipping through and old quilting magazine and it had an article on the Sun Bonnet Sue quilt.  Another magazine had some red work done with Sun Bonnet Sue designs.  It finally filtered through to me, make a bonnet.

My first bonnet was not successful.

With an idea in mind, I started searching online for bonnet patterns and checking through my fabric stash for colors that would contrast or coordinate with my autumn palette.  I found a free pattern, but it came with absolutely no explanation on the scale of the pattern or how to fit the bonnet.  If you want to look for this type of pattern, use the search words pattern for pioneer bonnet or prairie bonnet.  After searching around on the internet, I did find some instructions with pictures for making variations on a bonnet that was somewhat similar to the pattern.  It was helpful enough that I was able to start figuring things out for the pattern I found.

I had to do a little trial and error to get the pattern the right size for the head.    The pattern looks huge and looked like it would be too large for the head.  I took a few measurements of the head and adjusted the pattern to what I thought would fit.  You have to do a lot of gathering on this type of bonnet.  By the time everything was gathered and matched up, the hat was too small for my scarecrow's head.  I made another one, but this one was too large.  In fact it fits me.  All I have to do was add the ties, and I will have my own hat.  The third one fit just right, or at least right enough.

Sometimes when I work on a project, it will trigger some old memory, buried so deeply that I am not even aware of it.  I remembered I had actually seen my grandmother make herself a hat similar to this one to wear while gardening.  I remember showing me that she used an extra piece of cloth as interfacing and told me that she sewed extra line across the brim of the hat because that helped stiffen the brim.    The brim of her hat was wider than the brim on my hat.  Her hat was an actual working hat where she wanted to keep the sun off her face.  For my scarecrow's bonnet, I wanted the bonnet to frame the face, but not hide the face so the brim is a bit narrower.  I also used some light to medium weight interfacing on the hat brim because I had some scraps of that product.  If  I were to make another hat for myself, I would probably use a heavier fusible interfacing.  I did make the extra stitch lines across the brim, and it did make it stiffer.

At the moment, my fabric stash was a little spare of fabrics in autumn colors.  Being that it was the end of January, autumn fabrics were not in stores either.  I ended up choosing the bright red left over from making my Leaf and Star quilt.  It came down to choosing between the red and a dark brown.  I think the red was definitely the better choice.  It really brightened up the piece.

Anyway, I made the bonnet, but did not make the ties.  I could have sewn on ties, and used that as a ribbon under the chin.  However, I chose to use some silk leaves (left over from another project) to make a collar, and some of the purchased flower heads as a necklace instead.  It added more color and interest to the project.

By making parts of the project myself, I was able to cut between $24.00 and $34.00 dollars out of the cost of the project.  It is really worthwhile to see if you can find a way to shave off a few dollars here and there.  I don't think that the project suffered from the changes I made.  If I try another project of this nature, I might even try to make some of my own flowers.  They won't look as authentic as the silk flowers at the craft store, but they may add some folk art charm to the project.

So that is the end of this project.  Next Sunday I will be blogging more about the long-term doll project I started in January.  Check back on Sunday afternoon for that update.

A Cute Autumn Scarecrow Centerpiece

Finished centerpiece.

New readers may wonder why I am making an autumn centerpiece in January, but long time readers may remember that one of my goals for the year was to make a Halloween themed item each month.  Perhaps scarecrows are only marginally associated with Halloween, but at least it is in the season of late summer to autumn.  I started this piece in January, although I did not finish it until yesterday.  I was working on it during the time I was making the large head for my doll project.  I thought you might be interested in just how this project came about.  The instructions for making this project are fairly detailed, so it will take this blog post and the next one to explain how I made this project.   Once you see how the base is made, most crafters will be able to figure out how to finish the object on their own.

In 1994 I saw a similar centerpiece in a Crafts and Things magazine.  I kept the article because I thought that one day I might make this, and now 24 years later, I finally made something similar to it.  The centerpiece was really cute, but it was also really expensive to make it. Just to give you an idea of how much the original centerpiece would have cost, I went online to a national craft chain's website and priced out each piece.  It would have cost between $32.00 and $42.00 depending on whether or not you could find a 12 inch square (30.48 cm square) piece of burlap or whether you had to buy a whole yard of burlap.  (Many times online companies only sell fabrics by the yard.)  The cost is pretty expensive for a craft item that you may only use for one season.  It might last another year, but raffia tends to turn brown over time and become brittle.  This is not an heirloom craft, just something fun for the season.  I wanted to make something like it, but not something that was exactly like it.  I only really enjoy making things that I can make my own. 

Manufactured lid helped keep in bits of foam.

The cost of the centerpiece is not really out of line with what you might spend if you were to purchase a pre-made centerpiece.  However, when you think about it, if you were to purchase a seasonal arrangement four times a year you might be spending $120.00 dollars during the course of the year.  Over say ten years, that is about $1,200.00 dollars.  At my spending level, that would be the equivalent of a mortgage payment and a winter electricity bill.   That is a lot of money for something that is going to be thrown into the trash, or at best donated to a thrift store.   I try to find ways to keep expenses down by making things from recycled materials and found objects.

I kept the Crafts and Things article because "one of these days I'm going to make this."  It turns out that 2018 was to be the year for it.  It started because I am at the point of having to do a purge of all the odds and ends that have built up over time.  When I make a project, I frequently have little bits of this and that left over, because you can rarely buy an item in the exact quantity you want.  I hate to throw out the leftover pieces because sooner or later I am going to need another little bit of something for another project.  However, over time, those leftovers build up and my studio gets overcrowded and uncomfortable and some of this stuff has to go.  I decided that before I cleaned out the room that I would see just how much of the accumulated debris I could put to good use.

I wanted to try to make the centerpiece in a way that kept costs to a minimum.  My challenge to myself was to make this craft item using leftovers from other projects and to find ways to make or substitute items so that I would not as have many out of pocket expenses for the project.  I managed to cut the costs in a number of areas.  Yes, I still had to pay for the craft products used, but many of those costs had been absorbed in making other projects.  The only real out of pocket expense for this project was the $8.49 cents I spent on the artificial flowers that decorated the hat.  I probably could have made my own flowers from leftover materials, but it seemed like more effort than it was worth.

To start the project I needed a foam ball and block.  The original directions called for a five and a half inch (13.97 cm) diameter ball made out of floral foam and a four inch wide (10.16 cm)  block.  The floral foam is less expensive than Styrofoam,  but that was still a major expense for the project.  Other than the flowers, it was the most expensive part of the project. 

I sidestepped the foam ball by making a  ball out of re-purposed aluminum foil and covered it in paper mache'.  (Note: make sure your foil is not food contaminated.  I place my baked goods in plastic bags, then wrap them in foil before freezing.  The foil never comes in direct contact with food.  After the baked goods are used, there is plenty of clean foil for projects.). On this project, I learned that I don't need to crush the foil so tightly when making the ball.  It was so solid that I had to put some effort into pushing the dowel into the foil.  Once the paper mache' was dry I painted the ball with a coat of Gesso and some leftover straw colored paint.  The gesso was to cover the newsprint, and the color that matched the raffia helped to disguise any areas that might not be well covered by raffia.

The base for the piece is a four inch diameter (10.16 cm) clay flower pot.  The floral foam brick is glued into the pot using got glue and trimmed flush with the base.  I side stepped the floral foam brick by using some Styrofoam packing material that came in some package.  I will say that the Styrofoam was very messy to trim to size and there were little bits of the foam everywhere.  It was a mess to clean up.  At least I had the consolation of knowing that I was re-purposing a material that otherwise would have gone into the trash.  To keep further messy bits from escaping from the pot, I cut a circle with tabs from a recycled file folder.   (Trace around the pot and draw on your tabs then cut it out.)  Glue the re-purposed file folder to the bottom of the pot. I had some terra cotta colored paint from a previous project.  I gave the area two coats of paint.

Next came putting the pieces together.  I inserted one end of the dowel (leftover from another project) into the ball I had made from foil and paper mache', removed the dowel, added hot glue and re-inserted the dowel.   (I think the dowel was about eight inches long.) I flipped the pot upside down and inserted a dowel through the hole in the bottom of the pot, pushing it deep into the foam.  I withdrew the dowel, added hot glue, then replaced the dowel.  This created the base for the project.  The pot needs to be a clay pot because it needs the weight.  This pot was one I had hanging around for so long I cannot remember why I had it in the first place.  It had been sitting on my crafting table holding a bunch of gel pins. 

After that, it was a matter of hot gluing on some raffia.  Basically, I gathered up a bunch of raffia and tied it in half.  Then I glued it to the head.  I did three sections in this manner to have enough raffia to cover the head well.  Then I used a piece of raffia to tie the hair between the ball and the pot.  The raffia was really long, and once the entire ball had been covered, I trimmed the raffia so that it was even with the bottom of the base.  The raffia was a little stretchy, so while trimming I had to remember to give it just a little bit longer length than it actually looked like it should be.

I wanted my scarecrow to have some hair and be feminine.  I glued more bunches of tied raffia together to cover the head with hair.  Left straight, the raffia hair looked too shaggy.  At first I tried making it into braids, but one braid looked much thicker than the other, so I decided that pig tails were in order.  In the next blog post, you will see learn more about why this strategy worked well.

I added eyes and a mouth made from fabric I made a nose by tying bits of raffia.   . I will blog more about making the features in the next blog post.

Anyway, this is a good stopping point.  Many crafters can figure out where things go from here and go off in their own direction.  However, I do have some insights on the rest of the centerpiece that might be worth reading.  I digressed from the original directions by making a bonnet.  Making the hat was not easy.  I hope you will check back next Sunday afternoon for that blog post.