Wednesday, May 20, 2020

I Did It Again! Another New Project!

  Okay. I've done it again. I started another thing before finishing the ones I already have started. But I'm going to see this one through to the finish right now,even if I don't like how it's turning out. The reason I started something new is, I came across my peachy felt the other day, which is perfect for a skin tone, and I got inspired to make a doll.

He's about 4 or 5 inches tall.

  It's not everybody's skin tone, but it reminds me of an old Tiny Town doll,or the limbs of a Baps doll. If you aren't familiar with Tiny Town dolls you can go to my post on mine HERE. If you aren't familiar with Baps dolls, you can see my Baps doll HERE, and the beautiful ones I saw at a doll show HERE.  Now that I found this felt, the other thing I can do is repair my Baps girl's arms. Then maybe I'll take a whack at her face. (That sounds mean, doesn't it?)
  As for this new guy, I started with a wire armature. Actually, to be honest, I started like I usually do, about 4 steps into the process. I started by making his head.
 

I should have started with the wire armature. I made his head by bunching part of the felt  into a head shape,and stuffing it with polyfil. I tied thread tightly around the neck so it would stay a head shape. It felt pretty creepy strangling this guy with thread,especially after I had made and felted the body, and had to re-tie the neck! I felt like there was somebody somewhere who looked like this guy,being inexplicably strangled by an invisible force. 

Ad you can see,I made him a nose,ears,and, much to Ivy's dismay, lips. I might remove the lips when I try painting the face. They might look weird painted. Ivy thinks I just need to remove them. PERIOD.

Voo Doo dolls aside, I spent some time twisting wire to make him a one piece body and limb contraption. I then started the process of covering his torso with felt. With a torso there was something to attach his head to. I trimmed the excess felt that had been gathered around his neck to form the head. It was thickly bunched, so I  had to cut a lot of it out. Next I moved on to his arms,and shaped his hands. I glued the felt with Fabri-Tac,which stays pretty soft and rubbery for a while. That allowed me to use scissors to snip at the glued felt,which by then had merged with the glue and become a somewhat moldable single entity, to shape and reshape the body,including snipping shoulders and shaping the torso and arms..


 That's also how I made his hands. With the hands I glued the felt, and then snipped in fingers with scissors. After the fingers were cut in, I squeezed and shaped them with my fingers,adding more Fabri-tac as needed to make them moldable.




    This is how I always make the hands on the miniature felt covered dolls I make. Like THIS ONE,THIS ONE, and THIS ONE, and especially THIS ONE. Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't tell you this. If anybody can make one for themselves, they will never buy one from me,and I might want to do that again some day.
  Then I covered his legs.
 
I know his stomach area looks awful. But don't worry. That will be under his clothes and not be noticeable. The only thing that matters is how he looks in his clothes.
    One thing to keep in mind is that it has to be done as you go. The glued felt eventually gets tougher. By the next day the felt was too hard to snip very easily,or squeeze into shape.


  He's now in the process of having his clothes made. Ivy chastised me for gluing the clothes I was making for one of my almost finished dolls just last week. So this time I'm actually attempting to sew the tiny clothes wherever possible. When I get the clothes finished I'll show you. Then we'll see what he looks like with a face in another  post. But I promise we'll get there!
  As you can see, when I took these pictures, my lilacs were still blooming. I have been trying to get this post up for days, but I was having trouble with the memory card from my camera. I couldn't get the pictures onto my computer. I finally got it to work, but I think I'm going to need a new memory card. Luckily Ken already has some ordered,because we have that wedding to photograph in a few weeks.
  By now my lilacs are just about gone. The dogwood tree's blooms have all dropped. 

The walk at the side of our house,(Actually it's the back. It's hard to explain.), is covered with lilacs that have dropped already. We've had some really hard rains, so some of them were beaten off, I think.
The iris's are fading.
 
I have since pulled those tings in the back on the left. The other stuff is my daffodils. The flowers finish and wither, but the greenery lingers on. (It just gets flabby!) My white fencing has seen better days. It needs replacing or at least reshaping. I have some plastic fencing I'll probably replace it with. It has been either cold or rainy or both all Spring,so I haven't done much yard work. You know, I have a roll of the full sized vintage fencing made in a similar style to this one,(I found it ion the ceiling of our garage when we moved here almost 25 years ago.),  and it's still in great shape! They don't make 'em like they used to!  

  When I took these pictures my yard was full of flowers: lilacs,iris',and whatever these are:


The stuff in the front is red clover. It started years ago and I left it to grow for our rabbit,Jerome,who enjoyed it. Now I leave it for the bees. They need it.


  They might be weeds, but if so,they're nice ones. Does anybody know what they are? I also have a lot of this stuff this year.





Does it look familiar to anybody? Ken says he found in online and it's dark nettle. I found it as something else. It's a weed, I think, but it grows purple flowers and has nice leaves with a purple tint.
  These bushes have started to flower.

The grass is badly trimmed, but the little plant on front of the bushes on the left are wild violets. They grow where they want and refuse to grow where they are moved,so,I left them. they have medium purple flowers.

I like them for doll photo shoots because the flowers are small. You'll have seen them before,for example,in the MOTHER'S DAY POST featuring Dolly World and her daughters...


  ...or THIS POST, featuring Dolly and a few of her kids...


...or THIS POST on the Dolly Darlings doll,Honey. Nice bush...but does anybody know what it is?


  My peonies are getting there. They have a while to go though.


  They are surrounded by those yellow flowers,and to the right is that Asian lily that I finally identified a couple of years ago.
  So, until that guy gets his clothes on,this is it from here. See you soon.

17 comments:

  1. Oh goody, a little project doll! Can't wait to see how he turns out!

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    1. And this time I'm going to actually finish one!

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  2. I'm no gardener but some of these plants do look familiar. The tiny white flowers, do they have a very cloying (not so nice) smell? They remind me of the little flowers that grow on hawthorn bushes...I just looked them up and some of the images look very similar, so you never know. And those ones you called dark nettle, are the leaves really soft and not at all stingy? They remind me of a plant here that is actually used in cooking...I think it's called deadnettle and it has the small purple flowers too. https://www.purduelandscapereport.org/article/spotlight-on-weeds-purple-deadnettle/
    Big hugs xx

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    1. They don't really have a smell. The flowers look exactly the same,but I looked hawthorns. up and they are green year round and get red berries the Fall. This bush looses all it's leaves in the fall and doesn't grow berries. It's still a mystery bush I guess! The nettle thingy is not stingy,(Oh. I'm a poet.)The leaves are softish.I think you may be right about it being dead nettle. In any case there is no poisonous look alike for dead nettle,so I might try eating it!

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  3. PS I meant to comment on the little man, he's coming along well, and LIPS!!! He has LIPS!! :D

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    1. Ha! Thanks. I need encouragement on the lips after Ivy downed them so much!

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  4. Love your little man.

    Your garden looks good too.

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    1. Thank you. As for the yard, it's all camera angles. It's a mess really! But we do have some nice flowers this year!

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  5. The little purple flowers are when we call Ground Ivy, or Creeping Charlie. It is a weed, but it's pretty and to quote George Washington Carver, "A weed is just a flower in the wrong place

    The white flowers are probably Spirea, or Bridal Wreath. Very pretty blossoms and it grows well, ever for somebody who has the Thumb of Death, such as myself.

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    1. Spirea! That does seem to be it. Thank you. The leaves and the flowers are both different from what I see as Ground Ivy, but we have that too. I definitely agree with George on this one. I don't even mind dandelion 'flowers',although the leaves are ugly.

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  6. Beautiful dolls; I especially like the clothes on you Barbie Dolls. They resemble real people.

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    1. Thanks. That's the best compliment, because that's what I was going for.

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  7. I like the little man. Of course, he should have lips. How can he pontificate without them? I thought I would throw that word in as I had a friend who liked to say it all of the time (chuckle).

    The flowers are lovely.

    I like seeing Dolly World and the children.

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    1. Thank you Dorothy. I'll see what I think of the lips when I try to paint them. He may turn out looking like a clown!

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  8. Ooh, I get to see one of your dolls from the ground up as it were. I don't think you have to worry about people making their own and not buying yours. There are always people that have no talent, no time or both! Are the yellow ones buttercups? I dunno, they are all pretty but I don't know too many flowers on sight.

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    1. Great. The doll you get to see from the start turned out, let's say, not as I would have intended. The yellow flowers have leave that are very familiar, but I don't think they are buttercups.

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    2. If that's Dale Leroy, I loved him! He's got personality.

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Thanks in advance for your comments.