Shoes for Dale Leroy

  Okay! Here's the latest update on Dale Leroy,the felt doll I've been making,named after the son my mom always wanted. I made him some 'big yella work boots' like my dad used to wear,that Mom wanted her mythical little boy to wear.  I was going to paint his shoes on the felt feet I made on him, as I have done for the other felt covered dolls I have made. You may have seen some of those in my "A Doll of My Own Making" posts. (See the sidebar.) Then I thought, well, maybe I will make him some separate felt shoes. I found the right colour felt in my stash.
 

I thought I would just cover his feet  in yellow felt and paint on some shoe laces. Then I thought I could glue on thread or string and make faux shoe laces. Then I decided I would make his shoes like real shoes, in separate pieces, with tongues, and all that. Then I decided to even actually lace them with thread laces.
 

The white felt is for the soles.

   So these are the 'big yella work boots' Dale Leroy ended up with.

They aren't removable. Sorry Ivy. I glued them on.

His pants are pushed up so you can see his shoes. I haven't tried pulling them down over the shoes yet. They may not fit!

  

 
I even remembered at the last minute that Dad,who always replaced the laces that his 'big yella work boots'  came with right away, with leather laces,used to wrap the laces around his ankles a couple of times before tying the shoes.

The shoes took me a while, but I did do one wise thing I usually don't do. I made templates for the second shoe from the pieces of the first shoe, once I had fine tuned it. 

He kind of has Frankenstein feet now.

You can see some glue. This is why I have only made Caucasian people so far. I sort of make the felt moldable with the glue when I make the hands, especially.The glue blends into the pale felt,but would show with darker felt. Ivy had a costume she was working on at college, and had me experiment with mixing paint with the glue(Fabri-Tac). It doesn't work!

Of course, since the feet weren't exactly the same, the shoe didn't fit the other foot the way the original had fit the first foot! 

  So the one foot looks a little wider than the other one. But I have feet like that, so why can't Dale Leroy? He's my brother, after all!

Happy Mother's Day and Some More Tiny Little Things

  Hello again. I hope all of you moms had a nice Mother's Day. For those of you in Europe,our Mother's Day was today. I have two of my kids here at home,so I spent time with them,and due to social distancing I did a video chat with Emma. I got some nice presents which I will show you when I can move freely again! Ivy made me pancake breakfast in bed,and later I broke with my LPR rules and had Mexican food, and brownies for dessert.
   I'm still laid up with a back spasm,although it's not as bad as yesterday. Ken put some pressure on it this morning and it eased enough that I was able to get some sleep, and I managed to take a shower today,(which was painful,but do-able). Still,I'm staying close to the bed and the bathroom, because if I go downstairs and my back stiffens,I may not be able to get back upstairs!
  As to what caused the back spasm,I suppose it was mowing the grass on Thursday evening. I was ok on Thursday night, but on Friday I had really bad back pain when on my feet for any length of time. I was washing dishes in the evening,when both sides of my back and my stomach all clenched,causing terrible pain. I finished most of the dishes and sat down for a while. By that time the pain had made me a bit sick and light headed. It took me back to my working days, when I used to work like that all the time! Then I got up yesterday feeling a little stiff, which is nothing abnormal. I went to the bathroom,got my pants on,and started to feed the cat. (We keep bowls upstairs for the one cat because he doesn't like to go downstairs. Of course, then the other cats, who get fed downstairs,eat all his food. Why not feed them all upstairs? Because they make such a mess,and because we don't have room in the upstairs bathroom for multiple bowls.) My back started clenching while I was bending over feeding them, and when I tried to refill their water bowl I wasn't sure I was going to be able to stand there at the sink and fill it, let alone bend over and sit it on the floor. Cleaning the litter box was an interesting experience as well!
  I seem to always have some physical problem,don't I? Really, I don't feel I'm sick that often.
  It occurred to me that I should have shared the recipe for the Super Crust.(Not my recipe.It's by Cooking With Italian Joe. So here's the link to the YouTube video where I got it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUg0WpFNvI4
  If you don't want to watch the video you can find the written recipe at: https://cookingitalianwithjoe.com/pie-crust-3/
  There was also another picture I forgot to include in the last post. This is more stuff I started and haven't finished. These are a bunch of partially finished and nearly finished mini doll cases, clothes, hangers,and one weird doll. The battery is an AAA one, for size reference.
 

And also the red thing in the upper right corner is a purse I started,but the cardboard I used is too thick to let it close properly. Other than that it was going pretty well. Maybe if I used heavy duty glue to put the sides together...

 I leave some of these things before they're finished because I decide part of the way through that they just aren't working out for one reason or another. Some of these cases were made with paper that was too thick, so they wouldn't close properly. Some of them had drawers that I wasn't pleased with. Some I didn't like what I did for hinges. I might get back to them someday. That doll will look better when it's finished...I hope. I thought a couple of those dresses turned out well.I have a lace collar cut out for one of them, but haven't put it on yet.
I also started this felted cat. I don't have any felting needles,so I faked one up by cutting nicks in a thin wire. It sort of worked. The cat is pretty solid. I didn't finish him though. His tail isn't fully attached and isn't trimmed to size. Oh. And he has no face.

He does have tiny ears. No legs though.

  Well, hopefully tomorrow I will be back to normal, or at least close enough to function.

Stuff We Made---Again!

  Recently I did several posts on the miniature souvenirs I made for the kids' dolls' vacations. There were loads more things we made that weren't connected with the doll vacations,that were just 'because'. I came across a lot of them in redoing Ivy's room, and when Fuzz moved back home recently he cleared up some of his doll stuff too, and I photographed some of that. I thought today I'd show you some of those things.
  First up is this tiny puzzle that belongs to Ivy's doll Blue.

You can see from the penny how small it is. I know I cut it out, but I think it had to have been a picture of a puzzle because it had the lines for the pieces already on it. I don't know where I found it.
  In the posts on the souvenirs I showed you some tiny magnets I made. I made these Wizard of Oz magnets for Blue too.

I think they were things I cut out of an old catalog too,and glued to very thin magnet material.
  Ivy has a collection of millefiori paper weights. I made this mini butterfly paperweight for Blue. I got the idea when I found the small,clear half circle,which is actually a rubber foot for something. I put the butterfly picture on the bottom. I thought it worked quite well as a miniature paperweight. You can buy the clear rubber 'feet' by the pack I think.

 

Ivy has a mug that was sold by the company that sold the school photos. They were available with the school photo printed on them, and Ivy had to have a mug of herself. I used the tiny photos used as examples on the school photo sheets and made some Ivy mugs for Blue.

The mugs were sold at lots of places,including a local Hallmark store. They came blank, or with a name printed on them,and were sold for charm bracelets. I had forgotten, but apparently I also made a couple of Fuzzy mugs for Fuzzy the Doll.

The kids made a lot of things too. The array of goodies below belongs to Blue,and were made by Emma mostly. I did make the donut I think, as well as the pink and blue lollipop,(which is missing it's stick),and the pink cake. It has lost it's red bead cherry. It was very easy and quick to make,because it's made of one of those wooden plugs that cover the screw holes in put-it-together-yourself furniture! I just had to paint it!

Fuzzy also has some donuts. I'm not sure which of us made these. They even have a little paper bag to hold them all. The bag would have been home made too. I saved bags from gift stores for things like this because they are thin and make more realistic looking small bags.

I also came across Fuzzy the Doll's New Year's hat.

It was made from a used Christmas cracker,with some Christmas garland around the bottom. (That huge thing coming out from it is the very old rubber band chin strap. It's seen better days.) You had to have a New Year's hat because the dolls had to celebrate New Year's with us.
  Fuzz had one of Emma's cakes too,and what appears to be cheese on a bun.

All of this stuff was made from polymer clay.
  I made Emma a TV for her Emma the Doll. Sometime I'll try to show you that one. This one is Ivy's TV for Blue.

I painted Emma's black, but Ivy's was left white. I put the three black bead controls on it, but I think Ivy is the one who wrote 'Sony' on it. We must have had a Sony TV at the time.
  The TVs were made from tiny boxes. I cut the front out for the screen area,replaced it with a piece of clear plastic from a doll package,and taped in a piece of cardboard to fit behind the 'screen' hole so the pictures I made into TV screens would stand up to the clear plastic. I cut out a lot of 'movies' from store ads,and even wrapping paper.(All those Rankin and Bass shows,like Rudolph,and The Year Without a Santa Claus, etc.,and the Christmas Story ones are from wrapping paper.)

I even found pictures from some of Ivy's favourite movies that aren't very well known,like the little known Disney movie "Child of Glass",second from the bottom, far right. The black and white pictures were from old movie catalogs I saved from school! They were the catalogs the school used to order movies. In my post on Topo Gigio I mentioned how the movie "The Magic World of Topo Gigio" is considered a lost movie now. No one knows where to find a copy of it. But apparently it was still available in the 70's, because there it is, center far left, straight from the school's catalog.

  Most of these 'movies' I 'laminated' by covering them with wide clear tape. 

More Topo Gigio. Ivy loved him.

  Fuzz had some things that were cut out of ads and catalogs,like a pizza,a notebook, a fan,a mask, and a 'Franklin' book rack,cut from a cardstock book ad from a magazine. They're missing, but there were tiny Franklin books that fit inside.

I even made Fuzzy the Doll a birthday card from a scan of the real Fuzzy's birthday party invitation.

I made the kids a movie one year,starring their dolls. Emma was inspired to make movies too. She made a sequel to my "Emma and Fuzzy Take a Road Trip" called "Emma and Fuzzy Take a Time Trip". We held a premier,and invited Emma's friends and their dolls. The starring dolls got to walk down the red carpet amid the flashes of the paparazzi, (We used small strobe lights!),and put their hands and signatures in 'cement'. (It was wet self dry clay. We still have their signatures and hand prints in the 'cement'.)  They even handed out autographed photos of themselves to their fans.

These pictures of Blue and Emma the Doll are from Blue's collection.

  I have more things to show you. The next time we'll look at some three dimensional creations.

Making Mini Souvenirs in 1/6 Scale, Part Three

  This is part three of the posts on 1/6 scale souvenirs. If you haven't read the other two, now's the time to catch up. And everybody but Dorothy can check out the Facebook page, where I posted a thingy about a doll artist who makes gorgeous realistic dolls.
  The kids' dolls 'went' to various places on vacation. In my previous post on the vacations,which you can see HERE,I showed you some of the photos Ken and I did for the doll emails home. Like this one of Fuzzy the Doll heading up the mountain in Tibet with his guide.

  Or this picture of Fuzzy's best friend, Little Purple, petting a yak.

Both of these pictures were done by putting the dolls in front of a photo in a book. The lighting had to match the lighting in the photo. These days all you'd have to do is photo shop the doll in a photo.
  When he 'went' to Tibet to track the Yeti,he brought back a hat, which you may have seen in my post on Fuzzy the Doll for Fuzzy's (the kid) birthday one year.

I made the hat out of felt, and painted the design with acrylic paint. It was based on the hats in this photo.

I loved how the lady looked like she was looking at Fuzzy with confusion,but I'm not sure I used this photo because it looked too fake.

  I told you about the emails the dolls sent home, and Fuzzy the Doll's personality in Part One. If you read that you'll understand when I tell you that Fuzzy the Doll sent an email saying he had met 'the Dolly Llama'. He then sent a follow up email saying he really liked the Dolly Llama and was thinking of bringing him home. "I think I can fit him in my suitcase." When he got home it became more understandable how he could fit 'the Dolly Llama' in his suitcase and why he spelled it that way.

I made this tiny llama out of wire and some very furry thread. I don't know if you'd call it yarn or thread really. I couldn't find the appropriate fake fur, so I had to wrap the wire with the thread. It worked pretty well. It looked more like a llama than this picture suggests. He looks like a horse in the picture. We couldn't find the Dolly Llama,so I had to resort to this picture that was taken when the dolls got off the plane after their trip. As you can see, they also went to England during the trip,because Fuzzy also brought home a pub sign. The sign is actually a button I found at Hobby Lobby.
  Fuzzy was tracking a Yeti,so one of the things he brought home was a 'plaster' cast of a yeti footprint. I made it out of spackle. Luckily the casts they make of footprints are a positive,because that was much easier to make out of spackle,(and without a doll sized yeti foot.) than a negative.
  When the dolls went to England they visited London,which I showed you some of their souvenirs from the other day. In addition to those things they also visited the BBC gift shop and brought back little Doctor Who magnets. They were real magnets. I used very thin,almost paper thin,magnets from a free tiny calendar or business card magnet. I used that same magnet type when I made the Beatles magnets Blue brought back from the dolls' trip to Liverpool.

Blue brought home a set of magnets and a pack of postcards.

The magnets are very thin, but they really stick to metal.

Ringo was Ivy's favourite when she was little. The pictures were cut out of an old Beatlefest catalog.

I also used them for Blue's souvenirs from Italy.

These magnets sets were made from pictures of real magnet sets from an old PBS Signals catalog. I cut the pictures out of the catalog,glued them to the magnet, and then cut them out all over again.They really work just like the real ones,and you can stick the clothes on the statues.

  Ivy wanted Blue to go to Italy because she loved Topo Gigio. (See my post on Topo Gigio HERE.) One year Ivy sent her Topo doll along. On another trip her dolls just visited Topo's mother,Mama Gigio.

I don't know what the wooden  thing behind Mam's head is, but I like it, and it came in handy as part of Mama's house.'Mama' is a Topo doll,wearing glasses,a vintage embroidered antimacassar as a shawl, and a piece of lace crochet on 'her' head. Blue's sister Rose has 'red sauce' on her face because she loved Mama's red sauce and kept eating it. She liked it so much she brought a jar of it home with her.

The label says 'Mama Gigio's'. This was in Ivy's doll stuff.

This time I used paint instead of the real thing,after Ivy ate that tea Blue brought back from England! The jar came from Hobby Lobby,or maybe The Dollar Tree. The Dollar Tree sold nail art do dads in jars like that. For a pack of 6 or 8 it was only $1, much cheaper than Hobby Lobby.
  I didn't find it, so I can't show you, but Blue also brought back a little biscotti in a paper bag. I made the biscotti out of  polymer clay,and the bag out of one of those very thin paper bags they give you at Hallmark or other gift shops.
  While they were in Italy Blue also visited Pompeii,because as a kid Ivy shared my fascination with the place.

Blue with a mural 'in' Pompeii.

Blue and Ivy's other doll,'Swingy Legs'(Yes, that is what Ivy named her.),somewhere above Pompeii.

  From Pompeii Blue brought back a couple of pieces of lava. I scoured the parking lot at Walmart where they had the bags of lava rocks they were selling for use in grills. There are always little pieces of lava scattered around, that have fallen out of the bags. I found a couple of really tiny doll sized pieces,one light coloured, and one black,for Blue.
  There was one trip where Fuzzy the Doll went to Hollywood. He brought back some autographed pictures of the stars. True to form though, his emails said someone was going to sell him the Hollywood sign,and he was going to bring it home. Obviously the Hollywood sign is not for sale, and you can't fit a 45 feet tall sign in your suitcase. After a couple of days he decided not to buy the Hollywood sign, and to, instead, buy The Hollywood Bowl. I had forgotten about this, until Fuzzy and I were sorting through his doll stuff for me to do these posts,and Fuzz picked something out of the stuff and said,"Here's the Hollywood Bowl."

Fuzzy's Hollwood balloon,which is part of a floral thingy,his autographed pictures,cut from a catalog Lori gave me, and...The Hollywood Bowl.

Well, the kids found it amusing.
  Blue also brought back some 'signs' from Italy. They are below,right. They are scrapbooking stickers,but they are thick plastic,and since they have been cut out for a while they are curling up,which makes them look like ashtrays.On the left is a packet of French Baker Recipe Cards Blue brought back from France.

I think I must have cut them from a catalog. The tiny plastic packets were cut down from some kind of packets,and sealed with tape cut into a thin strip.

Emma's doll went to France too. You may have seen this picture of Emma the Doll and her best friend Susan in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Regular reader Dorothy made a comment about the dolls not having to worry about taking too much on the plane. I'm not sure if she meant they didn't have to pack anything,or if there was no weight restriction. But to clear up any confusion about the dolls' luggage,let me tell you that the kids did pack luggage for the dolls. They sent clothes for while they were away. I actually went to the trouble of changing the dolls' clothes for the different pictures they sent home. Every detail was thought of!

Emma the Doll,ever the fashionable Diva, brought back an original Paris dress, with matching hat and clutch purse.

This type of hat is called a 'picture hat'.

I found the fabric at Joann's, It has French places and things printed on it. Since Emma's birth I had gone from someone who never sewed,to someone who still sewed badly,but could sew and design a dress and accessories. I think I may also have provided the sunglasses.

Emma had the peace sign necklace on her already,and she's been wearing the clear bead necklace ever since it was sewn on her when she was "Anastasia" with Emma for Halloween.

  As I have mentioned before,Fuzzy the Doll went to various places in Africa, including Egypt,and a diamond mining region. Here's his map,which he brought back with him.

I think he may also have brought back some tiny 'gold' nuggets. I'm sure he brought money back with him too. When we started these vacations,we printed one sided doll sized money,but eventually we got good enough at it that we were able to do two sided things.
  Fuzzy brought back these necklaces for everybody. This one is Blue's.

He also brought back some African masks. They were buttons made to look like African masks, that I found somewhere,probably Hobby Lobby.
  He brought back the necklace below left for Blue too,I think. 

The green bead necklace is Blue's 'jade' necklace from China. I know there is a wrong bead on the metal bead necklace. It was missing a few beads when I found it. I miraculously found two of the beads it was missing...and lost them...and found them again!...and lost them...Every time I tried to put them back on,I'd drop them and lose them again. When I thought I had found the right ones and gotten them back on,I noticed in this picture that one of them was wrong! Amazingly enough I found the third missing bead and replaced the wrong one!
  Until I go through Emma's things at some point,that seems to be the end of the doll souvenirs that I have  to photograph. There are a lot more things I made for the dolls,but for now,I'll gave you a break!