Doll-A-Day 2019 #85: Ivy's Collection: Homemade Nesting Dolls

  Today's doll is this nesting doll from Ivy's collection.

There is one more that isn't in the picture!

  You may have seen the other set of nesting dolls that I painted as our family for Ivy. If not, you can see those HERE.
  The largest doll is 2 and 1/4 inches tall.

The smallest is so small we call it 'the crumb'.

I was so scared of losing it that I didn't even photograph it in the photo of all of the nests. I only did it with the one it's inside of, for comparison.

In the end I had Ivy hold it for me, because she swears it has a face, but it's so small I couldn't see where it is!

I made these for Ivy one Christmas.
 

This one is my favourite. I think she has sort of a 1930's look.

Ivy insists that nesting dolls are no good unless they have a lot of nests. So I bought a blank set with LOTS of nests!

This one is Ivy's favourite.

They were hard to paint. Where do you hold them while you paint? I ended up wedging the halves of the bigger ones on top of a shampoo bottle!

And of course, the smaller they got, the harder they were to hold.

I have no idea how I painted the tiniest ones.

I would like to think I could do a better job on these if I did it now, but...

  That's the doll for today. See you again tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-Day 2019 #83: Ivy's Collection: Nesting Kokeshi Doll

  Today's dolls are three sets from Ivy's collection of nesting dolls.

These are Kokeshi dolls. Kokeshi dolls have been made in Japan for over 300 years. The name may have come from the Japanese words for 'wooden',(ki),small,(ko), and doll, (keshi). They were originally made as guardians for children. They later became popular tourists items. Today they are still considered good luck and are kept in Japanese homes as protection. The traditional dolls are very simple,solid wooden dolls,without arms or legs,painted black,red, and yellow,and coated with wax. The face is simply painted, with little detail.

These dolls aren't just kokeshi dolls though. They are also nesting dolls.

This is one of Ivy's favourites in her collection. I was trying to hide it from her when I brought it home, but she saw it. She got excited because she knew it was a nesting doll. I told her it wasn't a nesting doll. Instead I told her it was a toothpick holder! She believed it,so she was surprised when I gave it to her and told her it was indeed a nesting doll.

These also have another feature Kokeshi dolls don't usually have: bobble heads!

These only have three dolls,and only the first two have bobble heads.

It was hard to get them all to face forward at the same time because of the bobbly heads.

All of the nests in Ivy's favourite set have bobble heads except the very last one.

Kokeshi dolls with the wobbly heads are called Nanbu kokeshi.

These aren't traditional Kokeshi dolls. These would be called  'creative kokeshi' dolls,which would have been made after WWII.

  For those of you who were interested in the mini pocket knife Ivy got for me,she says she thinks it came from AliExpress,or possibly Wish.  
 

  Tomorrow we'll look at another doll.

Doll-A-Day 328:Santa Nesting Doll

  Today's doll is another from Ivy's nesting doll collection. It's this Santa.

They're called 'nesting dolls' obviously because the dolls nest inside one another. The nesting doll originated in Russia in 1890. The Russian name for a nesting doll is Matryoshka doll.

This guy has three more nests inside him.

Santa has a three dimensional beard on the outside nest, but the inner ones are smooth. Traditionally the very inner nest of a nesting doll is made from one solid piece of wood.

He looks a little worried. I don't blame him: It's almost Christmas eve!

  Ivy has loads of nesting dolls, including two other Santas. This was her most interesting Santa.
See you tomorrow for another doll.

Doll-A-Day 164: Nesting Dolls of My Own Making (And My Own Family!) and the answer to that glaze question

  First of all, London Peony, our Blogiversary giveaway winner has FINALLY received her prize. She sounds happy with it! She's planning a photo shoot with it, so I hope she will share some of the pictures with us,or alert us if she posts them on her blog.
  Now, a while back I did a post on another of the tiny dolls I make, and one of our readers,Margarita,asked me what kind of glaze I used. Today I'm showing you another project I did using the same glaze. It's this set of nesting dolls I made for Ivy one Christmas.

Left to right: Ken, me, Emma, Fuzz, and Ivy.

It was a set of  blanks I bought and painted for Ivy, since she collects nesting dolls.

What to do with Ken's hands? Why let him hold a prop: his most frequent real life 'prop'? His knife and fork of course...

I drew the faces with pencil and chickened out when it came to painting over my pencil lines.I painted them with acrylic paints and used the glaze Triple Thick, by Deco Art.

Triple Thick says it only takes one coat, but I did give these a couple of coats to make them extra shiny.

Ivy would kill me if she saw this because I don't have the halves perfectly lined up. (She has a thing about lining the halves up.)Notice my left thumb.

Triple Thick is supposedly resistant to cracking and yellowing. It seems to live up to the claim so far. These nesting dolls were done in 2007.

Emma when she still wanted to be a movie director, before she went to film school and completely changed her mind. That's a video camera in her hands.

One thing about Triple Thick though: I have noticed that once it's been opened it starts to go thick and sticky fairly quickly. (Like, within a couple of months or less.) So, unless you use a lot of glaze in a short period of time, buy the smaller bottle instead of the large jar. Price per ounce is cheaper on the big jar, but unless you get to use it all before it gets too sticky to use, it ends up being less economical simply because of the waste. 

 

Fuzzy.

By the time I got to the Ivy, the smallest nest, it was pretty tiny and hard to even hold while painting it. That's my excuse for why the tiny one looks so bad!

Ivy is holding her favourite larger doll, Baby.There's no way I could have painted her other favourite doll in scale to that nesting doll of her.Her other favourite is a Kelly friend,Major Mint from Barbie Nurcracker.

Major Mint originally looked like this and was a boy. We thought he was so pretty he looked more like a girl, so 'he' became 'she', and, as she did with a lot of dolls at the time, Ivy named her 'Blue'. (It was her favourite colour and the only one she knew the name of, since she was only 2 years old.) This is the only one named Blue that we still remember the name of. But then, we still see her on a regular basis.

Since the dolls are painted to look like our family it worked out that there were five of them and five of us.

That's it for today. See you tomorrow for another doll.