Make Your Own Tiny China-Head Doll

For those of you who would like to make your own "china-head doll", here is a Fimo version that anyone can make.  I am working on writing directions.  It is a whole different style of writing than writing stories--I am not very good at it.  If you have any questions, or need better photos, just ask.

The collage bellow illustrates the steps to create a tiny doll...feel free to download for your own use

  The first picture in my hand is of two porcelain boy dolls that I wanted to show you.  You will make your doll parts directly onto the wire frame.  (I fire my pieces and then glue them to the frame.) This Femo method can be used for flesh colored dolls or animal dolls, here I used white to simulate china.  I like to make mice and other animals to dress like dolls.  Once you have made the doll, you should wrap the wire with strips of cloth and glue  (I usually use white silk mini ribbon for this purpose).

First twist two pieces of wire at the center.   Bend the top pieces into shoulders and arms and the bottom pieces into hips ad legs.
  Make a shoulder-plate and neck out of   Fimo...bake it.  Be sure to bake it for 10 minutes and let it cool all of the way.  Put a very small amount of liquid Fimo on the neck.
 Place a small oval of Fimo onto hardened neck.  Note that the back of the head should be higher than the chin.
 I was in such a hurry to make this tutorial, that I did not let my neck cool enough and it snapped in the process of adding the head.  I had to plop a head on and as you can she , she has no neck.
  using a fine stylus, add some facial details...two slight indents for eyes should be pressed in the middle of the face and a slight dent for mouth.  Be careful not to over-sculpt ..this is a tiny face and you do not want to over do it.   Gently nudge the Fimo with stylus to form a chin
 I added a bun at the top of her head.
Bake the head.
Cut the arm and leg wires to the lengths that you like and make some little arms and legs right onto the wires.  I press the hands into a slight point and place them in the direction that I like.  I did not make fingers.  You may want to make fancy shoes...I made them simple and will show you latter how I make shoes out of ribbon.
Bake the doll to harden legs.
I used liquid Fimo to add  thumbs and a nose in small drops placed on with a toothpick. then I baked The doll one more time.
  I am out of black acrylic paint, so I used dark  brown to paint her hair.  Paint her hair slowly with tiny brush strokes to simulate hair at her neck and around her face.
  To paint her face.  I  made two tiny dots for eyes, two thin lines for eyebrows out of brown paint to match her hair.
  I found a nice rose acrylic for her cheeks and mouth.
  I use my thumb nail as a palette for tiny amounts of paint.
 For the cheeks I added a small amount of water to my thumb- palette and mixed it with paint, so that I made a blush.
  I used the paint straight for a clear little dot of a mouth.
  When I was done, and the head was dry, I covered the head and shoulders with triple thick varnish.

This is my latest porcelain china- head doll.  I have put a tutorial for knitting these tiny undergarments on my needlework blog
http://mini-needle.blogspot.com/

Here she is  in her new dress.  I am making her an ivy green coat , a green silk hat and I am trying to  design a "carpet" bag for her. 

I made a new slip for this little doll.

Have a Wonderful week,
Lucy Coles

The Winner of The Fairy-house is....

A patch of tiny porcelain dolls

A mother with her son and daughter waiting for their clothes.

My new favorite artist is ,Maurice Prendergast  He is known for his images of the New England sea coast and Venice.  I will dress the above doll family in similar dress as the family in this watercolor, the boy will have a sailor suit..

Here is a the China -head doll that I am working on.  In my next post I will discuss how I made her and dress her.

This was supposed to be on the top..and the winner is Daydreamer, athttp://aboutmydollhouses.blogspot.com/.  Hi Betsy, please send  your address to lucy_coles@netzero.net, and I will happily send you the fairy-house, pillows and shell wreath.  Congratulations!

New Miniature Needle-work Blog Open

     I am moving all of my talk about knitting to a new blog http://mini-needle.blogspot.com/, which I think  I have just opened to the public.
      My hope is, that other mini-needle-workers will help me fill this new blog with images of their work, and that the whole blog does not revolve around me.  For now, I will just write about knitting and myself...that is what I know. If you are a needle worker and have some advice or information about a product that you would like to share, please contact me at lucy_coles@netzero.net.  If you are not a needle-worker and need some advice, please feel free to ask questions...if I do not have the answer I will find it. 
     My first post is about Burmilana which is a fiber that I have mentioned on this blog, but it really doesn't belong here.  So, if you are interested in a fine wool thread that comes in 113 colors and can be used in many mini projects, come visit me on Needle work in Miniature, I'll be glad to hear from you.  mmmmmm

Miss Kitty is a new project that I am working on.  Above is the first prototype of my first pattern. She will be the first project that I descuss on my new blog...that's a lot of firsts.

Please join me on my new blog, even if you are not a needle-worker.

http://mini-needle.blogspot.com/

New Image of Fairy House giveaway

I am in the middle of rearranging my blog and it is getting messy!
       I am continuing to hold my Fairy house /Beach house giveaway on this blog, but I am setting up two new blogs : one for miniature  needlework which is called Needlework in Miniature, and one for all the fun stuff that I have been doing with my beach house and one inch scale miniatures, This one will be called Lucy's Littles.
 I am doing this because, Evalina Rose was originally supposed to be about the characters in my stories and their half scale setting, and, because  I am easily distracted by what the rest of you are doing I have  gone off in too many directions--it was a great summer.  To contain some of the hysteria and  neaten things up, I will remove much of the unnecessary content from this blog and focus on Evalina  and her house.

Fairy and house.

View of patio and garden flowers.  I have used tiny scraps of lace for the curtains and tiny pink flowers in the window boxes.

For now, I leave you with  new images of my giveaway and the promise that I will be organized in the future.
I will give links to my new blogs when they are ready to view
have a wonderful week,

End of the summer, Beach-house Give-away

This Sea Fairy House is part of my give-away.  I made a similar house for my Beach House and will set it into the garden when I make one, but for the winner of my give-away, I have set the sea fairy and her house into their own setting.  The setting is made of cardboard, Femo,seashells and green "grass".  So the fairy comes with her own garden, but her garden can be set into a one inch scale garden.  She is less than 1/4 inches tall, but seated on her mushroom, she is about 1/4 inches tall.

 

.The  house is made of card stock with five layers of gesso.  The shingles are made of tinny shells that I found in Rockport,  MA.

I have set the house into a tiny setting with a rock wall and garden( all made of Femo ,shells and miniature landscaping materials).  The fairy is the blur seen through her rose arch.

There is a small metal bench, which I have painted green, that I bought a long time ago at a show.  The gravel around the house is made of fine crushed shells.

Sea Shell Pillows...These four pillows are printed  and sewn by me and are included in my give-away.

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I collected these shells on the beach of Rockport, MA.  I added some freshwater pearls.  The base of the wreath is Femo,   The wreath is part of my give-away, it is quite fragile.

Summer is over at my house, the children are back at school, the mornings are cool and the beach house has been removed from my kitchen island.  So to celebrate the end of a lovely summer, I am giving away things that remind me of it.  If you would like to be included in my give-away:
1) Leave a message on this post.
2) place the picture on my side bar(labeled"Beach-House Give-Away") on your blog...This optional, but would be greatly appreciated.
3) you need to be a follower.
4) the winner will be picked on October 1, 2012

If you have a mini beach house, send a picture to lucy_coles@netzero.net, and I will post the picture on my blog to help celebrate THE END OF SUMMER.
Good luck and I hope you enjoy the rest of the warm weather.

Hugs,

Beach House

These are some porcelain fairies that I made some time ago.  I am planning on having a "Beach House" giveaway at the end of the summer.  I will include a tiny fairy and a fairy -house made of tiny shells.  The bellow picture is of some printed fabric that I have made for pillows and cloth napkins.  I have made far too many and will include some of them in the giveaway as well.  

I am working on my chimney right now.
  First I cut a piece of foam  roughly into the shape of a chimney, and glued it onto the side  of the house.
 I am experimenting with papiermache to form my bricks because it comes in a much larger amount than Paperclay,and coast less.  So far it seems to work.
 I will cover the whole chimney with Papiermache in stages .   I am encasing the top of the chimney where it meets the roof line so that  the roof will look like  it is cut out and not part of the chimney.
  I made one mistake: I made the first batch too moist and it was hard to mark the bricks, so they are a bit large.  The mermaid tile was stuck on with siliconized acrylic caulk which is what I have used for most of my gluing.  Siliconized  acrylic caulk  is a great adhesive  it's thick and you can paint over it easily.  

 

I have used the same taupe acrylic paint to paint some of my foundation stones and the roof shingles to tie the house together visually.

I have a love hate relation ship with porcelain.  I love the finish that I can get, the colors of china paint, the glaze and the gold.  I love the details and the fact that it shrinks a little when it is fired.  But it is brittle, not easy to model and is very messy plus the physical discomfort that I have mentioned in the past, but  I just adore French and British porcelain figurines and have spent a lot of my past trying to reproduce them.  What should I do?  An ongoing question.  I have been unpacking my  miniatures and found these tucked into a little box.  the largest one is one inch.     

I am experimenting with crochet...I am using Gutermann's 100 cotton and a .5 crochet hook. Also I am testing the Burmilana wool thread, it is the peach and green fiber and it is knit.  I am very happy with the results and if anyone is interested please tell me and I will add a post all about it's qualities to my Knitting page.  I almost forgot...the bumilana works well in #40 silk gauze with a #10 needle.  It is for machine embroidery and comes in many colors.

Annabelle wanted a picture of her puppy to appear on the blog. This is Percy, he was too quick to get a good picture of him

A porcelain garden angel that I sculpted many years ago.  I think that I will keep her where she is, in Gwendolyn and Joseph's bed room.

Have a lovely week,

Summer Fun

     I have been trying out different types of clay.  In the past I have worked in porcelain,but found it too abrasive for my system.  I found some La Doll at Amazon and spent a little time with it today.  The chimney tile is a quick piece of work.  I didn't spend much time refining it, but I can tell that it will be beautiful to work with.  It has many of the same qualities of porcelain but it is more malleable.  One of the things that I like about porcelain is that you can paint fine details on with slip...La Doll allows for this technique also.

       I can,t wait to have more time to work with this clay. I think it will allow me to make great details in my work, but for now, my children and I are  off to Boston to visit my mother and the museums.

Tile for beach house chimney (2 3/4 x 2 3/4 inches)

 Normally, I would knit or embroider my own window treatments , but summer's end is close, and Annabelle's house needs to be finished.   I have a nice collection of  of vintage lace, and have used some  of it  for the beach house windows.

I have used some roses made from cold porcelain to tie back the bedroom curtains. 

I made this  blue wicker Chaise longue this week.  I used directions in  the book Wicker Furniture by Sheila Smith to get a basic idea, but changed it to suit my needs.  The lounge will go o he porch.

I need to make one more chair, a bench and two little tables, and the porch will have all of it's furniture.

Details of Gwendolyn's dresser.  I painted the china with china paints about eight years ago. The blank pieces were from Avon miniatures of the UK http://www.avonminiatures.com/  .   I plan on working on my flowers at some point, but for now they are just balancing in the vase.  The wall paper is from Itsy Bitsy Mini, and is described in an older post.

Annabelle solved our cat-in-the-house problem.  She made Bella a cardboard house which I put on top of a china cabinet.  She loves to sleep in it and to look down on all of us.   

We are planning to do a lot of mini baking.  We made these whipped cream dollops out of silicone caulking that I put in a disposable plastic pastry bag fitted with my smallest star tip.  The clean-up was easy, as the caulk cleans with soap and water until it dries.  Once  they dried I was able to store them in a little plastic container.

I finally got the nerve up to use liquid resin.   I  used Easy Cast, and it was easy. My biggest fear was that it would harden all over the place, but it takes a few hours to set, giving you plenty of time to add color, mix with tiny fruits, drop into jars and clean up.  If you are afraid to try this project, don't be.

Have a wonderful week,
Lucy Coles