Another recycling project for me. This rather unattractive girl’s denim dress into……
To make your own peg dolls you will need:
The first step is to paint your pegs, as you can see I mixed up a variety of pinks, browns and whites for the skin colour. Wait until the first coat is completely dry before painting again. Once again, allow to dry.
Now paint the legs, from the centre slit down to the tips. Allow each coat to dry before doing the next. You can make the legs spotty, stripey, plain, whatever you like. Then paint the tips with a darker colour for the shoes (I used black). Paint on hair in different styles. You can paint on the face if you have a fine paintbrush, but I drew mine on with Pigma pens. A word of warning – the varnish seems to smear the pen, so avoid varnishing the face, or leave to dry for 48 hours first (I don’t like to wait!)
When completely dry, coat the pegs with varnish and stand to dry. Coat again. You can use either a matt, satin or gloss varnish depending on the effect you want. Allow to completely dry.
Push a chenille stick to the top of the split in the peg. It should have fairly equal amounts on each side, but you can trim them later so don’t worry too much.
Taking the chenille stick from the front, wrap it around the body of the doll twice, winding up towards the head. The last wrap should go around the back of the head and stick out at a 90 degree angle to the doll. You can see I’ve also bent the other stick at an angle so it doesn’t get caught in the first wrapping.
Now take the chenille stick from the back and wind in the opposite direction, around the body twice again, and around the back of the neck as before. Trim the arms if they are not equal or readjust your winding.
Put a small dob of craft glue at the back, just underneath where the arms cross. This is not essential, but helps to hold them in place.
I’ll be posting the tutorial seperately seeing as it’s photo heavy. But first, an introduction starring the Peg Doll Girls!
Meet Jane, an all round nice girl, everybody’s friend.
This is Krishna, she loves spending time with her friends and is an adventurous cook.
This is Carmel, she’s a little bossy but a big softie underneath it all.
Last but not least is Anna the fashionista. Her favourite pastime is, yep, you guessed it – shopping!Pop over to Lenna’s blog for the chance to win a great floor lamp, I think I really need one of these!
An art journal cover that I’m practicing hand quilting on (and I really need the practice!)
Peg dolls that are painted but as yet unclothed, I’m trying to figure the best way to dress them without interfering with the attached arms. Hopefully I’ll have a tute up for these soon too š
A pair of shorts for one of the girls from recycled clothing.
I’ve been shopping just a little for some “essentials”. A few bright and pretty fabrics, some lovely hand dyed wool felt from Winterwood and wooden clothes pegs to make peg dollies with the girls.
It is a near perfect spring morning here, I hope you enjoy your day wherever you are.
Yes, I’ve been on Flickr, couldn’t you just spend all day there, so much to see! I do love pin cushions, I can’t believe I still haven’t gotten around to making myself one (or one hundred – I like them that much!) This cute little arrangement is by Lucy’s Daughter.
We tend to be a hand – me – down magnet as a family which is mostly a good thing, but involves sorting through bags of clothes we often don’t want and that end up in the charity bin. Recently I saved a few items that were made with nice fabric but in a style I didn’t like or were too big for my girls. Cut out the seams etc. and ta – da! Free fabric.
So here is the first installment, a top made from 2 other tops. The crocheted flower was a gift, so, apart from the thread and the sweat of my brow the top was completely free.
Some cute hair accessories over at Nadine’s blog – I can see these in my girl’s hair!
I have a growing interest in Crewel embroidery but haven’t gone so far as to buy the crewel wool needed yet. The design above is a simple one from a crewel work book which I worked in stranded floss. I’d love to have lots of little framed embroideries around my home, so this one will be the first. I actually want to do one for the laundry, seeing as I spend so much time in there these days and it’s possibly the least attractive room in the house!
I love hand embroidery very much and hope to increase my skills to teaching level one day. It is such a rewarding pastime and is so rich in history.
I do have one problem (see above). My mother in law kindly gave me her embroidery tin many years ago and this is what sparked my interest. Each new lot of cotton I buy ends up in here – a tangled mess! I would like to treat my cotton respectfully and increase my stash, but this is holding me back. I’ll consult my friend Google for solutions, but if anyone has any helpful suggestions I would be most grateful!