2015 #11 Matryoshka Dolls {by Lucy Edmondson}

2015 Theme 11: Hidden Objects

Hi everyone Lucy from True Colours here, joining you this evening with a post about Russian Matryoshka dolls. As soon as I saw the theme Hidden Objects, I thought of the iconic wooden peasant dolls nesting inside each other, and how perfectly the features of the Lynne Perrella faces would work for a Russian theme if I deconstructed the stamped images.

Finding the blank wooden nesting dolls was easy - a quick trawl of a certain on-line auction site found sets of five very cheaply. Not so easy was the design planning. I spent ages stamping out every Lynne Perrella stamp I had before deciding on these three, which I felt looked like scaled down versions of each other. Likewise with my choice of flowers, the JoFY mini gave me the three different sizes of the same flower. I also had no clue how to map out the design on my dolls, so I hope you find the die cut circles idea I eventually hit upon a useful starting point.

Step One: To kick off with, give the wooden boxes a good sanding as they're a bit rough, and base coat them with a pale Fresco opaque. I used Vanilla as this was going to be my apron colour. For the steps we are working on the largest doll. Die cut four circles of decreasing sizes and place the two largest on the largest doll.  You want the largest circle for the apron, overlapping the base and the top section, and the second largest for the face immediately above it as shown. Draw around the face in pencil. For the apron, draw around the bottom two thirds of the circle and then join up the gap to the face like a neck, as shown in the next step.

Step Two: Paint the face with Fresco Blush mixed with a little Prawn and the shawl in several coats of Banana. The apron can stay in the original Vanilla shade. Paint the base and about a centimetre below the shawl with several coats of London Bus. Don't worry about the join as we're going to cover this with a row of flowers. I hope the template is making sense now!

Step Three: Prepare your pieces for the faces for the three dolls. I have used Lynne Perrella LPC008 for the largest doll, bottom right in my picture, LPC007 on the left for the smallest doll, and LPC001 on the top right for the medium doll. Emboss the images with Versafine Onyx Black with clear embossing powder onto tissue paper. Alison Bomber told me she clear embosses her images and it is such a good tip! Turn them over and give them a little eye shadow with Glass Blue, and Blush with Prawn, and cover the whites of the eyes with Buff. (Later I added London Bus to the lips). Cover the whole face with Blush mixed with a little Prawn as we did for the base of the wooden doll. The idea is it will blend in later.

LPC008

LPC007

LPC001

Step Four: Prepare your pieces to decorate the dolls. Paint pieces of tissue paper in the appropriate Frescos for each of the images: the flowers are from the JoFy Mini 34 and are in London Bus, Bougainvillea, and Glass Blue, the tiny row of flowers along the doll's waist are from LPC023 and are in London Bus with a Banana centre, the leaves are from EDY10 and are in Tinned Peas, the leaves forming the bow at the neck of the largest doll are from ELB04 and are in Banana, and on the smaller dolls are from JoFY 26, and the tiny flowers are from ELB15 and are in Glass Blue. I found painting the reverse of the tissue in Vanilla made the translucents more vibrant. Fussy cut all the pieces out.

Step Five: Cut out the features from the tissue paper face so that you have no black surround and adhere to the prepared face on the doll with Golden Regular Gel Matte and paint on a peasant-style fringe with Fresco Little Black Dress. Adhere the other pieces as shown. Cut the largest of the pink flowers in half so that it overlaps the top and bottom sections. Use a black pen to outline the apron and face.

 Step 6: Paint the whole of the doll with Fresco Gloss Glaze for a lacquered finish! 

Here's a final picture showing the medium and the tiniest doll!

I do hope you've enjoyed this and will consider having a go at decorating some wooden nesting dolls! I did some research on Google Images before I started and although I plumped for an iconic peasant look for this post, there are so many other designs I would like to try. Some of Clare Lloyd's face stamps would be absolutely perfect! I'd love to see some hand-drawn faces too!

Lucy x
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oh Lucy these are fabulous, the mashup of so many collections is amazing, it all works so well. the Lynne Perrella faces are perfect.. such pretty colours too, and they are brought to life with that coat of glaze. 

We would love you to join in with challenge #11: Hidden Objects If you are inspired by any of our guests who blog with us over the fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Hidden Objects link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, June 21st, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.