2016 #5 Designer Fabric Doll {by Elizabeth Borer}

2016 Topic 5: Art Dolls

Hi there everyone ,Liz here.  I'm back today with a post about Art Dolls. I've never made one before but I have made rag dolls in the past so I enjoyed doing something different. I won't go into details about making the doll itself because there are many great books and instructions to be found on the topic . Instead I will take a look at colouring the face and creating designs on fabric to dress the doll .

When I made my doll I made her legs out of stripy fabric so that she had ready made tights on . Her hair is made out of a mix of grey fluffy wool and hand dyed silk wool which I stitched onto her head until I liked the effect.

The face was drawn and coloured on cream fabric with colouring pencils. I found this easier than paints which can spread in the fabric and spoil the lines. I drew the face onto the fabric by drawing onto tracing paper and transferring the design to the fabric. I didn't cut the fabric out before drawing on it because working on a larger piece of fabric gave me more control .

Top face , I outlined the features using a reddybrown pencil quite lightly and then started adding shading using a dark yellow colour .

Bottom face , I added more colour with the red pencil and used a white pencil to add highlights and the whites of the eyes.

Top face , I coloured the eyes and then added black pupils and white highlights . I used the red to outline the lips .

Bottom face , I added more depth of colour to the lips and cheeks . I also added colour around the eyes and used black to outline the eyes and add eyelashes. The eyebrows are drawn in with little brown strokes.

Here are some ideas about decorating fabric to dress the doll . I used several pieces of white cotton fabric a little bigger then A4 size to work on. I soaked the fabric in water and worked on a waterproof surface, colouring one piece at a time.

I shook the new PaperArtsy Infusions ( I could have used Brushos but I really like the more subtle colours that occur with the Infusions )randomly onto the wet fabric and if needed sprayed more water over the colours to help them spread. Once I was happy with the colours I dried the fabric . The picture shows three different prices of fabric using various colours .

Here I stencilled blobs from stencil PS031 using Royal  Amethyst Treasure Gold . This was done in a very random fashion .

I used the large and small flower stamps from EDY18 which I put under the fabric . I then rubbed a gold oil paintstik over the image . Again this was very random . I found that the easiest was to do this was to rub from the inside of the image towards the outside and to rub firmly over the edge of the stamp . The paint needs to dry and I found that ironing on the reverse of the fabric fixed the paint in place ( otherwise it has a tendency to smudge) .

EDY18

Here I've used the gold paintstik and flowers from EKC02 onto black fabric . I have also used a black paintstik in the same way on other fabric.

EKC02

Here are two other fabric pieces. The jade fabric was stencilled with silver treasure gold. When the pieces of fabric were decorated I used them to make the dolls dress . 

Here you can see the finished dress using all the fabrics. 

The beading on the dress was added using seed beads stuck into pinflair glue , which when dry holds the beads firmly .

As I said I enjoyed making this doll and decorating fabric to dress her . I hope that this has inspired you to try decorating fabric or making an art doll .

Liz . 

Blog: Decorative Delights

Oh how fab is that designer fabric, a true one off piece of couture. I am also a little in love with her hair! Thanks Liz for the great samples showing the face shading, this is often the trickiest part. ~Darcy

We would love to see how you interpret this Image Art Dolls  topic by linking what you make to our 2016 Challenge #5: Art Dolls, on this page HERE.

All of our bloggers love to see your twist on their ideas,  particularly if you were inspired directly by their post. 

All links go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Art dolls link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, March 20th. The winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.