I've moved on to dolls

I shifted my crafting focus this week from dresses to dolls and made up a sweet little maiden for my ETSY shop. It's the third time I have used felting needles for attatching the hair and I am pleased with the result. I made her in the style of the nature table dolls I had been making, but made her taller and not based on a flower. She came out nice but I was a little nervous about posting her. She's not a doll for a young chile and an older child might miss the fun of changing her (her clothes are her body) so I don't know if she will sell. But I simply sat down without a plan and made her as I guess she wanted to be made. It was fun and in the end that is the point for me.

Then I got so inspired by how nice my maiden looked that I decided to go with my fantasy impulses and make a mermaid. She was a little tricky and had some design challenges and I am not going to be selling her because of them. I am going to try again and make her a sister to list on my shop. My daughter is loving her "fishy-lady" and I feel the usual satisfaction I feel when I have worked my way through some problems.

Fun stuff

I recently purchased 2 mixed lots of vintage trim and bias tapes on EBay. I got the first one the other day and had a blast pouring though it. A bunch of the stuff I won't use (like 20 packages of iron on hem tape in various colors) and I might eBay it or offer it to someone who wants it (comment if you do). The funniest part about the whole thing was I received it at work, I am a nanny to 2 boys aged 7&10, and the boys were so interested I let them paw through it too. They ended up organizing it and spent almost an hour categorizing and bundling it, one color coordinated and one bundled by type. It was a largely useless exercise as my daughter undid the whole thing when we got home and she had her turn. They had a blast and kept commenting on how fun it was. Now if the other package would just get here! My stepson even messed around with it a bit.

I have been playing with it some and made a few dresses with it but my favorite by far is the one I made tonight. I got a huge roll of (get this) 1.5 inch wide AVOCADO lace. Now there aren't too many thing you can do with avocado lace but I thought I should try seeing as I have a TON of it. I ended up finding the perfect fabric to match it and voila, a lovely dress. Now the only problem is that my daughter doesn't look all that good in green... lol.

I have also decided that I need to get me a book or two on pattern making. I love making the pillow-case dresses and the 2 styles of rompers I make, but I feel like I should know more. So I requested a ton of books from the library and hopefully soon I'll be armed with a little more knowledge when I set about creating and will waste a little less fabric on the prototypes. At the least I'll be inspired.

Not as good as I wanted....

I recently lucked into a copy of a wonderful book called "Baby Dolls and their Clothes" by Valeria Ferrari. I originally got this book out of the library, fell in love with it's enchanting dolls and went to buy a copy for myself only to find that it was out of print. The cheapest I could find it on Amazon and half.com for a long time was around 70$. I was disappointed because I really liked it but there was NO way I was spending 70.00 on it. One day I happened to randomly type it in on EBay and found it on auction. I ended up getting it for 2.00 and the total with shipping was around 8.00, I was soooo excited. I poured though again and made plans. I finally sat down tonight to make a doll and what I had noticed before became very obvious as I worked. There were few directions and a lot of the technique had to be guessed. I tried making this cute little crawling baby tonight and while it is cute and does resemble the original doll it leaves a lot to be desired. I'd like to chalk it up to it being my first time with the doll, but I really do think it has a lot to do with the fact that there were 3 steps listed in the directions.... 3. I had to guess how she accomplished some of the stuff she didn't explain and I am ok with the results. Not ok enough to post a picture, lol. I am sure my lovely daughter will LOVE it and that in the end is what matters. I have also been making a TON of little "wood and felt Forest folk" for my shop and loving it. They are a lot of fun to make and I have a fun time creating their costumes as I go along. There is no planning, I pick a few colors and just see what happens. So far the yellow and green set are my favorites. My daughter has been requesting a set. I made her some before I had gotten my really nice felt, a bunch with the cheesy acrylic craft felt and decided she deserved some nicer ones. I have 2 out of four done and she is pleased. I can't wait to let her play with them in the morning when the glue is dry.

I sold something!!!!!!

So I woke up this morning to an email that tells me I sold something!!! It was my least favorite of the dresses, the blue one! I have it all bundled and ready to ship in the AM. I am so excited!!! I have already spent the proceeds (lol) on some more supplies for more things to sell but that's sort of what it's for. I made some cute little woodland folk and posted them too. We'll see how they sell, but they are cute and Arrianna is already begging me for them, that's going to be the hard part. But yay!!!