Trying out something New.

I've been very busy as usual and I have been busy making some new dolls two of my small ones and a larger doll from a Pattern By Sharon Mitchell, which stretched my skills. Before I show you the new dolls I wanted to look back at some of my older dolls.

This was my first full sized doll I made way back in  January 2013 and I still have her stashed away for safe keeping. I made a couple of other dolls and then I made a pirate doll, which was the first one that was sold in my Etsy shop. It was also the first one where I changed the pattern to suit my vision of the doll. 

I've learnt a lot in the process of those three years even designing my own patterns for my smaller dolls and mermaids. And I'm still learning and pushing myself to improve my skills and of course my dolls. Recently I bought two patterns by Sharon Mitchell one was on hands, it has some great tips and I felt my doll hands certainly needed a little bit of an improvement. Also there was a pattern that I fell in love with as the character of the face really called to me. So I made a start on it last week and finished Prudence earlier this week. 

With this dolls the colouring was completely different and part of the shading was done before the needle sculpting which made sense. Also it only used three colours of pencil, two pigma pens and my usual white gel pen. To be honest I thought I had over done her face but by the time she was fully assembled she looked great. 

Not only did I learn a different style of colouring the face I also learnt a few new things on the body, one was how to enhance the breast and give the look of a collar bone, also the dents in a spine and needle sculpted nipples. This was good for me as I hate sewing breasts on to dolls it's fiddly and I usually end up nearly throwing the doll across the room in frustration (like the new mermaid doll). I admit I loved making Prudence though I did add legs to her as it was supposed to be stump doll and I will be trying out the new colouring style again as it does give more character. 

Nerisa is the mermaid doll, who nearly got thrown across the room, small boobs are harder and fiddly. I did eventually like them, as I used the same material as her tail and after adding ribbon it looked like a bikini top. I also made another small doll at the same time she was originally going to be a witch or a fairy but I decided she didn't need wings or a witches hat. 

I'll probably have a couple of weeks break from doll making, I do have my eye on another Sharon Mitchell pattern that will mean using cotton lycra for the first time and is full of even more character. 

But in the meantime the three dolls will be stars of my next show in the Facebook LBA Limelight Group, which starts Friday 3rd June at 13:00 GMT for 48 hours. After that they will be for sale in my ETSY Shop or on my Website .

Until next time

Vic xx