Sophia

I did a class with Ankie Daanen recently. This doll is a half clay, half cloth doll. The head is built up on a Styrofoam heart, the hands and feet are also clay. I used DAS clay, but I now have some Darwi clay which is what Ankie recommends. If you follow Adele Scortino’s blog for her online class offerings, you will have seen this class listed as Heartbreaker.

I haven’t done a complete doll with air dry clay until this one. I have done a little with polymer clay and have plans in the New Year for more clay work. I quite like it and the more you do it, like anything else, you begin to get the feel for it and it gets a bit easier each time.

She was a lot of fun. The coat was a bit tricky to put together, but once you sit with the instructions you can “get it”. I’m quite happy with her. I have her sitting in a chair I made a few years ago for Halloween challenge, but it seems it was meant to hold a totally non Halloween doll. I found her little purse on a Christmas display, perfect ornament, but even more perfect as a doll purse.

Kind of a funny thing happened when it was time to attach her hair. So okay, I have needle felted hair on and stitched hair to the dolls head, but now I have to glue it on this doll. So I got an idea to put lots of glue on the head and then just strap elastic bands around her face and head. It worked like a charm and a couple of times I had to glue other parts of the hair and just move the elastic bands. I told hubby he should go and see the newest doll, it was on my desk. He went and looked and came back to tell me she looked liked the bride of Chucky. She really did with all those bands across her face…but he so appreciates the finished doll that much more… ;o)

One thing I was quite relieved about. When it came time to put her hat on, I was able to with care, push a hat pin through the clay into the Styrofoam heart inside, so that made keeping the hat in place on the left side while I added her trims on the other side. I found this YouTube Video and fashioned her hat from that if you think you might like to make one for your doll.

Doesn’t she look cute in her chair, like it’s her place of honour…