Female Faun – post 1

I have realised I have been terribly slack about posting some updates on my sculpting blog. And its been for no other reason than time – my nemesis! (hmmmm.. a sculpture with a time villain – I’ll store that idea away for later

Currently I am working on three dolls, my female faun, a doll for the Auckland doll show “On a musical note” and another doll for a IADR contest “Twisted Fairytale”. So while I can’t show updates on the two contest dolls, I can do a blog on the faun. So here goes…
So a quick run down on how she got to this point.

First her armature was made, obviously the legs were made longer and then bent to include the extra limb. The armature was then covered in tighly compressed tinfoil to bulk up the thicker areas, such as the torso and thighs.

The tinfoil, and any armature wire not covered in tinfoil, is then completely covered in masking tape. As you can see in the picture I haven’t finished covering the lower arm, but I will do that before I add clay to that area.

Once that is done I have added clay to her torso. I add bits of clay blocking in the areas until I have it looking right as far as proportions go, then I push and smooth it altogether to ensure there are no gaps or air pockets in the clay that can cause problems when cooking.

I then did the same process with the legs. Usually the legs are done later, but I tend to always start with the “hero” of the piece. And with a faun its definitely the cool legs!

As this piece is going to have details sculpted into the areas I have just left the clay rougly smoothed – no point in spending time smoothing something that is just going to be changed.
The base was made using an old light switch casing that I got from a demolition yard. I gave it a bit of a sanding, and then glued down a big wad of compressed tinfoil covered in masking tape. The clay is added after and sculpted to, hopefully, look like a bit of rocky landscape.

Once the scupting is completed it was cooked for 30min. The heat needed to cook the clay is not that hot, so the wood is fine in the oven.

After the clay is cooled the painting was done. I actually used a tutorial to help me with this, and you can find that tutorial right here. The rod was then added, which matched up to the rod in the lower leg of the faun, and the base is done.

Right – back to sculpting the doll. As I said this doll is starting from legs up, which is so very backwards. But every doll I do is made is a different way, for example my last doll Mother Earth when I did her face her hair was the “hero” so I made her hair first and then sculpted the face onto it! But just let your doll guide you – they have a mind of their own sometimes.

The legs were done by adding detail to each limb, starting with the lower ones and working the way up.

Her two lowest limbs are earthy and tree like. They have bark lines and whorls, and they end at the main upper knee.

The upper thigh area will stay as human skin, and will have sculpted fur around the waist ending half way down the thigh. So I have made sure the lower thigh is nice and smooth, while the upper thigh is left as a rough smooth, waiting for its detailing.

This was fiddly work so ensuring you hold the piece right is so important not to keep squishing areas already completed. I also hang my pieces from a doll stand to help with this. And I was also giving areas finished a few blasts of the heat gun to seal the outer clay. But you must be careful with this that you don’t go into areas on yet sculptured (don’t want to set that clay before you work it) and also that you keep in mind that its only a band-aid and the clay underneath is not cooked – so you must not put any pressure on these parts or they will cause the cooked crust to crack!

And now we are up to where I am currently at. The upper torso has been sculpted.

She has what I hope will come out as a bark like warrior bodice. It is wrapped around her breast/chest area criss-crossing at the front, and leaving her lower breast exposed.

Her shoulders have a leafy shoulder pad with frilling leaf detailing. And the bodice will be lifted up around her neck to make a bark strip high collar.

To protect the front I have given it a blast of the heat gun to protect it while the back work is done.

And that is where I am at. Thanks for reading and keep watching for the next stages coming soon!

Happy crafting from Julie Sharpe at Dollworld

New 8″ Female Mould

I am working hard to keep my promise of releasing a 8″ Female and Male mould, with a matching infant and child mould, for the Class coming up at the end of March

So here she is so far. The reason she is grey is because I am using the Sculpey Firm clay to make it easier when casting her for the moulds. She will most likely be destroyed in the process, but we will see. If she is salvageable I may complete her like a black and white photo and do a giveaway with her, or maybe even give it to one of the people attending the March class. We shall see

If you are interested in the course see all the details here

DIY Dollhouse – Final Post

This is it, the last post on making one of these wonderful mini dollhouses. It’s been a fun project and would make an excellent Christmas gift or fun family project.

The last little tip is just a note about how you can make these houses your own. The steps included in the instructions are just a guideline  you don;t have to follow them to the letter. If you think the room would look better rearranged – then do it. If you think a piece of furniture could be made better a different way – then do it. And if you think an item is just not needed – then leave it out. It is your house – make it your way.

As mine is a sample I have kept it pretty much as it is on the box. But one thing I did add was to make some outdoor furniture using the left over bits of wood from the house.

I selected wood for a table, and chair as per the picture to the left. First the three pieces for the tabletop and chair seat are glued side-by-side and then left to dry.

Once they are dry add a piece underneath the seat/top for support. In the picture you can see I did one horizontal and one vertical, that was just from not paying attention. You can do yours the same direction if you prefer.

The three bits of wood for the chair back are glued together, slightly fanned apart. Once dry glue them to the back of the chair.

After everything is dry you can add the tiny little pieces as the legs.

Add a decoration to the table. I have used the pot pattern and some leftover brown card to make a new pot and filled it with some of the white grass. But you can add what ever you like to the table, maybe a magazine or a cup of coffee and a cupcake?

Once its all done you can add it to your house. I have put mine on the first floor porch just outside of the conservatory window.

One other thing I was planning to do, but never got around to it, was to turn the piece of round wood (left over from the round window surround) into a clock for the kitchen wall.

You could print out a clock pattern using an image found on the internet. Or you can paint one up by hand.

And that is everything done, time to sit back and enjoy your house. I hope you had as much fun as I did making your house. And if you have any questions, regarding this house or the other styles I sell, please use the comments and ask away.

If you haven’t got a house and would love one please check them out here

And that’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.

DIY Dollhouse – Lighting

Sorry, I know I have been very late with finished the posts on this house. But I’ve been going from fair to fair without much breathing room in between. But I know lots of people are waiting on this so I do apologise for the delay.

At this point the entire house is done and I have gone though and made up all the lamp shades. You might have been doing this as you went along. Its up to you if you make the lamp shades as you go, or just leave them till the end like I did.

Here are all of mine. The good thing is you actually get 6 lights but only need to make 5, so you have one spare.

You can also do a quick test to check the lights are working before going to all the trouble of adding them into your house. Just put a couple of AA battery’s in the battery pack, take one light and touch one end of its white wire to the black wire, and the other white wire to the red wire. You wont get a shock, so don’t worry about that. So that’s white to black and white to red – get that right and hey presto! – We have light! Test out each light to make sure all are working.

Once you have all the lights tested and added to the lamp shades its time to add them to your house. You can follow the steps I have taken, or if you think there is a better way you are, of course, welcome to do it your own way. First step is to glue the lights into their places on the ceiling and run the wire across the ceiling and out through a gap in the wall so that all cords are hanging out the front of the house (by front I mean the side with the front door). A touch of superglue will hold them in place.

Once you have all the cords hanging out through the walls it’s time to tidy them up all. I have chosen the spot I want the battery to sit is on the balcony, you can change this if you want – just ensure where ever you decide to put it is close enough for all the white wires to reach. In the picture above you can see the paths I have taken (click on it for a bigger view).

• The red is the bathroom – across the roof-line, down under the roof awning, across the second floor bedroom ceiling and down the window line.
• The Blue is the lounge – across the ceiling, out the wall gap, along the second floor lounge/bedroom ceiling and down the window line.
• The Green is the bedroom – across the ceiling, out the wall gap, along the bedroom ceiling and down the window line.
• The Orange is the kitchen – across the ceiling, out the wall gap, across to the balcony and up through a gap between the balcony and the wall.
• The Purple is the Conservatory – across the ceiling, out the wall gap, across to the balcony and up through a gap between the balcony and the wall.

You will need to keep track of the pairs, so it may help to tape each pair together so they don’t get mixed up. Once you have every wire in place a touch of super glue will hold them all in place. Now the scary part, if you don’t want excess wire you need to trim them all back so they all end at that balcony point. I trimmed all the white back without much excess but left the red and black wires on the battery pack long to allow me room to lift the battery pack in and out when changing the batteries.

Once you have all the wires to the right length its time to join it all together. Basically each light has two wires – one goes to the red, one to the black. So you want to take one from each light and twist or solder it onto the red one. And then take the other half of wires and twist or solder them onto the  black wire. Soldering is better – it will make a more permanent hold, but just twisting will work you just might find you need to strip back the wires a bit. Once you have the wires all connected then cover them up with some electrical tape to 1) keep it all together, and 2) hide any yucky solder or bulky wires.

And that’s it! – All done, now take a deep deep breath and turn the switch on the battery pack to ‘On’ and watch your house light up!.

And make sure to try it at night. it really lights up.

DIY Dollhouse Week 4

Fast on the heals of the last update is the bathroom update. The bathroom has a lot of tiny wee items that are going to test your patience. So just take it nice and so, and remember to let glue dry between steps – it really does help.

The lined basket is made using the same printed box and glued rope method that was done in the living room. It is then lined with the material used as the curtains. To do this I put a line of glue around the edge, and then glued down two pieces of material starting at the top and going downwards (see picture). Once the glue is dried the two material pieces are lifted up, cut to size and glued inside the basket.

The print for the floor in this room has two many gaps for my liking. So to fill in the gaps I have cut out a section of the floor that will end up being covered by the bath plinth. This gives me extra bits to cut up and place in the gaps, using the square tiles to line them all up.

You can also do the same for the toilet plinth if you still have more gaps to fill. It certainly makes the room look much nicer if the floor is completely covered.

And here we go, all the bathroom items all completed.

It really is a cute little bathroom. All those fiddly pieces may have given you some grief and you probably found yourself glueing everything but what you wanted glued. But it really does all come together to create a very realistic bathroom that you can imagine a little person living in and using all the soaps and toothbrushes.

At least I can, maybe all that glue has made me a little crazy

And here is the bathroom all done.

So that is all the rooms done! Yay!

Next step is to complete the rooms by creating the lampshades and then connecting up all the wires to give this house some light. Very exciting.

That’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.

DIY Dollhouse Week 4

The next room up is the living room. I enjoyed this room. You have a couple of big pieces and a few small pieces that you had already done before like the jug, books and apples. The baskets are also a lot easier this time as you use a printed box underneath and then glue the rope around it. Super easy!

The most fun was making the couch, so that is what this post is concentrating on. First step is to cut a small piece of the couch material and wrap around the end of the arms.

There is no need to hem any edges as they all will be covered.

Next is to cover the rest of the arms. In this case you need to hem the side that buts up against the arm end (or cheat like me and use fabric glue).

You also need to make sure the material that runs over the arm and down the other side is low enough to cover everything up till the point that the seat will cover it from (about half way down will be fine).

Once you have both arms done you need to cut out the seat pattern and glue it together.
Then cut out a couple of pieces of material to cover the seat and the back plate.

I found the stuffing supplied was a bit low. So for the couch I just folded up a bit of handy towel, and used that as the cushion padding.

The seat was just wrapped like a parcel. And the back plate was wrapped from the front around the back. You can see the back of the couch through the window. So if the back of your couch isn’t very tidy you can cut and hem a piece of material and stick it on the back of the couch to hide all the loose ends.

And here are all the items assembled in the house.

For the wood in the fireplace baskets the instructions called for the orange cardboard to be rolled up into logs. But I have all the leftover wood from the house and there is plenty of planks in there. So there is real wood in my fireplace. I also added a bit of the leftover wood to the back of the one canvas painting that didn’t have a back board, I just like it better that way.

And that’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.

Sorry…I forgot to add the picture of all the items gathered up before they got added to the room. So here they are all.

There are four pictures shown. But I ended up putting one of the pictures in the bedroom next door. Part of the fun of these houses is you can arrange them as you like. I am trying to keep mine as a sample, so very close to the original. But you can have as much creative freedom as you wish with yours!

DIY Dollhouse Week 3

Week 3 was the building of the third room which is a very very pink bedroom.

In this room there is a lot of sewing to be done. Or if you are like me and can’t sew to save yourself then Fabri-tac is for you!

I made these cushions by cutting the pattern, placing a line of glue on the three open sides, add the stuffing and then fold and press to seal the sides. The trim is then glued one side at a time. One tip – you might want to reduce the pattern size if you do it this way. I didnt, and because there is no hem area the cushions have come out a bit bigger than they would have been if they were sewn.

Here is all the items you need to make for the bedroom.

As I said this is one pink room, and that bed is very over the top.

I dont think any of the items gave me much grief. It was a pretty easy room, especially as you have already done some of the items like the slippers and plant. I mentioned before that the felt was very hard to glue. But I tried my Fabri-tac out on it, and it made it so much easier to glue. So I definitely recommend a fabric glue on the felt.

And here is the room all completed and glued down. I have cheated and stolen a painting from the next room, so there is now two paintings in this room which I will further explain in the next post.

I did end up putting a bit of paint on the plant pot to get rid of the white, just like the brown planter and watering can from the conservatory.

I have to share this picture. My Mr4 loves this house, he seems to think its his job to place each item once they have all been finished. And the tongue always sticks out as he concentrates on placing the tiny wee objects. So cute!

That’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.

DIY Dollhouse – Week 3 Cont

Week 3 also saw the completion of the kitchen. Just to clarify when I say “Week 3″ I don’t mean it took three weeks to get this far. There is a lot of work to be done, but not that much! LOL. This is my night-time, while the kids are in the bath, job. So I get maybe 1 hour a day to work on it. But you certainly cant buy this thinking you will have it done in a few hours. You really get your money worth as there is lots and lots to do.

As per the first room I have catalogued all the items in this rooms bag, which is the C bag. I will be giving this list out to anyone who purchases it from Dollworld.

After that I always start with the big wooden items so they have time to dry while I work on the small stuff.

In this room the main wooden pieces are the kitchen cabinets and the table.

Here is the cabinet done up. I know I did the drawers wrong. I first read it that the handles were just made from cardboard, but they are in fact made from a another duller silver from bag B. So mine are just white, I could just add the silver to them now, but never mind I think they look fine. I was actually expecting them to use more of the little black strips that are the handles on the cupboards. There are a few of them in the C bag but they don’t seem to be all used, and I am currently working on the last room and they are still not used. So if you are thinking of using them maybe check the bathroom post and I will let you know if they are left over or not.

Here is the pic of all the kitchen items.

There were certainly some fun items, like the chairs. Lots of wire bending to create the fun swirls and shapes in the legs and backrest.

I didn’t make any changes to any of the items in this room. But missing is the two gold cups that should be on the table. I found the gold hard to work with and creases ruined the gold finish. In the end I decided not to bother with them. But I am sure all you crafty people out there will do a better job of them than I did.

Here is a close up on the pot and pan. I really love these pieces. You do actually get the metal shapes but you have to glue everything together. To do the pan handle I just glued it and then rested the handle on the little brown shelf so that it was at the right height while glueing.

One note, the instructions mention the black range circles as what looks like a print, but I looked and looked and couldn’t find them. So I just cut out some circles and coloured them in black.

I always finish every item before the final assembly and glueing down.

So here is the final picture of the kitchen all complete.

It was a fun room to do and I am happy with how it looks. And the pictures don’t do it justice, it looks so much better in person when you can see how tiny it really is, but with so much detail packed in.

That’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.

DIY Dollhouse – Week 3

All the pieces for the conservatory have been completed.

So added we have the white pot plant, the sack of plant food, the canvas painting, the brown watering can, the tablecloth and the paper bag.

Not really much to report, everything was pretty straight forward. The only thing I changed was instead of putting the painting onto cardboard I used a bit of wood left over from making the house to make it a more 3D canvas. I thought I was being quite clever, but have since realised that in future rooms they have made them exactly the same way

One other change I made was to the three brown items, as pictured to the right.

I felt these items were showing to much white and it made them look a bit fake.

So I have touched them up by painting out all the white areas with a bit of brown acrylic paint. You can see in the before and after pictures that they look so much better.

Here is everything placed in the room.

My dollhouse is coming with me to all the fairs I attend, so everything has been glued down. Obviously you can choose whether or not you glue your house down. If you don’t you will have the freedom to rearrange your house, but you may find some of the items are very light and could do with being glued down.

Now have you noticed the two missing items?………………..

Thats right – the brown planter box and watering can.

I decided that the conservatory is just two crowded, so I have moved them outside on the second floor balcony.

I have also finished the planter box off by filling it will green moss, three flowers made from the green wire and orange paper, and green paper leaves.

I think they look really nice outside. and the space hasn’t been decorated, so its nice to add something out there. In fact I think once everything is finished there will be lots of bits and pieces leftover for you to use all the skills learned and make up a few pieces for the outdoor area. If you do please send pics, I would love to see what you come up with.

That’s all for now, until next time – happy crafting.