Barbara Johnston, a frequent visitor and familiar face on
The Carol Duvall Show, shares her dexterous approach for defining the facial features on soft-fabric dolls. In her demonstration, details below, Barbara reviews the process for forming doll hair and eyes.
Materials:
wool yarn or raffia
knitting needle*
water or hairspray
paper
dress pins
black permanent marker
paint
hot glue gun with glue
* To be used to create the hair. Sizes may vary: thick needles for large curls, thin for smaller curls.
Steps:
- To make curly hair, wrap yarn or raffia around a knitting needle and spray it with water or hairspray.
- Preheat an oven to 250 degrees. Place the wrapped knitting needle in the oven and turn the oven off. Leave it in the oven for 10 minutes.
- Take the needle out of the oven and remove the yarn or raffia to produce the curly "hair."
- Attach hair to the head of the doll with a hot glue gun and then cut it to even lengths.
If you prefer your doll to have straight hair, a skein of embroidery thread works well. - Draw eyes onto a sheet of paper and cut them out.
- Attach the eyes onto the head of a pin and poke into the head where you want the eyes to be.
- Draw around the eyes and draw eyelashes on.
- Paint an eyeball in the eye.
- Put a spot of black in the center of the eyeball for the retina. Put a tiny white dot at the edge of the eyeball for realism. You can also add a tiny red dot at the edge of the eye for realism.
- You can also use buttons for eyes.
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