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Welcome back to the 60s! Today I'll talk about Francie's accessories. And her hair. Which is not quite an accessory.
Let me see, where were we. Right. Francie was dressed now. Have you noticed that there were no shoe problems this time? It wouldn't have been difficult to find shoes for this girl, I might even have something that fits in my little shoe box, but she chose to go barefoot and feel the grass under her feet instead.
What she couldn't do without was a tote bag, and the tote bag couldn't do without fringe. I'm the mad fringer, mwahahaaaa! I wrote about the tote before. The nice thing about a hippie outfit is not being forced to coordinate colors. That way I could use my bead soup and a color that didn't go with anything else so far to brick stitch this tote. I like to think Francie found it in a second hand store.
When I was a child, ball point pens still used to have that little metal ring in the middle where you could unscrew them to put a new ink cartridge in. Sometimes these rings were very thin, sometimes wide. It didn't matter, we used them all as doll bangles.
I had to use two large jump rings here instead.
Now it was time to do something about Francie's bristle head. The original vintage Malibu Francie had long blond hair and that's what I wanted to stick with.
The blond hair I have is called "Sunshine", a great name because it is really shiny.
After weeks of procrastinating I finally mustered the courage to go for it. Rerooting still doesn't come natural to me.
It wasn't easy to pull out the hair plugs and unfortunately Francie already had some small scalp splits, but I did my best to cover those up. I had blond hair everywhere and so did Ponder. He declined my offer to make him a little wig, by the way, but supervised my rerooting with a sharp eye as always.
Here's the result.
After brushing, setting the hair in hot water, giving her a trim and brushing again Francie looked like this. Almost done!
I had always thought I would make a headband as last accessory, but then I wondered if one of those floppy hats would look cool, too. My personal adviser aka my sister, however, had a different idea which I fell in love with right away. She said Francie needed a daisy chain. I had never made one before, but looked it up, and when I found I had beads in my stash that would work, there was no stopping me.
Isn't it perfect for her?
I hadn't planned to make a necklace, but then I was told there had to be a peace sign. Actually my first plan for the tote had been a peace sign pattern, but that didn't work in this size and I didn't want to make it any bigger. So it had to be a necklace after all. This was as small as I could make it with the beads I had. Any smaller and it looked like just a mess of beads. Yes, I tried this more than once.
First I used a copper tone ball chain for the pendant, but that was too big, so I finally settled for a simple chain stitch necklace.
Today I took Francie out to the garden for her first real photo shoot. There's a collage with more pictures at my deviantART if you want to have a look.
You know you want to sing "Let the sunshine in" now or how about "Aquarius"? ;-)
You missed the first post? Here you go!
Part 1, The clothes
Welcome back to Christie's story!
This time I am going to tell you about her jewelry and her shoes.
Actually the jewelry was the easiest part to do in the whole project.
I knew I wanted to give her long necklaces, so I just had to look in my stash if I had beads in the right colors that I could use with the seed beads. As it so happens, I had green and yellow crystals. In fact I tried all-crystal necklaces first, but I didn't really love them and after getting a no on that from my personal advisor as well, I went for a combination of crystals and seed beads. That was much better, also because the necklaces sit better that way.
In my stash were also smaller crystals in green, so I made a little chain stitch bracelet with them, and just look at that big stone she's wearing on her finger!
Newer dolls often have a hole in their hand where the ring is missing, so I had to cover that up.
I felt that dangly earrings would not go well with the fringe on the headpiece, so even if I love them, I settled for simple golden studs instead which are headpins that I put in the ear holes.
Christie's makeover was almost finished, how exciting! Little did I know how long she still had to wait.
I have big feet, but I don't have as many problems to find shoes as this lady.
There aren't that many Supersize outfits and the shoes are even harder to find individually. When I missed out on the one pair I found for sale, I had to figure out something else.
My first thought was polymer clay. Maybe I could make the soles from clay and bead the top. I had some old clay and decided on a dry run. I put Christie's feet on some paper and drew the outlines, cut out the templates, pressed them onto the clay and started cutting around.
I believe in recycling and have paper scraps around for notes, my to do lists, and stuff like this. I have a tip for you. Don't use paper with a tax return form printed on it. The print will end up on the clay. Of course it will. Doh. After all this was only a dry run, though, so it didn't matter.
I lightly pressed the soles onto Christie's feet for the shape. That didn't look too bad for a first try. I put them into my toaster oven and waited when I suddenly heard a weird sound. I can't even describe what the soles had turned into. It was a burnt and gooey mass with bubbles. I have no idea if it had been the oven that hadn't been used in a while - although I did wipe all the dust off - or the old clay or both. Time and temperature had been right. Oh well.
I had to get some new clay and use the other oven.
I had been optimistic after making the new soles, things didn't quite work out the way I wanted them to. I had my soles which had kept the shape of the feet pretty well, I had the heels, now I just needed to come up with an idea for the top.
Poor Christie leaned against the wall for weeks. My next doll project, still without head then, kept her company while receiving one garment after the other. They were an odd pair and a little sad to look at.
Finally I knew it was now or never. I sat down with my clay, the soles and Christie and tried to mold a shoe onto her foot that I could get off afterwards. Don't forget that again I had a whole doll attached to that foot, too. As Christie's waist is a little loose, she moved and wriggled a lot during the process. The lady has no patience at all!
I tried and tried, and when one thing worked, the other went wrong. The thought of having to do the same for the other foot drove me to take drastic measures. I broke the soles in two and tossed them.
But now what?
I can't believe it took me that long to realize that I could knit the shoes from wire and beads. T-strap shoes with a wire crochet heel. See, sometimes I just need time to come up with something!
And here she is now, in our 20s inspired hallway where she took up residence (no way she would have fit into my doll cabinet). Every time I come out of my flat, she makes me smile standing there and smiling at me.
You have missed the first two posts? Find them here!
Part 1, The Dress
Part 2, The headpiece
Will you be back for my next doll project? It's very different from the first two, but was just as much fun (and there were no shoe problems at all!).
Let's jump right in, okay? Today is about Christie's head.
Vintage dolls have a neck knob which allows you to move the head sideways. There are smaller and bigger ones and cone shaped ones and whatnot.
Later dolls got neck knobs which allowed to also tilt the head, make it look up or down, this is the kind Christie has.
Out there in the net you can find much more information on the subject and also on the subject of the dreaded neck split and what's the best way to behead a doll. A little hint, it is NOT the guillotine.
Again, I am not a doll artist meaning I have the patience to do repairs of all kind, replace limbs, heads, re-paint faces or more. I try my best to avoid some procedures if possible, and one of them is taking a head off a doll if not absolutely necessary.
As a child I was cooler about that. We had outfits that were impossible to put on a doll if you didn't take her head off first. Yes, my Stacey does have a neck split, but she also has a yellow face and one finger and half a foot are missing. You can tell she was a beloved and played with toy. I'm digressing, sorry.
Have you ever seen a Barbie doll which looks like she doesn't have a neck? She probably had one of those newer neck knobs, maybe even the ones with prongs. My sister and I have seen more than one of those. If a child pulls on one of the heads on such a knob, the neck can break and the knob part comes off. If you put the head back on, it's right on the neck instead the knob. We call them "no-neck monsters" after a quote from "Cat On A Hot Tin Roof".
After all the work with the dress *looking at Ponder who is trying to clean up around his food plate* I didn't want to risk Christie to become a no-neck monster.
A hair cut was out of the question, too. I didn't have a replacement head in case anything went wrong.
And honestly, the copper streaks didn't look very 20s to me, either.
So all that I could do was to put something on her head that had the touch of the 20s, but hid all her hair.
I chose to knit a wire headpiece because knitted wire is flexible enough to shape it if needed. I used golden wire and the bright green beads to pick up the colors from the dress.
The last rows were a little difficult because I had to knit them with the headpiece already on the head, so I could decrease. Not that easy with the whole doll attached to it, I can tell you.
The wire knit "flower" with the crystal center was easier to make, but a bit fiddly to put on. I used the dark teal beads for it to have some contrast.
I had still some peacock feather leftovers. What was funny is that they arranged themselves when I pulled the flower tight. I wish all components would be that cooperative!
Last but not least I added a fringe at the bottom to match the fringe on the dress and voilà!
The last post will be about the jewelry and about big feet. Not Bigfoot, big feet! Just wait and see.
Have you missed the first post? Here it is:
Part 1, The dress
Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.
As promised last time today's post is all about accessories.
What comes to mind when you think Flapper? Headbands, feathers, long necklaces, earrings, crystals, pearls, shoes, bracelets ....
These shoes were a donation by my sister. I didn't have an extra pair of vintage black heels and many of the modern shoes don't work well on the bigger and harder vinyl feet of the old dolls. Golden instead of silver sprinkles would have been perfect, but not only did they fit, Barbie could also stand in them on her own if you did it right. Of course I use a stand anyway.
To make the shoes more 20s, I sewed on straps from the beads that I had also used in the dress.
I didn't have to go far for the necklaces. In my stash I have tiny beads and pearls. For these four strands in two different lengths I chose black onyx and golden freshwater pearls to pick up the colors in the dress.
For the headband I made a simple brick stitch band and added some decorations.
And once again my sister pulled a rabbit out of her magician's hat ... or rather peacock feathers from an old carnival costume. Of course a whole feather would have been much too big, so I cut one up instead and sewed the parts to the headband.
I felt more would have been too much, so I did without more jewelry. Instead I just re-painted the fingernails and turned my attention the head.
That will be the story for the next post then. I hope I'll see you there again!
If you missed the earlier posts, you can find them here:
Part 1, The introduction
Part 2, The dress
Barbie is a registered trademark of Mattel, Inc. I am not affiliated with Mattel.
