Bald Heads, Embellished Bangles & Bread Pudding

Remember these? I embellished four of them with buttons and one with buttons and a couple of flat-sided glass marble-like thing-a-ma-gigs. I need to give them one last coat of shellac and they're ready to go.

Go where you ask? Well, how about to YOU?

I've been having such a fabulous Birthday month and received so many nice gifts to celebrate with and then the good luck I had with all of my winnings through the OWOH event, that I thought - why not have a give-away?

If you are interested in receiving one of my embellished recycled cardboard tube bangles, just leave a comment on this post by 5pm tomorrow - Sunday, February 15th. I will pull 5 winning names and get your bangle in the mail to you next weekend. I need to let the last layer of shellac dry and cure before I wrap and mail.


In the Exhibition 36 Mixed-Media Demonstrations + Explorations book (one of the books that Lezlei got me for my birthday), there's a project on pages 52 and 53 by JoAnnA Pierotti.

JoAnnA creates the most gorgeous art dolls. I had no idea that she uses plastic doll heads until I read her technique. All of her doll heads look like they are made of porcelain! Wow - who knew?

I just happened to have a jar of doll heads, arms and legs on a dresser in my bedroom. Yeah, I know, probably sounds like a strange place to have them huh?

Anyway, I didn't want my dolls to look like JoAnnA's, so I decided to make African American dolls. Here are a couple of heads I have base coated with three coats of brown acrylic paint and then painted eyebrows and new eyes. I painted the lips and using my finger, lightly added some rosy cheeks using the same color red.

Once everything was completely dry, I glazed the doll heads a few times, letting each coat dry before applying the next coat . . .


In the book - to create the feeling of hair, JoAnnA embellished her doll heads with ribbons, flowers, lace, etc. For one of my dolls, I made a hat from a crocheted lace doily and a piece of crocheted lace trim that matched almost PERFECTLY . . .

JoAnnA used a vintage spool/bobbin for the body of her dolls in the book. But since I went a little overboard in collecting vintage bottles to use in those Cindy Forrester workshops last October, I thought this would be a good project to use up some of them!

The little heads below were snapped off some dolls I had laying around. No doll in sight was safe!
I've painted their little heads in a creamy white acrylic. JoAnnA's technique is that you paint the faces until you no longer see any details from the original doll face, then create a new face. I'm thinking I may paint the last coat for these heads a caramel color . . .

NOTE: The bottles the heads are on are just serving as painting/drying racks for now.

I gave these girls a haircut. How the heck do dollmakers sew hair on these doll heads anyway? But an even BETTER question is, how the heck do I get it off/out of the daggone head? HA!

One more thing and I'll let you go. One of my friends took me to lunch (another Birthday gift!) on Friday. We went to Memphis Soul Cafe and Bar in Costa Mesa.

This is what we shared for dessert. Banana Walnut Bread Pudding. Yuuuuuummmmy!
THE END!