Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Another French Fashion doll. . .

Finished the MD2027/Renee doll, but having my doubts that she is MD2027! Supposedly, MD2027 makes a 15" doll, but the finished head is much larger than the heads for my 18" dolls. Also, the limbs that supposedly go with her are so tiny that they'd do well for a doll that was maybe 13"-14" tall. I did some digging and found another mold by bell (MD2742) that looks similar to my doll, but I'm not sure my head is quite large enough to be the 23.5" tall that doll should be, and also, my doll teacher hasn't mentioned having that mold! It's really too bad that the popularity of this sort of doll making died out before the internet really took off, because I'd love to be able to Google and find someone else who made this doll and see if they had the same experience as me.

Before I post pics, I should also warn that I made a major mistake on day #1 of painting this doll: I used the totally wrong shade of red for her lips. Reds are tricky because they paint on all bright and saturated, but then fire off to be much lighter. I chose what I thought looked like a rose red color, but after firing. . . Eep! They were almost brown, they were that dark! But at that point, there wasn't much I could do, except to just go with it. . . So now, I'm apparently making a brooding, possibly secretly evil, gothic-yet-still-Victorian doll. . .



The wig needs some taming and she obviously doesn't have a body yet (and you can be she's last on the list to get one since I will need to pattern and sew hands with fingers!) but you can see where I'm going! I've been having such fun dreaming up a personality for her and planning her ensemble that I almost don't regret making the mistake with the lips after all! In fact, the only regret I have is that I didn't make the brows more angled, and I would have liked them darker, but alas, this was the darkest brown I could find. . .

This brings my total "floating head" count up to three:



The two in front are my first two French Fashion dolls, and they are from the same mold, but look so different from each other, don't you think? I think the one on the front left (the one I most recently posted about, but now with eyes, so decidedly less creepy) is my favorite, which surprises me because I hated her when I got her home.

Now I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to do in doll class. I'm overwhelmed by the growing number of floating heads (never mind dolls with bodies but still without clothing) piling up on my shelf, so don't really want to add to their number. It's already so bad that I had to give up the second shelf of my hutch for the dolls. By "give up" I mean that the fabrics that filled every particle of this space had to come out and be fit elsewhere, and I'm going to have to find new homes for some of it as it didn't all fit in the shelves in the closet!



While this arrangement is fine for now, I don't think it's going to work out in the long run. With the dolls seated, they just fit, but once those floating heads have bodies and are standing, they will no longer fit. I suppose I could try to find more furniture and have them all sit, but it seems kind of a shame to do that since the elaborate costumes I have planned for them (which were the whole point of getting in to the doll making in the first place) aren't going to look nice if they are seated. I'll just have to try and figure out something else, storage-wise. . .