Pirate Doll - Suited for Battle

My latest pirate doll is French. I wasn't aware of this when I started, but she just started talking in a French accent. Go figure. So I think her name is Babette. I gave her a dagger-and-heart tattoo. She'll go up on Etsy tomorrow. Here she is with the rest of the crew.

Pirate Doll - Time for Cheesecake

Hi! So far, the pirate doll looked more like an albino alien blob than a pirate doll. But a few limbs, a little hair for the head, and voila! One sexy - but pissed off and violent - doll. Next stop - clothing and, of course, weapon. I think she may need a tattoo, too. I'm not sure yet...

How to Make a Pirate - pieces and parts

It's alive, it's alive! I sculpted and baked the torso, arms, and feet. Since the oven'son, I curled the doll hair by wrapping it around a knitting needle and baking til dry. Here is the torso and hair, fresh from the oven:




Now - to make the fabric pieces. Why do this? Why not make the doll entirely out of clay? Because I want the doll to be flexible, and move her arms and legs. You CAN make polymer clay dolls with joints, but the clay isn't flexible and breaks under stress. So - fabric shoulders and legs. The arms are attached - a button inside the black shoulder piece is stitched through the doll to another button on the other side. The leg is still open - I just stitched the buttons together from one leg to the other, making the hip joints.

(Like her pirate undies?)



Next stop- undressed doll!

How to Make a Pirate Doll 1

To start making a doll, make a rough outline of the shape of the doll that you will keep going back to as you build it - to make sure the proportions stay the way you want. Then the head - I start with a ball of tin foil for the clay to go over. I do this because polymer clay is heavy, and I don't want a topheavy pirate.



The eyeballs I mold out of white clay so they are the same size and shape. A dot of paint makes the iris, and acrylic gloss finishes the look.

Pirate Doll 2 - Red

Doll the - okay, now i lost count but this is one of my faves and my first sale! (Thanks, Sylvia!) Red is a mean buccaneer who doesn't know she's small and weak, and her sword and pistol double-dog dare you to mention it. She's a hard drinker and harder brawler. Argh!

I curled her wild strawberry viscose hair on paper clips. It's as time-consuming as you think - take a small piece, wet it and wrap it around an unbent paper clip. Put in oven and set. Her costume is stitched to her so it fits extra tight. I loved making her baldric and sword from sheet metal, a bead cap, and a filligree bead.

She of course has a nasty scar beneath her eyepatch. She lost her eye taking on five armed opponents. They have no arms now, thanks to Red.

Pirate doll 1

A pirate doll with a pegleg! Who doesn't love pirates? I mean, unless they're slaughtering your loved ones. And such a variety of deformities. My first has lost her leg. I also didn't want her to look coquettish or harmless, so I put a dagger in her mouth.

I started with polymer clay and the muslin body. For the face, I made eyeballs out of white clay and baked them, painted, and glossed them before sticking them in Pirate's skull. Her nose is a little ball of clay, and her mouth was made when I shoved in the dagger. It fell out while baking, but a little super glue solves everything,doesn't it?

The dagger's from a piece of sheet metal wrapped in leather, and the pistol in her sash is polymer clay over a thick wire.

The hat is wool felt, blocked on a ping pong ball.
Argh! Love me some woman pirates!

Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse

I love Jane Austen. I've read all her books, and love Emma. For my second doll, I wanted to pay homage to Jane Austen and also to try polymer clay. I sculpted Emma's head, hands, and feet out of Super Sculpey and attached them to a stitched muslin body. I used buttons for the shoulder joints, and stitched joints at the hip and knee. I painted the Super Sculpey pieces with acrylic paint, and also painted the eyes.

I learned my lessons with this doll - 1) mold the eyes and insert them in the clay instead of painting eyes after it's all baked. 2) Don't paint the face - mix the polymer clay to be the right shade- the translucent clay looks more like skin

In Jane Austen's time, most women's dresses were lightweight white cotton. To add interest, I embroidered the edges in blue. The bonnet is silk dupioni over a heavy interfacing. The trim is all hand-crocheted and I love the effect- time well spent.

All that being said, I still love Emma. She was a happy lesson and I like her cheerful, open face

My first doll

This is the first doll I ever made, a 1770's French court doll that I named "FuFu LaRoux." She's a cloth doll made of muslin. The doll itself is simpler than her dress, which I had a lot of fun with. Her hair is white yarn, and her "eyes" are fake eyelashes. She was a lot of fun!