Gratitude Goddesses Part 2: Adding hair and faces to our Paper Doll Chain Project

We’re diving into Part 2: Creating Mixed Media Goddesses using paper, fabric scraps, and your favorite collected bits of beauty.

I’ll walk you through how to:

✨ Layer fabric and paper for texture and dimension

✨ Add faces, expressions, and hair to personalize each goddess

✨ Decorate with stitching, collage, and your own soulful symbols

These dolls are more than just art—they’re embodied blessings, each one holding a piece of your gratitude, your becoming, your story. Whether you’re using paper, canvas, or muslin, this practice is all about play, presence, and personal expression. You don’t need to be an artist—just bring your scraps, your scissors, and your open heart.

Transcript

[0:01] : Good morning my creative friends and welcome to painting in your PJs with
[0:06] : Minette. I'm Dr. Minette Riordan. I am in my PJs hair extra crazy this morning.
[0:11] : Super excited to continue our gratitude goddess project setting up for what's
[0:19] : coming in November. When we get excited about a 30-day challenge or the 100 day
[0:26] : project, it can be easy to kind of lose track, lose inspiration, get distracted
[0:32] : by some other creative project. So, last week's video and again in this week,
[0:37] : we're talking about how to sort of batch create your paper dolls so that you have a bunch of them precreated so that you
[0:44] : can just add little details to each one daily and also write your gratitude on each
[0:52] : one. So, welcome if you're brand new to painting in your PJs with Manette. I'm Dr. Manette Ryarden and I am passionate
[1:00] : about supporting women in midlife and beyond to use art as a creative process
[1:05] : for self-discovery to fall in love with the joy, the journey and the playfulness
[1:11] : of creating and get out of everything has to be a product mode. So this is not
[1:17] : your typical art video. This is a lot of me sharing my own process, the ups, the
[1:23] : downs, the in-ins and outs, and the self-discovery. And every November, it
[1:29] : feels really important to me. I have a daily gratitude practice. But to go a little bit deeper into the experience of
[1:36] : gratitude in the month of giving thanks. Here in the United States, Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. And since I
[1:43] : moved to Colorado three years ago, I think fall has become my favorite season of the year as well.
[1:51] : And when we're in this sort of introspective, playful, promptdriven
[1:58] : space of asking ourselves different questions than we normally would ask
[2:04] : ourselves about gratitude, we get different answers. Good morning, Lorraine. Sometimes it feels tricky to
[2:13] : just come up with a list of gratitudes every day. So, I've created a few different things for you over on our
[2:20] : blog. And good morning, Anna. And I love that you guys are sisters in here
[2:25] : together. And I'll make sure the link is in the blog in the description. It's not there yet, but it will be after the
[2:32] : video. And there is a paper doll template, which I'll show you in a
[2:37] : minute what those look like. And then there's also a list of daily prompts. We're going to work in four different
[2:42] : themes. Being grateful to self, grateful to nature, grateful to others, and whatever the fourth one is that I can't
[2:49] : remember right now, but I am having so much fun with this kind of batch
[2:54] : creation of my dolls. So, I want to give you a sense of where I'm at. create
[3:01] : another set of dolls so that I am so ready to go on November 1st, which is
[3:09] : Saturday already, right? It's already the 1 of November. There's two months left in the year.
[3:16] : And in so many ways, it's been a tricky, challenging year for so many people, me
[3:23] : included, both personally and globally. There's a lots going on. is sending out
[3:29] : prayers to all the people in Jamaica right now. I have a a colleague that
[3:34] : lives there, someone that's visiting there. So, you know, just noticing there's always a lot going on. And one
[3:41] : of the things that keeps me present and connected and focused on the positive is
[3:47] : gratitude. So, last week we painted up a big piece
[3:54] : of fabric which I then cut up into and let me see if I can zoom in here a
[4:01] : little bit and uh painted up a bunch of fabric. And then I had a lot of fun
[4:07] : going back and adding stitching, little bits of lace. I added some hair and some
[4:13] : faces. And I'm going to talk about how to add hair and faces, a couple of
[4:18] : different ideas for that, whether you're working on paper or fabric. And this was a a piece of duck cloth, right? So,
[4:26] : here's one that a little rick rack that I found at a antique marketplace. A
[4:32] : little bit of stitching, right? This one got a little apron. She feels like a little gingerbread doll.
[4:40] : Super cute. And as I write my gratitudes on each one, I will stitch the change
[4:48] : the good morning Tori. I will stitch the chain together as I go. I worked on
[4:54] : three at once and found it a little trickier to work on three at once. And
[5:00] : so I realized that I prefer working on one doll at a time. And then as I add
[5:07] : the the prompts on the back, and you can see I just made a little space to write on this one. Um, but as I write on each
[5:16] : one, I'm going to stitch them together. So, this one I cut all three out at once
[5:22] : and worked on them, it was a little trickier. I had fun making up how to
[5:27] : attach the hair for these, right? And I think they came out pretty cute. And for
[5:34] : these, I just added some buttons and some beads and some hair. And then I just used markers. I have some fun sort
[5:42] : of glittery shiny markers and added a little detail. I took a fabric pen and
[5:48] : did a little drawing on them. Yes. Uh these did come out stinking adorable.
[5:54] : Was super happy with the hair here. So fun to add and make them different to
[6:02] : give them each different faces and different personalities. Right? So there's no right or wrong way to
[6:08] : approach this, but the idea here is to make it easy on yourself by batch
[6:14] : creating the first base part of the doll so that you can add to them as you go. I
[6:22] : had also painted up a piece of fabric that was just black and white. These are
[6:27] : the the series that's in process. So the again I just used markers and a pen. And
[6:35] : these I just glued on with my favorite glue, which I think I've shared on here before, this precision craft glue with a
[6:43] : teeny tiny needle top for. It really is precise and super sticky. But I'm loving
[6:51] : these little black and white ones. And this one again, I just took markers and
[6:57] : colored and took a pen. Yeah, I'm really digging the the black and white. There's
[7:03] : something very calming about them with their little pops of color. So, I'm
[7:08] : looking forward to continuing this one. You know, she's got a little hair and a
[7:13] : little illustration, but she needs, you know, a face. This one and this one.
[7:19] : Before I cut out the template, I actually added the hair on to the
[7:25] : template. So, they came out with some hair, right? So, these are super super
[7:32] : fun to play with, right? And I used all different kinds of things for
[7:39] : hair. So, I want you to think about what you have in your stash.
[7:45] : So, this I can't remember what it's called. Maybe somebody else who does um quilting or weaving, not quilting but
[7:51] : weaving will remember this fuzzy stuff. Found it at a creative reuse store. It
[7:57] : makes great hair. And basically I just stitched it on with an overhand stitch
[8:04] : and then you know fluffed it out and trimmed the edges. These I started sort of pompom style but then did added a
[8:13] : little bang. So, this these are stitched on on this one. Same here. And I'll show
[8:20] : you what I mean by starting, you know, sort of pompom style. And um again, just
[8:26] : a couple of stitches on there. And this one, you know, I loved the kind of crazy
[8:31] : hair and again that overhand stitch to kind of give it that feeling of bangs.
[8:37] : So this one I just did a running stitch and then wo embroidery floss through the
[8:43] : running stitch and left it a little bit loose to kind of just give her a little bit of a fringe there. Did that same
[8:50] : thing here. This was a blanket stitch that then I added a fun little
[8:56] : embroidery to. So you know use what you have on hand and love you. I loved the
[9:01] : hair on this one. We'll do more of this one. And when I was in Oregon at this
[9:07] : antique store, I found this giant piece of mummy cloth in the Halloween section.
[9:15] : So, it's kind of this funny woven, messy piece, and it ended up making great
[9:22] : hair. So, get creative in your stash when it comes to looking for things that
[9:29] : can make hair. And when it comes to attaching them, don't be afraid to stitch them on, glue them on, like, you
[9:37] : know, don't agonize over making them perfect. And then this morning, I'm
[9:42] : making some little stuffed dolls for a different project. And I um bought a
[9:48] : pattern on Etsy and she had a super cute video on making faces and hair as well,
[9:56] : right, for some stitched dolls. So, super fun. So, today what I want to do
[10:02] : is to create a master sheet like I did with the
[10:08] : and we'll talk about faces in a minute uh when we get these drawn on here. Um,
[10:15] : last week we painted a piece of fabric to create our dolls which was ended up
[10:22] : being a little busier than I liked. And so, you know, it's just note to self and
[10:27] : that's okay. I also ended up stitching a round of felt onto each of the painty
[10:35] : faces to have a clean face. So, today I'm like, there's got to be a better way to do this. So, as I was thinking about
[10:44] : this, so I'm going to create on this matte side and I'm going to again create
[10:51] : a master sheet here. Hi, Ann. Welcome, welcome, welcome. I'm going to create a
[10:57] : master sheet here using collage materials, some fabric, maybe some of
[11:02] : this um seam binding. Uh got a calendar and a couple of magazine pages, and also
[11:08] : some of the painty papers we've made over the last couple of months. But one of the things that I'm thinking about is
[11:14] : I want to be able to have her
[11:21] : face on here. And I'm going back and forth between the
[11:26] : two different templates, the taller, more slender one and this sort of
[11:32] : godmother round one. This feels like my my stepmother. her mom was from Germany and
[11:39] : she was just wonderfully round and soft all over. So, I'm not going to collage
[11:45] : right below this line. Make sure I left myself enough space. And then I'm going
[11:51] : to do that on this end as well. So, I'm just going to collage in between because
[11:57] : I think it's going to make the faces easier rather than either having to paint over the face or add something
[12:04] : different to the face. I want to have the the bodies done, but I want the the faces, you know, I may add color to the
[12:11] : faces or I may leave them white. I had funny fun playing with midjourney this
[12:17] : morning and asked it for, you know, some different faces that I could use as
[12:24] : templates for either just stitching or drawing. And I didn't realize it printed
[12:30] : double-sided. Um, but these were fun. They gave cute ideas for hairstyles and
[12:36] : I will email these out to everybody that's on the Paperd Doll Chronicles email list and I will also add them to
[12:42] : the blog post that we started that has all of the uh details for the project.
[12:50] : That link to the blog post will get added to the description of the video. It's not there yet. But I loved these
[12:56] : really simple styles which was kind of what I did here. Right. So, these I did
[13:03] : with thread. It's hard to draw on felt, but these I
[13:09] : did just with a black marker and a red pen. And then I think this one is the
[13:16] : only black and white one I've done so far. This one, no, this one too. I used a Pentel fabric marker to draw the face,
[13:25] : but I realized I wanted when I'm thinking about gratitude, I wanted to be
[13:30] : able to have some different expressions on the faces. So, my goal here would be
[13:37] : to play with these different expressions on each of the dolls and maybe some of
[13:42] : these hairstyles as well. And again, I'm having fun creating a head for all of
[13:50] : these dolls. So that when November hits,
[13:56] : my daily practice will be the writing of the gratitude and simply spending five
[14:02] : or 10 minutes to add a few details to the doll. So, I am going to use matte
[14:08] : medium because I want my collage to be nice and flat. And I love this piece of
[14:16] : fabric. So, I might do some fabric. I'm really loving this lacy seam
[14:23] : binding. All these things I found at Creative Reuse stores, like, you know, a
[14:28] : whole bag full of stuff. Love this pretty landscape. This looks like
[14:33] : somebody's oil painting. And then I also found this calendar that um I don't even
[14:41] : know when it's from 2023. So I probably picked this up for you know a dollar
[14:46] : somewhere. But I was really digging these very mindful nature images as
[14:52] : well. So I may tear up some of this calendar to use. And then of
[14:59] : course I have a huge box of painty papers. that we have painted up in some
[15:08] : of the past videos here. Oh, that's a fun piece. And I'm thinking I want some
[15:14] : of these really these look like the alcohol inks. Some of these really sheer
[15:19] : tissue like pieces will be really beautiful. Definitely still on that.
[15:28] : That's multiple pieces of tissue. All right, we'll set that aside. still on
[15:34] : that uh bright color kick, but those are kind of fun, too. So, you know, it
[15:41] : doesn't all have to look the same. Definitely looking for this project for thinner pieces because if I want to add
[15:48] : any stitching, oh, polka dots would be cute. any stitching later. And I'm looking for
[15:56] : things that I, you know, probably wouldn't use in other projects. But if I want to add some stitching
[16:03] : and I'm grabbing more paper than I am possibly going to need for this. And now I'm
[16:11] : probably wishing that I would have also got several pieces of poster board.
[16:18] : Just not sure what I managed to do here. Okay, we're not going to use that one
[16:24] : because it's going to be a mess at the moment. And I have a small piece of paper,
[16:30] : right? And I think that it looks like Let's see if I can actually probably get two. Nope, they're
[16:39] : not quite gonna fit. So, I'm going to only get one set of dolls or maybe, you know, I'll get some couple more off the
[16:46] : edges. So, I'm gonna, you know, be practical about the paper as well.
[16:57] : So, the cover is like a card stock. A little too stiff.
[17:04] : Don't really want words. It was This is the one I saw that I
[17:10] : really loved that look.
[17:17] : I love this can, but I think what I'm really drawn to at the moment is just
[17:23] : that beautiful blue water feel.
[17:28] : Definitely love this one. Some of these gorgeous ones. Oh, this is
[17:36] : a fun pattern and texture, right? So, I'm not looking for images as much as
[17:42] : I'm looking for color, texture, and pattern
[17:48] : to make these dolls. All right, we'll save those for another project.
[18:02] : And my goal here is to just keep this very abstract, right? I do.
[18:09] : I'm going to stay below that line there. They don't necessarily
[18:15] : have to match. And any scraps that
[18:22] : don't get used for the dolls will get used for some other project.
[18:28] : So again, just being curious and interested about patterns,
[18:35] : colors. These colors right now are not working together. So now that has me
[18:40] : thinking like, do I want a more cohesive pattern or am I just need to get over
[18:47] : myself, stick them down, and see what happens?
[18:56] : Look at those beautiful colors.
[19:02] : And maybe these little scrappy dolls are going to end up. And it's interesting.
[19:08] : I'm going to run out of room fast here and wish that I had some. And um it's
[19:16] : going to be glary for a minute and wish that I, like I said, had another piece
[19:22] : of paper here. So, we just need to bring some more of
[19:28] : that blue in. It'll start to help to tie things
[19:34] : together. This is one of those pretty images where
[19:40] : I'm feeling very hesitant to cut it apart. And so I may save this. And this
[19:47] : may I think that would actually mostly fit on a doll. So maybe that'll get
[19:54] : added as a layer to the doll. All right. Definitely love this piece of
[20:03] : fabric. I think I'm about out of that and I'm going to be kind of sad.
[20:08] : So, I like these the black and white a lot. So, maybe I'll do a a second set of
[20:14] : these paper ones with the black and white. Love this
[20:20] : scrappy painty paper that I made somewhere along the line with a lot of
[20:26] : my favorite colors. I'm feeling a little obsessed right now with fluorescent
[20:31] : pink.
[20:40] : And I love this paisley print.
[20:46] : And this one has some fun patterns in it that I can see adding more to as I go
[20:53] : along. And again, this is just a good way to use up some of these
[21:00] : little scraps that might not get used other places. So, it's starting to feel
[21:06] : a little bit better. I'm thinking that this is going to get collaged down and a
[21:13] : layer of paint put over the the top of the whole thing. One of my favorite
[21:18] : processes, right, is to push all that back. And I am definitely
[21:25] : All these beautiful black and white ones are going to get saved for another
[21:30] : project because I always have way too much.
[21:38] : Lorraine, I did thank you. Yesterday was busy. I just haven't replied to all my emails yet. But I absolutely loved your
[21:46] : Malta goddesses and am always so happy
[21:52] : when um you share them with me. So, thank you for sending those to me.
[22:06] : And if you're on Instagram, use the hashtagg gratitude goddesses and be sure
[22:13] : and share your goddesses over on Instagram.
[22:23] : All right, so this feels like kind of a fun crazy mess. I have no idea where
[22:28] : it's going to end up. And once I take these papers off, I'm not necessarily
[22:35] : going to remember where I put them to begin with. And let me find
[22:43] : my I think the So for any kind of scraper, gift card, you know, old hotel
[22:50] : key card that you might want to use for this project, you want to make sure your
[22:55] : end is really nice and clean. Otherwise, you get, you know, little ny texture
[23:03] : underneath your images and over the top of them that you may not want. So, I'm just making sure. Sometimes I will stick
[23:09] : this in a little tub of soapy water and just peel all of the the paint off and
[23:16] : it will last forever as long as you keep it nice and clean. And that's true for
[23:22] : like an old, you know, holiday gift card that's used or whatever. Okay.
[23:30] : So, I am just going to kind of push these all to the side.
[23:36] : And if you're new to matte medium, it is tricky to get off your fingers. I
[23:44] : had someone from our recent mythical makeover experience say that I should
[23:49] : share how to get it off your fingers, but honestly, I don't mind having sticky
[23:54] : fingers. So for me, I usually just take a shower and in the hot shower, lots of
[24:02] : soap and water and just kind of rub it off of your fingers. You can also wear
[24:07] : plastic gloves if getting your fingers painty is not your favorite thing.
[24:18] : And you want glue under the image and over the image. We want these to get
[24:23] : really flat and well sealed.
[24:29] : And we don't want them once we're cutting out all the the pieces of our paper dolls, we don't want any of those
[24:35] : edges poking up. And so again, I'm keeping this line up here
[24:42] : totally clear so that when I lay down my paper doll, it might have some glue and
[24:47] : paint, but you know, that's fine because this has paint on it. You can see it's leaving a bit of a shadow.
[24:58] : And it's always so interesting laying things down the first time and then coming back and starting to glue
[25:06] : them down. Things move around. They change. So, just let them go where they
[25:13] : want to go. Notice my things tend to be fairly
[25:18] : square or rectangular. It makes it easier to kind of fit them all together and makes the look at the
[25:25] : end a little more cohesive than if you start to put in like a lot of round
[25:31] : pieces or odd shapes. But you do want to vary the size of the
[25:37] : pieces. That also helps to create a lot of visual interest on those pages. also
[25:44] : put something down to protect your surface because the glue goes everywhere
[25:49] : and you do you want to get that glue all the way to the edge of the project and the paper all the way to the edge as
[25:56] : well. So, I just buy rolls of butcher paper. Freezer paper also works really
[26:01] : well. Nothing super fancy. So, I can see there's that one didn't get glue
[26:08] : underneath it. So, it's kind of sticking up there. So you can do the same collage
[26:14] : process with fabric. It might take a little extra glue, especially on top,
[26:22] : and just kind of let that absorb into that fabric there. It will also the
[26:27] : fabric takes longer to dry than the paper.
[26:37] : And I can sit and glue paper to surfaces like this for hours.
[26:44] : It's a really fun way to create your own collage master sheets. You can make
[26:50] : photo copies of this and use it again and again.
[26:57] : Snap a picture of it and upload it to your computer and play with it. So,
[27:03] : there's so many uses for creating a page like this. And I'm
[27:09] : noticing now as I'm gluing it down that I'm appreciating those pops of red are
[27:14] : really adding some nice contrast here to the piece. I wasn't sure at first,
[27:21] : but now I think it's working for me. And I'm sort of overlapping edges here.
[27:29] : I have some that are buckling and that's okay. Especially magazine images. You
[27:34] : know, I'm going really fast. If you want magazine images to be really flat, you got to be a little slower and more
[27:40] : patient than I am. But it's okay to leave white space, too. Not every single
[27:46] : piece has to be completely covered up. And again, you see how generous I'm
[27:52] : being with that matte medium on there.
[28:01] : So we get those pieces nice and flat.
[28:08] : Let me get that flat edge right up there. So that lines up nicely.
[28:15] : And I don't need to know that that was an umbrella, right? What I like is the the shape and the the drama, right? And
[28:22] : so by the time you know I I cut this out, we're have going to just have a fragment of that image on there.
[28:38] : Look at that pop of pink. Makes me happy. Happy.
[28:43] : I'm trying to get a good mix of some of those magazine images with my own painty
[28:50] : papers. You guys know I'm a fan of whenever we use our own artwork, our own
[28:56] : handmade collage, our own marks in our artwork. It makes it uniquely us. Even
[29:02] : if it's a technique you learn from someone else. Add your own colors, your
[29:08] : own marks, your own texture, and you'll be glad that you did. I mean,
[29:15] : it's why I don't tend to buy a lot of stencils either because I even want
[29:22] : those to be unique. I have a lot of stencils from when I was first starting
[29:28] : out on my mixed media journey.
[29:34] : Let's see. Put some of those polka dots in here.
[29:41] : I noticed I ended up with a lot more of the magazine images on that side and
[29:47] : more of the mixed media paper over here on this side. And it's all good. Just
[29:54] : noticing.
[30:09] : really getting that down there tightly. It's okay to let the papers hang off over the edge. So now we have this kind
[30:16] : of big chaotic piece of paper here
[30:22] : and we want to bring some cohesiveness to this so that we're going to push back
[30:29] : some of the messiness and make this all feel a little bit more like it's one
[30:37] : piece. I don't want to lose what I put under there, but I definitely want to
[30:42] : tone it down. And because I'm in love with fall colors right now, I may try a
[30:49] : yellow over the top and see what I think about yellow. Although, there's a lot of
[30:56] : my favorite blues in here. And that yellow, right, is going to brighten up
[31:02] : the greens. Turn this orange, turn this green. So, it'll end up being some
[31:09] : interesting colors. So, I'm going to grab this Azo yellow
[31:16] : deep. This is one of my favorite yellows. And I'm just going to go for it because
[31:22] : you know what? And that it doesn't need to be dry. That's the nice thing about the matte medium. It doesn't need to be dry. Azo yellow deep is
[31:30] : semi-transparent. So, it's going to give me a nice transparency. And if I don't like the yellow, guess what? I'll just go over it
[31:37] : with a different color. I even like some of the marks and texture. It's one of
[31:43] : the things I love about using this scraper as opposed to a brush.
[31:54] : All right. So, it totally changes the dynamic here. And you can see just by
[32:00] : looking that all the sudden all of these look like they're part of the same piece
[32:07] : and not as fragmented as it did before.
[32:13] : Still have some white showing through. That's fine. But all of a sudden I'm in love, right? Like I'm like, "Oh, that's
[32:19] : exactly what it needed to kind of work that piece." And this is um one of those
[32:25] : pieces that would make a an amazing underpainting for a mixed media piece of
[32:31] : art. Like it's just a great starting place. And if there's places where I want to maybe, you know, pull back some
[32:39] : of those little bit of pops of bright, maybe add a little thicker layers in
[32:47] : somewhere. The reason that we layer on the matte medium is twofold. One is so that we get this really um beautiful
[32:55] : flat layer where we don't have to worry about our edges coming up. But the other reason is because it seals the surface
[33:02] : and you can paint over it and push back to the images without damaging any of
[33:08] : your beautiful images in there. Okay, I probably want to just quit
[33:14] : messing with this.
[33:26] : And I'm going to set this aside to dry for just a minute. I may have to hit it
[33:32] : with my dryer. And let's talk about some fun ways to make some hair for some of
[33:40] : your dolls while that one gets dry. You know, with the with the paper dolls, we
[33:46] : can totally add the hair onto the template, right?
[33:52] : So, for example, if I'm working on this
[33:57] : doll template here before I cut her out, right? I'm And
[34:03] : then before instead of tracing, I might trace around her head, too, just so we remember where her head is. But go ahead
[34:10] : and, you know, put hair in there and cut the hair out, right? And so then you
[34:16] : have those hair is part of the doll and not something that needs to be added
[34:24] : separately. So I love this one with these little pigtails,
[34:30] : right? So I can just draw those little pigtails in. Come back. Right. So, we can get her
[34:38] : some cute hair going in here. And then you can paint or draw or stitch, you
[34:44] : know, whatever feels good for those dolls. So, I think that's like one of the simplest ways to get some hair onto
[34:52] : your doll is just draw it onto your template, right? But in the case of
[34:58] : these fabric dolls, they needed to I
[35:03] : didn't think about it when I until I did some of the black and white ones. So, I needed to add hair. And I love texture.
[35:10] : I love stitching. And I think the favorite way that I've seen to make doll
[35:16] : hair is simply, and you probably remember doing this when you were in
[35:22] : school, is to do a kind of almost like if you were going to make a PMP pom. So,
[35:30] : I have some lovely hand dyed wool that I bought at a wool market here. And I love
[35:36] : the variegated colors of it for hair. And then I'm going to take something
[35:42] : like this. And this is going to be the length of the hair. So you want to pick
[35:48] : something that the width matches the width of the hair that you want to make.
[35:55] : And then I'm just going to wrap this. Depends on how much hair you want to
[36:01] : make, how tight you want that to be.
[36:10] : And I'm going to post a link in the blog post to the video of the lady I saw making stitched hair for rag dolls today
[36:17] : because it was a really great video. And this one will be a little bit simpler
[36:23] : than that. So then I'm simply going to trim this.
[36:30] : I'm going to cut off a little extra piece of this yarn.
[36:37] : I'm going to slide this piece of yarn underneath.
[36:42] : Zoom in again a little bit. And I want to tie the yarn up before I
[36:49] : scooch it off just for ease and it doesn't fall apart.
[36:54] : And let's see. All right, we'll trim that up later. And
[37:00] : I'm just going to kind of do a loose double knot here.
[37:08] : And this is kind of like the part in the hair.
[37:16] : And I'm just going to pull this off. It was nice that had plastic on it. It
[37:22] : came off nice. And I'm going to come back over here. I'm going to slit the bottom.
[37:29] : Then I'm probably going to tighten up that little double knot on the top now that it's off. So we don't want our hair
[37:36] : to come off
[37:42] : and we're going to trim it up. You're going to grab one of your dolls.
[37:49] : Looking for a blank one here.
[37:54] : So, the easiest way to do this Oops, I missed a loop.
[38:08] : I love the crazy yarn hair. You may not, right? You could do this with fabric.
[38:14] : You could do it with embroidery. Floss. You could do it with twine. Would make really fun, interesting hair. And then I
[38:22] : just used an overhand stitch to stitch it on. It's a lot of hair for this
[38:28] : little doll. This would be more appropriate for a larger doll. Like even
[38:36] : she has more substance. Oh, that's kind of pretty cute on her, too. Maybe this
[38:42] : series all needs to have like matching matching hair. So, you could just do an
[38:48] : overhand stitch and stitch the hair onto the doll. And what this
[38:56] : fabric glue is great for is getting the base layer of the hair down. So, don't
[39:01] : be afraid to use what you on have on hand. If you don't love to sew, there's so many other ways to attach hair. So,
[39:11] : glue, stapler, safety pin, right? So get creative with
[39:17] : how you like to make the hair, but this is a really fun way. And then once the
[39:22] : hair is sort of tacked down at the top, you can
[39:29] : make pigtails, right? You can make it that's what I did on the the one with
[39:34] : the messy bun, right? If I did it like an actual PMP pom
[39:40] : and tied another piece of fabric around here and stitched it on, we can actually
[39:45] : make her a sweet little bun. Right? If you want to have a bun on there, have a
[39:52] : messy little bun. It's not going to stay together without the stitching. But it gives you an idea of how to start
[39:58] : putting these things together. And don't be afraid to just uh search on YouTube for how to make doll hair. There's so
[40:05] : many great examples of how to do that. But this one, this mummy cloth, which
[40:12] : you could do also with a loose cheesecloth or any kind of fabric, you
[40:18] : know, um thread bits if you're someone who collects thready bits. This I 100%
[40:25] : just glued this. And that's way too much hair again. way. But actually, it's kind
[40:32] : of fun and funny. But I simply glued her hair down using that really strong glue.
[40:41] : Where'd she go? And I did twist it up a little bit and,
[40:47] : you know, gave her a little bit of bangs. And there's, you know, kind of It's definitely Look, Tori, it's curly
[40:53] : like yours. Um, like the Tori has gorgeous, gorgeous curly hair, right?
[40:59] : So, this was a little fussy to work with because when you cut it, all the stringy bits start to come apart, right? But you
[41:08] : can simply work to pull it apart,
[41:15] : twist it up. So, explore with what you have on hand. It's so interesting. These
[41:21] : black and white dolls don't want hair. like the drawn hair is fine, but they're
[41:26] : not wanting hair added. So, I'm just noticing that, right? Like there's something about the hair that feels like
[41:33] : too much for these smaller doll bodies, right? So, multiple ideas for using
[41:41] : whatever you have at home. This was really fun. This was a piece of
[41:49] : um what do you call it? Tool. I love tulle
[41:54] : for laying over things. I love the transparency of the tulle. This was the seam binding that also I like the
[42:02] : transparency of. This was from an old handkerchief that I just cut out a
[42:07] : little embroidered heart. And again, these things are just glued on there.
[42:12] : So, even if you're working with fabric, right? It doesn't have to be a stitched
[42:17] : project. Um, so some of this stuff got glued on. Let's see how our master sheet
[42:25] : is doing here. It's looking drier. And I can
[42:34] : pick up a little bit of the globby bits of yellow.
[42:45] : It's going to take a while for this to dry. And to me, this is the fun and the magic
[42:52] : part. We've done um similar projects to this. I'm going to turn this over.
[43:00] : And I am going to make sure that I mark that same line on this side
[43:09] : as I have on the other side. Looks like it's about it's an inch and a quarter.
[43:18] : because I want that face to be up there in the white part.
[43:26] : I'm just going to grab a pencil. So, I'm just tracing these. So, I'm not going to
[43:31] : have any control over what she's going to look
[43:36] : like on the other side, which is part of the magic and mystery of this process.
[43:52] : got her way over close to the edge there, but it's all good. Again, we're not going for perfection here. We're
[43:59] : going for playfulness. And even as I'm working on these dolls,
[44:05] : I feel grateful for the time. I feel grateful for the
[44:12] : focus on gratitude. I can express gratitude for my abundance
[44:18] : of supplies. I love projects that use up scrappy
[44:24] : bits.
[44:32] : And again, you could cut this out as a chain. You could link each doll together
[44:39] : from the beginning and make a paper doll chain, but I found it more challenging
[44:45] : to work on. I really enjoyed working on each doll individually rather than a
[44:53] : chain of dolls. See if we can get one more on there.
[45:03] : We'll see what happens when uh I put her at a little bit of an angle.
[45:10] : And you know, if I cut off the tip of the fingers, it doesn't matter because they are going to get glued or stitched
[45:16] : into chains. And my intention is to create one chain
[45:24] : of seven dolls each week rather than one really long chain. Um, it feels fun to
[45:30] : have multiple chains that I can kind of
[45:36] : hang around my studio in different places. I don't necessarily have a place where I could just hang one. So, this
[45:44] : one, we don't have that white space, so I might add a head or paint a face. All
[45:51] : right, we're just going to do a whole one here.
[45:59] : I This is an 11 by14 piece of poster board. I found a old pack of poster
[46:06] : board in my stash. No idea what I bought it for. Hadn't even been opened.
[46:14] : And what I noticed with the fabric dolls is they're a little floppy. And so I
[46:19] : want to see what is it like if I have some that have a little more substance
[46:25] : to them. So I'm going to get five dolls out of
[46:30] : this 11 by 15. If I had used the slender
[46:35] : doll template, I might have gotten maybe one more out of it. But I really love
[46:40] : this little soft round. She feels like goddessy
[46:47] : to me.
[46:54] : that sort of fairy godmother. And so now I want to look at these and I
[47:00] : want to come back in and um do some of
[47:05] : the these fun cute little hairstyles. And that's also going to speed up the
[47:11] : process if I'm not having to add hair to every single one. And I usually like to
[47:20] : add hair that looks like mine, right? So, you know, but it doesn't have to.
[47:28] : And I also noticed when I was making these, she doesn't really have a neck, right? So,
[47:35] : and I didn't leave a lot of space on those for dolls. So those will get hair or on any of them. So we'll just do a
[47:43] : couple of them. Maybe just kind of a little flippy hair
[47:50] : do there.
[47:58] : Probably just to squeeze when I love some of these ones with the the buns on
[48:04] : them, too. Right. Your dolls might need to have really
[48:10] : long hair. And remember that when you're drawing faces that the hair is up above
[48:18] : the top roundness of the head, right? So if we were to
[48:24] : draw this the roundness of the face on here, the hair goes up above the top of
[48:30] : the template, right? So, you want that hair normally to come way up there.
[48:38] : All right, we'll see if we can cut these out while it's still kind of wet
[48:45] : and see what happens.
[48:51] : So, where it's soggy, the I'm noticing the, you know, the board might tear a
[48:57] : little bit. So, you know, I recommend that you let your master sheet Oops, and I overcut there. No problem. Um, let
[49:06] : your master sheet dry
[49:12] : because mine definitely feels a little bit soggy. You know, I'm looking at all of these
[49:19] : that I have drawn here, and it feels uh very much like um
[49:26] : cookie cutters, like making gingerbread cookies at the holidays. One of my favorite things to do and eat. I
[49:32] : absolutely love gingerbread. And I'm starting by just cutting these
[49:38] : apart. And then I'll go back with some fussy
[49:44] : cutting. And you notice I'm not turning them over
[49:50] : and looking at them yet, right? I'm letting them just kind of do their their
[49:56] : thing.
[50:03] : And see, I already have that one thing of hair made that can go on one of these.
[50:12] : Brad and I are leaving in a couple hours to just have a nice long weekend away.
[50:17] : So, it felt even extra important to have
[50:22] : some of the dolls already made.
[50:28] : And I'm really pleased with how the prompts came out. And you may find that
[50:33] : you end up writing the prompts in your journals and just putting a word
[50:40] : onto each of your dolls. As I'm thinking about, you know, the paper dolls and adding more collage or more imagery to
[50:50] : them. You could even add a word to the front of the doll, which feels fun.
[51:04] : This is where you want to be able to speed up that video. And I will look through and see, you
[51:10] : know, if any of these fun little scrappy bits. I am not one of those people that keeps all the small scrappy bits of
[51:18] : everything because it's too messy and drives me crazy. So, I have to actually
[51:23] : really love the scraps to keep them. I do tend to clean up a bit. All right. Are we ready? Let's see what happened.
[51:31] : Oh my gosh, look how stinking cute that is. And then she's going to have some hair
[51:39] : on here, which I'm probably just going to glue on. Oh, I absolutely love how
[51:45] : cute this came out. Okay, now I have to do another one. Oh my gosh, so much fun. I love the
[51:54] : mystery and magic of this process and I love the batch creating of sets of them
[52:03] : as well because I think it's going to add, you know, some cohesiveness to each
[52:09] : set too. Found a wet part there.
[52:15] : Definitely trickier to cut it while it's wet and I'm making it work. Okay. So, this
[52:22] : one we're gonna She's going to have some hair when we turn her over that'll have to get colored or painted.
[52:31] : [Music] Some of them feel like maybe they want some hats would be fun to add.
[52:52] : Okay. I think this is the one that was on a angle. So, we'll see, you know, where that uh paint painty paper landed.
[53:08] : I'm not trying to make her perfectly symmetrical.
[53:14] : So cute. Look at these. Now I want to get my Posa markers out and go to town
[53:20] : with the mark making, right? And the
[53:25] : playfulness of these. So now I can, you know, have a sense of where these are
[53:31] : going. I want to cut out one of the ones where we're going to have she's going to
[53:36] : be painty all over.
[53:45] : Totally. So much fun. So much fun.
[54:11] : She's gonna have a little cute high hair do there.
[54:20] : And then I'm sad because I'm leaving my studio for the next four or five days to
[54:25] : to go play and I can't drag all the things I want to play with. But I will
[54:31] : probably take some of these along to
[54:36] : start that journaling process. You guys are going to love the prompts.
[54:41] : They're again, they're linked in the blog post and I will put a link to that
[54:47] : blog post in the video. And if you're on my email list, you got a link to the
[54:53] : templates in the blog post in your email yesterday.
[55:07] : So, this one is going to need a face
[55:12] : added or a face painted, right? And I'm seeing, you know, these have a little
[55:18] : bit of that glue on there. And you know, how easy would it be
[55:25] : to just cut out one of these cute little faces after I reprint them, not
[55:30] : doublesided. So, another option. And I will email out these templates to the Paperd Doll
[55:36] : Chronicles email list. I will email out these little faces after our call today, too.
[55:44] : Or actually, I'll just stick them um I'll add them to the blog post so that everything is all in one place. I love
[55:53] : that she has little earrings on. So, if we want to make this really simple and
[56:00] : quick, right, then we can just print out a face, glue a face on.
[56:08] : And this one feels like she's going to need a little bit bigger face. So, I might print one
[56:16] : out a little bit bigger. But how stinking cute is that, right? Um, just
[56:21] : such an easy way to create a face or a style. And
[56:28] : maybe she's gonna get the hair and that can just get glued and or stitched and
[56:34] : then she'll get a face underneath. So, just a Now we have two different ways
[56:40] : that we can batch create our dolls. Oh, look at that fun piece that we can batch
[56:46] : create our dolls. And then again on the daily basis throughout November, you're
[56:52] : just finishing up one doll at a time, adding little fun touches like this
[56:59] : pretty green seam binding, you know, might be a pretty little belt.
[57:06] : They don't have to be over-the-top embellished to be super cute. And when
[57:14] : you're trying to stick with a challenge, one of the best things to remember,
[57:22] : got there's some nice orange rick rack on there. To remember is to keep it
[57:27] : simple. Don't make that project so elaborate that you can't get it done.
[57:34] : Like I did all three of these in one sitting. Probably took me an hour, hour
[57:40] : and a half watching TV to get them all done. And now I get to
[57:46] : go back and just do some, you know, writing on the back or add like I also
[57:53] : had the thought this morning of typing some words on my typewriter that might be maybe each doll is going to have a
[58:00] : word. Not sure yet, but so many directions, ideas, fun ways to play. So
[58:08] : hopefully this just gives you some easy ways to think about bringing them all
[58:14] : together to create something that is unique to you but is simple, playful,
[58:22] : and will keep you inspired throughout the month of November. And I will be dropping in on Thursdays to work on some
[58:30] : of these individual dolls and to share my personal progress with you guys
[58:35] : throughout the month as well. As always, thank you for joining me. Thank you for
[58:40] : being here live. Thank you for catching the replay. So appreciate each and every
[58:46] : one of you. Would love some comments and thumbs up on the video and encourage
[58:52] : other people. Share it with a friend that you know would love this project and I will see you guys all next
[58:59] : Thursday. Have a great rest of your day and a great weekend. Bye everybody.
[59:05] : Thank you. Thank you everybody. Thank you. I will enjoy the