From the category archives:
As you all know, I’ve been raving about how much I like Ultra Chic and even took the next step and became a distributor, but I’m not one to hide my head in the sand when a problem develops! We were at the Portland Doll Show last Saturday (yes, I do intend to write about [...]
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Is there anything more rewarding than watching the glow and excitement on a new doll maker’s face as she binds the cloth body to the doll’s legs and begins to see it come together as a real doll? Not for me, there isn’t. I love it!
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You may remember that I told you about the doll class we started at our local Senior Center (Center 50 +) here in Salem, Oregon earlier this year. The ladies are starting on their second dolls now, and I thought you might enjoy seeing some shots of our class in action.
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When I first started making dolls, I couldn’t understand what people saw in antique or reproduction dolls. Antiques are frequently not beautiful. When I go to doll shows, antique stores, or even pull up pictures of antique dolls being auctioned off by well known auction houses, I find lots of dolls that I personally wouldn’t [...]
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I was talking with a friend the other day and she mentioned she had been getting some unusual discolored spots on her porcelain and couldn’t figure out what was going on. She described them as being roughly the size of a thumb print with a streaky area running downward from the bottom, and there was [...]
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Probably every last one of you has made a 28” Ballerina at some time in your doll making history, since it was so popular awhile back, but I never did. I’m more into character dolls that I can dress in old fashioned clothes and show that even “back then” kids were kids, no matter how [...]
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Nothing makes me grind my teeth more then opening my kiln only to find that the shoulder plate has warped all out of shape. There are several ways to fire shoulder plates that greatly improve the odds of ending up with a nice looking, symmetrical result. One way is to stack up a couple of [...]
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I don’t know about you, but I’ve ruined more shoulder plates then I can shake a stick at. For me, they’ve always been the hardest part of firing a doll. If the arms and legs are straight, I stand them up, if bent I put some prop over a shelf support, put some more inside [...]
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Have you ever wondered why it’s so hard to cut doll eyes well? Do you tend to leave the eyes for last because you hate to do them or just know you’ll mess them up? It’s so aggravating to have spent so much time getting the head poured without pin holes or blemishes, maybe even [...]
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In the last article we addressed cleaning soft fired greenware, or greenware fired to a cone 018, so let’s talk a bit about dry cleaning unfired greenware using the T.I.B.s brushes. T.I.B.s stands for Tisha’s Incredible Brushes. These great little brushes were developed by Tisha Ritter for just this purpose and allow doll makers to [...]
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