The Vintage Dresser: Vintage Doll Face Tutorial

Welcome to the "Doll Face" tutorial!

Tania came to my (Mom's) house yesterday so we could stage a tutorial. She found a cute idea online, using these vintage doll faces. The one she found was Halloween themed, but we decided to do a Christmas/Winter theme, since Halloween has sneaked up on us unexpectedly! LOL!

I chose the 2nd from the left of this selection of faces. Tania used the one on the far right. It isn't plastic like the rest. It's canvas or a similar fabric that was molded in a form, I guess.

But before we started we needed a little "Christmas Inspiration". We found some Eggnogg flavored tea stashed in my cupboard, which provided the perfect Holiday ambiance!

Now we're feeling inspired, so next came the decision making process. What to do to embellish this cute face? Tania brought some crepe paper, doilies, sheet music, vintage Christmas wrapping paper, etc. I had vintage piano roll paper, glitter, buttons, gems, glue, tape, etc.

I decided to put a crepe paper ruffle around my doll face. I cut a length of white and red, each about 3 feet long, layered it with the red extending beyond the white and stitched a gathering stitch the length of it, on my sewing machine. If you don't have a machine, you can use needle and thread and hand stitch a gathering stitch.

I gathered the crepe paper by holding one of the gathering threads and pushing it along the length of the sewing thread, till I had an oval shape, the right size for the face to fit onto. I wanted the face to fit over the gathering stitch, so it would cover it.

Using hot glue, I adhered the face to the crepe paper.

In order to hide the edge of the face, where it attached to the crepe paper, I glued a length of vintage pink rik-rak which has gold threads woven thru it. You'll need to measure around the face you decide to use, to determine the length it will take for yours. You could also use lace or other sewing embellishments for this step. The idea is to hide the edge of the face.

Then I decided she had quite a receding hairline for a young lady, so I attached short strips of the pink rik-rak at the top of her forehead, to simulate bangs. Ah, yes---much better!

The inspiration piece Tania found was wearing a mask, since she was dressed for Halloween. Instead of a mask, I decided my little lady needed cat eye glasses. I formed them from gold glitter craft stem (pipe cleaner). It only took one stem to form the glasses. Determine how long you want them to be across the top, extending past the outer corners of the eye. Center that measurement on the craft stem, fold the stem down at each corner and curve it down, around and up to meet the top again, winding the ends around a couple of times and clipping off the excess. I used hot glue to fasten the glasses to the bridge of her nose, between the eyes.

I cut another length of the white and red crepe paper, about 1 foot long, and stitched it lengthwise, like I did for the ruffle around her face. (The one shown above isn't long enough---it's just to show what I'm talking about).

Gather the stitched pieces to fit under the chin and cover the bottom of her neck. Fold in half lengthwise, along the stitching.

Turn under each end and fasten with a dot of hot glue.

Turn with the folded sides underneath and glue the ruffle under her chin.

At this point, she's looking pretty finished from the front. But the back is kind of messy! So I cut an oval to fit on the back, where all the gathered raw edges are showing. You can see what I mean in a photo down below a ways.

I used a roll of crepe paper and squeezed it a little, into an oval shape which matched the size of the area I wanted to cover up. I drew around it with a pencil onto a piece of chipboard (lightweight cardboard) and some vintage Christmas wrapping paper, making the paper piece a half inch or so bigger all around than the cardboard.

I used a couple of strips of double stick tape to fasten the cardboard to the paper oval. (Oops, no photo!)

Then I clipped all around the paper oval, from the outer paper edge to the cardboard. I did this every 1/4" or so. I put a small bead of craft glue all around the cardboard edge, smeared it a little with my finger, and folded the edges of the paper over onto the cardboard. (Sorry--no photo again!)

I then cut a length of crepe paper about a yard long and stitched about 1/2" from the edge, the entire length. I gathered it to fit on the back of the oval, keeping the stitching inside the edge, so it wouldn't show when viewed from the finished side.

Here we have the decorated oval that will cover up all the gathered edges showing on the back of the doll piece.

I put short folded length of gold rik-rak at the top and glued it to the cardboard oval, than ran a bead of hot glue around the edge of the front piece and attached the decorated oval, sandwiching the rik-rak hanger between the front and back pieces.

I picked the cute paper to use on the back from this box of fun vintage wrapping paper that Tania found at one of the antiuqe/junque sales we attended this summer.

So, this is where we're at. I hung her up and pondered for a while and decided she needed something! But what?? I KNOW! GLITTER! What's a fun crafty project without a little glitter?!

I ran a tiny bead of white craft glue arount the outer edge of the red crepe paper and then dipped the glued edge into gold glitter. Just your regular old fashioned gold glitter- - nothing fancy! Just run a little glue, dip in glitter, more glue, more glitter, and so on till you work your way all around the outer edge.

Sorry, this photo is a little out of focus! That's what happens when you're holding your camera in one hand and trying to focus and click single handed! I put the glitter into a plastic dish that's made for this purpose. It has a spout at one end so you can dump the unused glitter back into the container.

You can probably see here that I also added glitter to the edge of the ruffle under her neck and attached a little red heart shaped jewel under her chin. Now she's done!

Looks like she's thinking "What are you looking at?????"

We started with the counter top all clean and uncluttered and this is what we ended up with! And I think I had picked up a few things at this point even! Typical! Any time I create anything I end up working in a little square foot of space with clutter surround me!