Art Dolls - Featuring embroidered and mixed media art dolls.

Current Project:
This will be my first completely beaded art doll.

I created a body pattern and cut front and back from felt and stitched them together - stuffing firmly with fiberfill. The body form is about 7-1/2" tall.

I started beading the form last night.

I am taking a journey with no particular destination in mind. The selection of beads and the path of the stitching evolve as I work.

My First Art Doll: Earth Elemental
This is the first art doll I made. I created a body pattern and cut front and back from felt. I stitched the front and back with embroidery thread, covering the felt completely with shades of brown, green and gold.

I used hand-rolled paper beads across the top of her head, and a braided bow around her neck. This doll measures approx. 4-1/2" tall.

Second Art Doll: Prima
"Prima" is short for primary, as in "primary colors". I created this doll in the same manner as the first. However, I only used shades of red, yellow and blue in the doll.

Again, I used hand-rolled paper beads on her head, and a braided bow around her neck. This doll measures approx. 4" tall.

Water Elemental Art Doll
As with my previous art dolls, I created a body pattern and cut front and back from felt. I stitched the front and back with embroidery thread, covering the felt completely with shades of blue, green and violet.

I used small glass beads for sparkle, around the head and tail. This doll measures just under 4".

"Catch of the Day" Art Doll

This mixed media art doll includes an embroidered felt body, shrinky dink and beaded paws, and a head made from recycled packaging. Yes, that is a masked Morris the cat!

I had the idea to use the Morris photo from a cat food package. I coated the cardboard photo with Diamond Glaze to give it a hard clear coat for durability.

I wanted to make the art doll fun and crazy, so I drew up the pattern for the fish body and used variagated floss to stitch the scale pattern.

The paws were created with shrinky dinks plastic. I added some beads for legs and connected all the pieces together with jump rings.

Zelda Art Doll

This art doll includes a hand stitched felt body with buttons, shrink plastic head, hands and feet, beaded arms and legs, fiber hair, and googly eyes.

I created this art doll for a swap at ATCards.com.

Shrink Plastic Art Doll

This little art doll was created from an original 9 piece pattern. My colorful "doodle" design was done with a black ultra-fine sharpie marker and colored pencils. I incorporated summertime graphics into the design - a sun, a beetle, a bee, a butterfly, a storm cloud, a sunflower and some vines.

I punched a row of holes across the top of her head before shrinking, and attached colorful fibers to create her hair. I added the little purple satin rose with craft wire.

The body sections were joined using silver jump rings. She measures just over 5-1/2" tall.

I am very happy with the results! This project was so much fun!

Snow Fairy

Inspired by Salley Mavor's Wee Folk, I made this little snow fairy.

She is about 2-1/2" tall when standing. She is sporting a white flower petal skirt and white wool top embroidered with metallic gold thread. Her little hat is crocheted from white thread, and her wings are a tiny gold mesh material.

She is special to me because the bead I used for her head was mixed in with a box of hobby & needlework supplies that belonged to my Grandmother, who passed away in 2004. I had been saving the bead (which already had the face painted on it) to make something special. So now I have my little snow fairy to sit on my computer monitor and remind me of my Grandma.