Doll: Part 9 of 9

Yes, you read that right, this is the final installment of Peri. She's done! She's already listed on my Etsy site: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Batty4Arts just in case you'd like to adopt her.

So, you may recall that in the last post she looked pretty much done, but I wasn't completely satisfied with her hair. It just needed something to pick it up.

Ta-da! Chopsticks. Not the "eat your chow mien" kind, but the "Oh my! Your hair looks FABULOUS! Wherever did you get those?" kind. Of course, since everything has to be done in miniature, there was a bit of a creative process involved.

These are orange sticks. For the life of me, I've never understood why they're called orange sticks, but that's just what they are. Their actual use to to push your cuticles back so that your nails are healthy and look great. They also work really well as sculpting tools. But that's another story altogether. My first task was to sand the orange sticks down so that one end was rounded off, and the other end didn't draw blood when I accidentally stabbed myself with it.The one on the bottom is how they started. The one on the top is post Jade Proofing.

Next, I used nail polish in darkest purple by Wet 'n Wild to paint the sticks. Believe it or not, I got this nail polish when I was in high school and I still use it. For my nails even! Nail polish is basically, just an enamel paint. It's easy to apply, plus it's glossy without having to paint a second sealer on. It also works well on stoneware fired in a kiln. Truly amazing stuff.

Foam blocks are good for so many purposes.

Now that my chopsticks are painted, I'm ready to begin creating a beaded decoration for them. I got the idea for this out of a book by Annika deGroot called Micro-Macrame, 30 Beaded Designs for Jewelry using Crystals and Cords. Since I used orange sticks, seed beads, and sewing thread rather than chopsticks, crystals, and macrame cord, I decided this is Micro Micro-Macrame.

I was going to get in to how these were put together, but I don't want to encourage this sort of behavior. It was blood, sweat, and tears, let me tell ya! I think if I were to make people sized ones, it would be easy and fun. But when you miniature any task like this, it compounds the difficulty 10 fold. I do highly recommend the book, though! It's quite good, and I'm planning to use it as a basis for several upcoming projects.








Once the beaded design was glued in place, and the glue dried completely, it was time to add beads to the tassels. It seemed to take forever! There are 16 tassels per stick, and I had 4 sticks to do. That's a lot of threading.

But the final result was well worth it!

 View in the rear. The beads in her hair just give her a bit of a lift, and add a lot more interest to what was the plainest part of her.

 Her hair is still the plainest part of her, but at least it fits in with the overall concept a lot better now.

I must admit I'm very pleased with how she's turned out. In fact, I'll be slightly sad to send her to a new family, but as long as she's treasured by someone, that's all I want.

So make sure you go to my Etsy shop: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Batty4Arts because, just like me, she is one of a kind. Once she's gone, you'll have to wait to see the next design.