Wooden Peg People Tutorial: part 1

... Goldie got out her paints and carefully mixed a flesh color for the doll. She covered its face, neck, and ears, its arms and hands with the rosy tan paint, and them waited for it to dry.

As the day went on, Goldie ate buns and drank tea, and painted the doll's curls a glossy dark brown. She painted a white camisole and matching knickers on the doll's body, gray stockings on her legs and pretty black shoes on her feet. Then she painted a little gleaming black eye on either side of the doll's nose and finally, holding it firmly around the waist with one hand, Goldie smiled and smiled into the doll's eyes in the friendliest, sweetest way, and she painted a smile right back to herself on the little doll's face.

From Goldie the Dollmaker by M. B. Goffstein

Over the past months we've been making a lot of peg-dolls around here. Most of them have fluttered their tiny wings, landing as gifts in the homes of friends, to be loved by their children. But many still remain in our home... so many, in fact, that every time my husband spots one hiding behind a teapot or tucked into a bookshelf, he takes to muttering under his breath, "Goodness, such an infestation of pixies, sprites & fairies!"

If you would like a few wee peg-dolls to take up residence in your house, please continue with this tutorial to, perhaps, find some inspiration to create your own.

To start with, you'll want to stock up on some blank dolls, similar to the ones pictured at the top of the post. There are variations in shape... I don't have a preference and simply use whatever I find at my local shops. The first step would be to paint up the bodies...

And add some hair.

The next step, painting faces, is a little tricky. I would recommend finding the smallest paint brush in your collection and practice making dots on a piece of paper (in case you do not have a small paintbrush, I've heard that a toothpick works well for tiny peg-doll face painting...) When you have achieved a bit of confidence with dot making, you are ready to paint on some eyes. I have to admit that my hand is not steady enough to paint any sort of proper mouth, so my mouths are also basically dots of paint, too. I used acrylic paint on the dolls above. One advantage to acrylic paint is that, if you make a mistake on the face, you can take out an exacto (or other type of craft knife), scrape off the offending features, and try again. This only works if you do not paint a skin-tone color on the face. I leave the bare wood showing on my faces... I like the natural grain of the wood, and I also like the option of correcting face-painting problems.

Another option is to leave your faces blank. Creating dolls without any facial features is part of the Waldorf/Steiner tradition. The thought behind this is, if a doll does not have facial features, it offers the child playing with the doll an opportunity to imagine various emotions & expressions as they play. I will have some links in a post tomorrow (yes! another peg-doll post!) so you can see some wonderful examples of this and other dolls...

Now comes the fun part... costuming your dolls!

Imagine who your little doll will be and what he or she will wear... Will he wear an acorn cap or a peaked hat? Will she wear a little crown or perhaps be crowned with flower petals? Will he have a sensible belt to hold up his trousers? Will she have tidy buttons up the front of her dress or perhaps a wee, glittery pair of wings? Will your dolls represent a season? Snow-sprites? Autumn fairies? Spring flower-fairies? If you are lacking ideas or inspiration, I recommend you turn to your child standing at your side... your child (or children) who magically materialized the moment you pulled out your box of paints. I assure you, this child will have some wonderful ideas! Better yet, pull out a couple of extra dolls and a paint brush so the two of you can sit side by side creating dolls together...

To start my costuming, I pulled out all the scraps of felt I could find in my stash (I required such small pieces that I did not need to buy one new bit of material.) I have also seen dolls costumed with bits of cotton print fabric such as calico, and that's fun, too... Then, I snipped a few patterns from newspaper to experiment with size and shape -- if I was not happy with my pattern, I simply grabbed a bit more newspaper and tried again... To make a peaked hat, I started with a half-circle 1 1/2 inches high and then trimmed off a wedge to achieve the shape pictured above. For flower hats, I started with full circles 2 1/2 inches across and trimmed out just a bit of a wedge (see above.)

For the peaked cap, I rolled the felt around my finger, crossing the edges from where I had trimmed out the wedge (dolls stood nearby to test the size of the opening for the head...) Then I applied glue inside where the rolled edges overlapped. Some people prefer to sew their little peaked caps rather than use glue... tomorrow I will post a link to another website where you can find a pattern for sewing.

Having the company of a quiet kitty is always nice, don't you think (can you see him hiding there in the shadows?)

To make a flower cap, apply some glue onto one or two petals...


Then overlap & glue them to a petal on the opposite side from where you trimmed out your wedge.

Glue caps to heads, and voila! Some very stylish elfin-folk...

And finally, a few more examples, just for fun! If I were a sea-sprite, I'd swim around wearing a hat with a little seashell perched on top... wouldn't you?

This tiny autumn fairy is wearing the latest fashion... an acorn cap tilted at a jaunty angle...

What's up, buttercup?

A wee bumble-bee... Her companion, a little blue butterfly, has fluttered off, far away, to be the companion of a dear little girl, but bumble-bee has opted to remain here, buzzing about the lavender in our flower garden.

Tomorrow... a rainbow of water-color pixies, the secret of the tiny toadstools and a few links to other blogs for more ideas!