Sunflower Art Doll: A Mixed Media Doll You Can Paint and Sew

1. Sunflower Art Doll: Sewing, Painting, and Stamping: Okay. Hi, everybody. I am Sheri Burbach, I'm a mixed media artist and writer. I'm hanging out in my studio, and I want to tell you about a project that we're going to work on today, which was inspired by a trip that I recently took to a sunflower field. The sunflower field was so inspiring to me. I got to look at all these very tall flowers and how they waved in the breeze and the look of them from their petals to the rough leaves that they had to the intricate designs on the centers. All of it inspired me. Now, I'm somebody that paints a lot of girls and whimsical images, and I use bright colors and things like that. Now I was thinking of all this as I was at the sunflower field. I thought what I would do is use the inspiration of those sunflowers to do a project like this, which is an art doll. So this is a sunflower inspired art doll, and she's two sided. So she's got the sunflower whimsical girl look on the front, and then she's on the back has this beautiful phrase that says, keep your face to the sun that was stamped on there. And her petals are different on the front and the back. We've got some tool, you can use lace. We've got all kind of scraps of fabric, and that's what we're going to use for our project. We're going to gather all our scraps. Don't worry if you don't have the exact materials that I'm using. Look and see what you do have and what could be comparable. I used a very thin fabric that I painted over in order to get her face. You don't even have to have plain fabric. I really do encourage you to use whatever it is you have to gather all the different types of material you have and we're going to place these together and do an art do. You can personalize this anyway that you would like to do. It's a great project for using up scraps and just seeing what you have and letting your creativity go, letting your creativity run wild so that you can take these different elements that you might have in your studio and place them together to create something new. 2. Sunflower Art Doll Part 1: Sketching Out Your Doll's Design: Oh. Our next project is going to involve stitching and painting and sewing. It's got a collection of items, and some of these are optional. Take a look, as I describe everything and you can see what you want to include. But we're making an art doll and it's going to be a sunflower art doll. An art doll is something that is usually a stuffed doll that has painting and sewing on it. That's what we're going to make and use the inspiration of our sunflower. First, I had mentioned that it's going to be stuffed can get some stuffing. We only need a little bit, but, you know, I'm using this fibrophil stuffing that you can get Okay. You can take apart another pillow to use some stuffing. You can stuff some felt in there. Just something to give it some softness. I'm also going to use lace, so I have my bag of lace out. I don't know how much lace I'm going to use or what type. I just know I'm going to take my scraps and I'm going to make use of them somehow. So that's what I have. It's my scrap bag of lace. And material, and this is all just random material. Now, one thing I do want to get is some white material. Because that's going to be the face of our sunflower. If you don't have white, you can also use any other kind of fabric, but then you'll need to paint on it to make sure that the face stands out. You can do whatever you want. I'm going to do a face like this on this, and I'm just using this scrap piece of it's an old sheet that I've cut up a bunch of times used for different projects. And I'm going to use that for the face. But I have a variety of fabrics, you'll see as I go forward, how I use these? I'm just going to use some of these for accents on our little art doll. I'm going to use some of these as the back of it. The back is going to look different than the front. The front is going to have the doll face on there, but it's a sunflower, and then the back is going to have a saying because I thought, wouldn't it be cool to add words to this doll. I think in looking through all this, I'm going to use this material as the back because I really like it, I think it's happy material. But I'm going to show you how I'm going to do all that. I've got this pile all different scraps. It's going to scrap pile that I dig through for projects like this. I mentioned that I was going to have a saying or phrase rather on the back of the art doll. There's any number of ways you can do this. Now you could just use a paint pen for this. You could use a marker. You can do it anyway that you want. You could stitch wording on there. I'm going to use this stays in and some alphabet stamps. I've got this little bowl that has my favorite font. This little font, I've used this over and over and I just really like the size of it and the look of it. I'm using this as the font. A Alphabet stamp would do, any stencil would do or like I said, you can free hand it and you could paint it on. I'm going to use the ink and put it on pieces and sew it on, and I'll show you how you do that. But some Alphabet stamps in ink Okay. And I've got a collection of paints here. Oh, before I get to that. So I've got a little bit of tool. I've got this green tool, isn't this fun? My friend gave me this, and I just I just think it's so fun. And I just think it's so bright and colorful, I'm going to use it somehow on this sunflower. I'm determined. Okay. Use it. Now, if you don't have tool like this because she gave this to me, and if you don't have something like this, it's no big deal. You can use lace, you can use material. I'm using this collection of items like I always do and I can just to show you the process, you can get ideas for your own art doll like this. I'll be using the tool. Then as far as the paints, I'm going to use a lot of different craft paints. I'm creating the face, I'm going to use some of these paints. I've got this nice green that I used on a previous project that my friend gave me and it's really it's folk art paint and it has green with a little A little shimmer to it. It's really pretty. I've got some browns. Let's see what else I got here. Blues, I've got oranges, I got all kind of random paints, craft paint works lovely for this type of project because it goes on fabric really well. Especially if you look for something like the Apple barrel multicurface, which is what this is. I'll be using a variety of different craft paints, but I have a lot of these and these are really great for fabric. They stick to fabric well, they adhere nicely. If you're If you are looking for the right paint and you don't want to spend a lot of money because these are inexpensive and you can get these at a big box store at a craft store and they go anywhere from usually $0.50 to $1 depending on what you get and you can get a variety of them and they work well. I highly recommend craft paint for this, but I also have some of my acrylic paints that I might use and I'm keeping them out just in case I want them, And they have I have just kind of like the yellows and the black and white for those, and these are regular body acrylics. And a variety of paint brushes. Because I'm not sure what kind of paint brushes I'm going to need. I think it's going to depend on what I do and, you know, how I go about it. The reason I don't know it up front is as we're creating, you know, I'm going to put some marks here and there on the fabric, and I'm just going to see what paint brushes just call to me when it comes time for that. Okay. Let me mention one more thing before we get going, and that is the sewing machine. Now I've got my little handy sewing machine, and I will be using this to put the doll together. I think it is easier to do it with a sewing machine, but feel free to use your hand sewing if you want because you can do it that way as well. You can hands stitch this, you can stitch it together. You can hand stitch the items on it, but I'm using my trustee sewing machine. If you have yours, keep it handy because we'll use it. Okay. So that's our project. Let's get going. First things first, I want to determine how big I want my art doll to be. And this isn't going to be a doll like, you know, the rag dolls of old where they had, you know, arms and legs. I just want to be an art doll with the image of a sunflower face and a cute little dress. That's what I'm envisioning. So I like this size about this size. And I just found to kind of sketch out what her face is going to be. I'm going to do petals, which it will do in a second, but I want to get an idea of size just so I know where I'm headed. I'm just sketching out with a pencil. She's going to have kind of a large face because this is our sunflower. So she's got a little round face. And now, you know, a normal doll would have a neck and all those kind of things. We're talking normal doll. This is an art doll. So we're doing something different. So I'm not going to give her a neck. I'm going to go right through to the dress because That would be better to keep her together and be easier for sewing. So that's what she's going to look like. And I'm okay with leaving this raw edge for now. So I am going to cut this and I'm going to use my rotary cutter for this, but you could also use your scissors, follow along that line that I made. Okay with the pencil. If you want to eyeball it, you could as well. Sometimes I eyeball things and sometimes I sketch it out really depends. When you're using the rotary cutters, you can see I am, you just have to make sure you press consistently throughout to make sure it cuts. Rotary cutter comes in for cutting jobs like this, especially if you have this nice healing mat. And you can see this has a little bump in it. I did not bother to iron it. You could do that also if you'd like. So I've got this little gal. And now I want to do a back for her because the back is going to be a different material. So I was looking at this material earlier. This is just an old sheet again that I got somewhere and I washed it and I've been using it for craft projects. And that's the back. That's the front. I think it's really pretty. Trying to see if this would be enough to use for the back. Okay. What do we think? Oh, yeah, that'll be enough. So when we're measuring the back, if you have to pick a side that one of these is going to be the front and the back then is going to be flipped over because that will be the front, this will be the back. Generally, when you sew things like that, that's how it works. Now for this, you could pin these two together. You also need pins for that, if I didn't say that earlier. Any kind of sewing thing we need that for. You could pin this together. I think this is going to be fine just to hold these two like this and cut. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to follow the line of the original. Girl then I just cut here. And go rounds. Again, you don't have to get it perfect. You can trim up. I see. I did not press down consistently with my little rotary cutter. That's the one thing I keep doing. There we go. So I've got that round I love to miss these little edges, don't I? Okay. What are projects, if not a challenge, right? I go down this way. Always be careful that you don't have your fingers in the way or anything like that. And trim up the bottom. It's the same. And it looks like I've got a big notch here that I need to see out. So we've got that. It looks like there's a little bit of wonkiness here. I'm going to turn that off. So we've got our front and back. Next because we're not ready to sew these together yet. Next, though, we want to decorate this front. And also, this is the back is where we're going to have, let me give you an idea. So we have the front. We're going to have her little sunflower face. We're going to have petals, which we'll work on in a second, and we have her dress, which we'll be decorating. That's one thing. Then this back piece. So that'll be the back and here is where I'm going to put the saying. I'm going to put it back through here. I may start here. The saying I thought I would put on here is keep your face to the sun, keep your face to the sun or keep your face, keep your face to the sun, could be nice that way. Because, you know, sunflowers all move and change and change direction and head toward the sun, wherever the sun is facing. Okay. See, I've got a little piece here. I got to trim up. I'm going to do that while I'm talking. I thought it would be nice to have that phrase on there just because it would make an interesting motory cutter just just fell apart. Everybody stay calm. Okay. The rotary cutter. Sometimes the rotary cutter turns and then it can fall apart. So I will put back together. And anyway, so sunflowers turn their faces to the sun and I want to put that on here. Keep your face to the sun. And I'm going to do that by putting it on other fabric. First, though, I want to decorate the girl. 3. Sunflower Art Doll Part 2: Painting the Front of Your Doll: Okay. I have my collection of craft paints, different colors, and I just put a bunch on there just so I could have something to pull from, and I've got my water and a couple of paint brushes here. I want to just create a little base that this girl's face is going to be. You know the features that we're going to put on her. So I'm using this kind of light pink. Now, this is a sunflower, so we know that sunflowers don't have faces. But what I want to do is do kind of like a rendering of a sunflower, which means that you know, I'm going to use the brown for her eyes and, you know, really kind of use that as the nod to that brown center that exists with sunflowers and really just, you know, paint the rest on here so that it becomes like a face. Something that's cute and fun and something that we can look at and think, okay, that's sunflower. I can tell, you know, something like that. Is a little bit of white Some highlights on there. Now, when you're painting fabric, you know, you can paint as many layers as you want, really. Sometimes when you're using a lot of paint on fabric, it can be difficult to sew with, you know, I find that when I'm doing hand sewing on fabric, but, you know, we're still using a light coverage here. If you sew with your machine, it's not going to really matter. And If you sew by hand, we're still using a light enough touch here that's not going to be a big deal. Especially if you're using craft paints, they're really formulated for all that. Okay. So I am going to take a slightly smaller brush now, and just kind of mark in I'm going to give her a little neck, give her a little shading. Give her some eyebrows. This might be too big to be the eyebrows, you think? For a sunflower girl? I don't know. We'll see. These are kind of place holdery type of things. I like to get an idea where features are going to go. Now on the rest of this, I'm going to paint and we're going to do some fun stuff with, you know, just putting some scraps on there and just making it a fun just kind of you know, a different way to express ourselves with arts and to get that inspiration of the sunflower, which is just there's so many ways you can get project ideas from sunflowers. I always like to put a little shading up. Okay. Forehead there. Put the put her nose. Give her a little nose little nose. I need. Again, using too large of a brush. Again. How about if we use a smaller one. Seems to be my trademark, using inappropriately brush. I'm going to that kind of blend in. Okay. So I'm just drawing kind of some whimsical features on there. And a lot of paint there. Giving her a little. Keep knows some nostrils. So her flower face can breathe. Okay. I'm going to put some white down for the eyes. And we'll need to probably let this dry and put a second coat on, but I just want to get a first coat with that white for her eyeballs. She's looking very weird and alien like, but I am kind loving her already. What do you guys think? You're doing these cute little whimsical paintings, I think they're so fun. Almost instantly, they become fun. Their personality comes out. Okay. So I got a little mouth here. Okay. And got a weird edge to that male, I have to go over that. This red that I'm using is kind of an orangey red. So I'm putting a little white on there, blending it a, giving it shading highlights rather. Okay. Okay. Go back over it. And again, you know, it's depending on what type of paints you're using, like, this is a regular craft paint regular body acrylic that I'm using. However, it's It's not as opaque as even some of the craft paint. And they all have their own little personality. Some of these colors sometimes are just they're just different from one color to the next. So if you need to let it dry and go over a second coat, you can feel free to do that. I'm going to let all this dry just a little bit. I'm going to still work on the face a little bit, but I'm going to focus on the body and some of the stuff I want to do on that in getting some color and design and texture on there, but I want to give this a minute to dry. Okay. Stress is going to have some material, some lace, a lot of different things on there, but I also want to put some paint on there just to give it some interest, a little bit of design. I'm going to do it very loosely with different areas and different colors. I've got this blue that I really like. I've got some green, I've got some gold, which could be fun, some keel. I'm not really worried about the color as far as the color being correct. For a sunflower. I mean, we're making a sunflower, girl. So how correct is the color supposed to be. For real. No. Of course, I'm too lazy to iron this out. So I'm going to put paint over it. How about that? Okay. I also like these little imperfections on things like that. I'm just I don't know. I'm wear that way. I like that kind of stuff. So I'm just here and there putting little bits of paint. Without rhyme or reason, just kind of whatever I feel, whatever I feel like, and they make it covered up. They might stay. I'm not cleaning my brush as I move to one color to the next. I'm just putting some on there. I think it would be good to get around the neck. A little bit of color. So if we put some material or something over it or have a base on there. That's all I'm thinking. I got that and I don't really want this to look like a color. I'm just saving color. I'm coming back in. Since this is material, it does act differently than canvas. I'm using that motion that I had used on the lace, which is just dabbing it down. I've got it on some of the material, not all. There's some loose parts here, but I want to continue putting a little bit of design on there. I've got some bubble wrap. This is actually the other side of a package and has that kind of circly bubble wrap material. I always save this because I use it all the time for painting, and I love the idea of putting some gold on there. That would be so fun. I'm going to do that and see how that looks. I'm going to choose to go over the spots with paints. Because the ones that are plain, I am probably going to put some material over. So that kind moved a little. This is kind of a flat bubble wrap but I don't care. I kind, I kind of like that, so I'm going to do it again. I'm going to do that. Just as a little bit of interest on there. That's super fun. Put that aside. I'm going to take a different paint brush now in the smaller one and do a couple designs on here. I really like this red that is in her lips and the orange and I'm just doing a few designs. You know, playing. Now, this would be similar to if I prepped a background on a canvas and just decided to do some random mark making on it. Okay. Okay. Some of this may get covered up. Some of it may stay. I'm not really thinking about it. I'm just kind of playing a little bit and putting those random marks on there. I choose a smaller paint brush yet. And put a couple really loving that green. Oh. Like that. So I've got these random marks on here. I think that looks super fun. And again, I want to give this a minute to dry, but I want to focus back on the face. This is dried a little bit. I'll be careful not to stick my hand in it. We'll see. I'll try. I'll try not to. But I want to get back to the face. Now, on this face, you know, this is going to be filled with petals all the way around. Okay. And, you know, she's going to have a neck, she's part sunflower girl, part sunflower part girl. So this is going to be all petals and that's kind of like the hair type of thing. But you know, we have some spots here that I could either put some rosy cheeks on there, but I think it would be fun to put material on there. So I think I'm going to leave that. And I don't know if I'll put anything on her forehead because I feel like that would be maybe weird. So I'm going to leave that for now, but I just want to focus on the rest of her face. She had some white eyes here, you know, where we had the whites for the eyes and I still want to go over those again because I feel like there was a slight coverage, but, you know, it wasn't huge. So I got that putting that it's as you can see, very loose. It's not Nothing real. Nothing too exacting. I'm using brown for her eyes because I want to just give you know, I'm kind giving it a nod to the sunflower, the center that's brown. So we're going to put brown for her eyes. I got a big block of brown there. Let's see if I can smooth that out. Little bit too much brown. Okay. So her eyes look really buggy right now because I don't have a lid of any sort on there, and I'm going to put that on there right now. And I think I want to do for the lid. I really like this orange and I love this green. The green is not, I don't think very dark, but I'm thinking between this teal and the green. We could give her some fun eye shadow. I put some teal on there to start Of course, I got caught up in the brown. I didn't let it dry. That's okay. So I got that and going to put some green. The green is, but it just has this really nice shimmer to it. I can't stop using it apparently. It would all work down here really nicely, the shimmer. I think it would be fun on some eye shadow. It dries really shimmery. That's what I'm going for. Okay. Okay. So the eyebrows. Now, here's the thing about the eyebrows. I have them sketched in. I could make them darker so we can go back to that inspiration of the sunflower. I could make them really crazy and big and we have the room for that because I have her little forehead here. We could actually sew some eyebrows on here with material and that could be fun. These are some options we have. I like the brown of the eyes. I am thinking we probably don't need to go brown on these eyebrows and we could actually on. I think I like that idea. These are options you can think about when you're doing this. Now, the eyes, we have the big brown eyes. Probably I'm going to add a cheek of some sort. Always eyes have in addition to the color in the center, we have a little bit of brown. I mean, black. And we want to add that. Here is some black paint. This is just regular body acrylic. I'm just going to give her a dot. Now, this is just a personal choice, but I love adding just a little bit of eyelashes when I'm doing a little whimsical girl like this. I mean, she's got the eye shadow already. She needs some eyelashes. I take a very small brush for this. I'm using paint. Can you use a paint pen to Okay. And give her a little bit of eyelash. Those lashes. So as I'm looking at this, what I'm trying to take in is I'm going to sew this so I have enough room to sew it. I want to make sure I have that. I take a look at what I've got going on here? Is it going to give me some interesting parts to put on here, and I think it will. I've got in this line right here that did not blend super well because I just was putting a shadow line on there and normally I would blend that in there, but I like it. So I'm leaving it. I like where it is right now, and I'm going to set it aside to dry. 4. Sunflower Art Doll Part 3: Stamping the Phrase on the Back: Next, I have this back piece. So that's the back and I'm going to put that saying on there. Keep your face to the sun. And in order to put that on there, I'm going to put it on some material and then sew the material on here. So I'm going to put the paint aside for a minute. We're going to be using this ink and the alphabet stamp, but I want to pick out the material that I'm going to use for this. Now, there's a couple ways I could do it. I have in my scraps a couple plain materials plain meaning that they don't have a pattern on them and they would be good for stamping, words on there. I have this green which is thicker and I really like it. It's also fraying, which I actually do like. I've got this yellow, which is a lot thinner. And so if I put the yellow on there, it kind of shows through a little bit, the pattern shows through. I don't know if I love that. The green is a little bit thicker, but I don't know how it will accept the ink so that's something I'm going to test. Then I have other, you know, more of that white, that large sheet that I got somewhere and I've been using, and I could always use this for my stamping and I could paint the edges and do things with it. So I have some options. I think what I want to do is because I like the look of the green on there and I like that it gets free. Frase easily. I think that could be interesting too. I'm going to do a combination because what I want to do is see if the stamping the material accepts the stamping on here. That's the first step. I'm going to take a little piece just to try it out. I put this aside for now. So this little piece of green And, I have a brand new stamp pad even realize that. How exciting? Okay. And let's just take a random letter and stamp on there. What do we think? Okay. So it does accept it, but it really pulls it goes all the way around. I like that one better this. I like that. I like how that looks on there. So I'm going to use the green. So let's gather the letters we need first. So to remind us we're doing keep your face to the son. Okay. So remember what letters we're using. It's helpful sometimes to do that. What I want to do, I think is, I've got the green, and I think this is going to look really lovely on here like this, you know, with the words. But I like the idea of keeping your face and to have face highlighted a different way. And for that, I'm going to use this yellow and put the green behind it. While the yellow is th with the green behind it, Okay. I think it'll work out. I'm going to cut a larger than a need piece. I'm going to do the word face first because I'm using a different type of material for that. Let me gather the letters I need. Okay. It's always a good idea when you're doing a stamping project like this with letters to make sure you have all of them. I like to pull them out ahead of time. And it goes faster than when you're stamping besides. You can also when you write it out, it helps you remember what the phrase is so that you're not stamping incorrectly and putting some other miscellaneous words. It's happened with me. This is the way I like to do it. I have the letters pulled out that I need and I decided to do with face. Since we're doing in a different material, I also decided to do it all caps. I pulled out the caps for that. I'm just dabbing the letters in here and I'm doing it in the center of this. I know that I won't need all of this material, but this gives me some room to work with. I'm going to do each word on a different piece of material. Okay. So when you stamp one, take a look and see how you like it. I've got a little bit extra on that C, but the rest of it's good. And I actually really like that. So I'm good with that. So I'm going to put it aside to dry. So let's focus on the rest of this. Keep your. We already have the face to the sun. We need some material for that. So let's cut some material we can use for that. Okay. You face, we have two which I might put on one to the sun. And there's another one. There's are pieces. I've made these larger than I need. Because I'm going to determine when I sew, I'm going to cut them after. So let's do keep. We'll just stamp all the words on here. I've chosen to put a capital K for keep, you don't have to. You can do all small. It doesn't matter. Keep course I didn't. I don't like the way that came out. Keep. I like that. Keep your Okay. So. All right. Give all of these little pieces a minute to dry the ink. It dries quick, but it takes a minute, and then we will go back to our girl. Now, I have some pens and I have my pieces here for the back. Okay. And I want to just place them and sew them. So my idea is to say, keep your face. So we want these to fit on here, okay? So let's trim. We want to make sure that we have enough material around the words so that we can sew it but we want to make sure we trim it so it fits. So that's our challenge. So we're going to just place these Okay. Keep your. Now on this one, we want to make sure we have enough space around face. And then remember, we're going to put it on the green also. Do I have a piece of green that'll fit on fit on there, right? That's one to keep your face. So it's a little crooked. Tua Son. So we've got that? Keep your face to the sun. Can play with the positioning? I mean, I kind of like it as I'm looking at it this way, kind like that to the sun. And we can also see, do we want to add anything else to some of these letters. This is the time to do it. We're kind of placing things and we're just getting ready to sew them. So nothing is set in stone yet. So do we want to put like I'm looking at this thinking maybe instead of green behind this yellow, we do something else. Another color, perhaps. You know, there's other colors we could do. There's a combination of things we could do. I love vibrancy of this material. It's crazy colorful, but that could be fun. If I didn't want to do green, I could do this kind like that. Let's try. Let's put a piece on there and just try it. So you have that trim around it a little bit. Okay. How about that? I like it. I feel like sun needs to be highlighted as well. Let me see what else we have here. What other stuff we got here? I got that old shirt of mine. You know, if your shirt gets a stain, it shrinks, don't throw it out. Use it for other stuff. Sun I like this material because it's red could go well with. We've got lots of room down here, too. We actually have more room. So I cut this out, see what it looks like. I keep cutting. Raw edge off. And of course, I have a raw edge on the other side. Of course I do. Okay. So about this S I don't know if I like it square. Let me round the edges off and see if I like it. Okay. Rounded like that. I even think we could put some stitching or something right here. To create some kind of can move this here to or I have a lot of room done here to the sun I like that. I like the idea of putting sun rays in some form around that. So I pulled out a bag of lace, my bag of lace, crazy bag of things in here. And I was really drawn immediately to these two pinkish pieces of lace that I have. They're weird little wrinkled up pieces, but I really like them. This seems to match what's going on in here a little bit. So I think it would be a really nice compliment you know, and we could cut it So it would be like that. I think that could be fun. And this piece of lace, I like the pinkish underneath this and think it could be fun like that. I'm going to trim these to fit. I'm going to pull this aside, of course, I'll keep it. You can use it's big enough or I could use it. Okay. And to kind of trim this in like an oval trim that side a little bit. Okay. Fun and this little guy. So, I wanted to just do straight and mimic the edges of the material that I have on there. And this one has this weird little piece of thread pull off. I don't know where that thread came from. Here's face. I like that to the So. Like it. In fact, it might even do this. Yeah. All right. Time to pin it. I've got these pins. And remember, when we're pinning, we're going to be sewing around this. Let's keep that in mind. I am not sewing, here's the other thing with I'm not sewing and turning this inside out. Generally, we do that with sewing projects. I'm sewing the edges because it's going to have a rough edge look. This is everything we do in this course is mixed media. Mixed media has this perfectly imperfect look to it. I feel like that's the way that we achieve that with this art doll. In addition to all these fun fabrics and everything, we're going to keep this all rough. I think it will look better that way than actually turning it inside out and making it like a rag doll because it's an arc do. That's what my plan is. As you're pinning, keep all that in mind. Keep in mind that you're going to be going traditionally, if we were doing a sewing project where we would need like an inch or something like that because we'd have to flip it inside out. But we do need a little bit because we need to trim these, we need to sew these to the front part so that the stuffing can stay inside. So we want to make sure we leave enough room and we do have that with this. 5. Sunflower Art Doll Part 4A: Cutting the Flower Petals: We want to cut some petals around. Now, the petals will be shown on the front, which I do plan to do yellow, yellow petals all the way from the front. But of course, we have a back on this thing and we don't necessarily want there to be a raw edge, we want it to have something interesting on the back. The way that I'd like to do this is to take different pieces of material and to cut what I would determine to be a petal size, and I do want to make them a little bit bigger. And, you know, we have, like, a raw edge that will be the raw edge will be sewn and we'll just determine our size of our petals. Going to be different types of petals. We've got that. So a little bit too big? What do you think? I think it is. We want it big enough where we can sew it, but we don't want it gigantic and we want to make sure it's like a petal. Now remember, this is going to be the back. So it's essentially going to be this, but just to see. Let's do a couple of them. That looks like it might be the right size going around. I'm going to do a couple of that size. What we want is material that has a little bit of heft and I really like this color of material, but I want to do a couple of different types. Let's use this as our guide on this one. I think this is fun material that colorful. Get that. Let me get back to my stash here. What else I got. Dark green, which could be nice. I'm going to cut out a bunch and see what I like. Okay. And so I have to all look alike. But I'm trying to get an idea of size on here. So these are the backs, You know, we got that we've got that. That Let's get some more. We can actually do cut on that awkward fold. We could actually do since this is the guide, we could actually do a different petal. Remember, our sunflowers have a lot of different types. I want to do another weird one like that with this material just because I like it. I like the material at the brown. We got that. We got that. Let's see what else we've got here. Oh, this is a pretty green. Let's use this. How is that? So trying to get an idea of size, but again, we're going to use all different shapes for the petals. So let's see what we have here. I want to go down a little. Come out. One weird pedal. Let's do another one in that green. When you got a pretty color like that, it's pretty piece of material, I mean, you have to work with it, right? Can't just use it for one thing. Like that. I really dig this. I don't even know where I got that. How much material do I have here? This is a piece of material I used for something. Well, look how pretty. We can definitely get pedal this way. Okay. Sure you don't throw. Good scrap here. Okay. And again, I'm doing this organically, eyeballing it, just seeing what I have in my pile. Since it's so pretty, I mean, I have to use it twice, right? I have to. Let's cut this whole thing down. And then I can use it again. Okay. Okay. And got this weird like summertime. There's a little girl on here, like kee. Little girl. That could be so fun for a pedal. I wonder if I'll be able to do that with her. I'm going to try it. It's just too fun not to try. Let's give it a whirl. Okay. Okay. So we have this little girl on here want the flat edge to be at the bottom, so we can sew it. That's that. Let's see what we can do with her. Just round up the tip, maybe, making a petal that way. It's a nice wrinkled jagged piece. This also has nice leaves and everything. I really like that. I want to use that. Again, where I get my material everywhere. I mean, I cut up my own clothes instead of throwing them out. I go to thrift stores. Usually they sell like a package of them or even if you see an old interesting shirt or something in a thrift store, you know, that can work well in projects. It depends. Old sheets are great sources for a lot of different sewing, especially like a vintage sheet, really fabric on it. 6. Sunflower Art Doll Part 4B: Painting the Backs of the Petals: So, I have a variety here. Let's see if it'll work. Let's see if I have enough. We'll test it out. We have our girl. Careful make sure she's dry. Don't touch unless it's dry. Just give you an idea of what this will look like easier. Let me put this down so you can see it. So essentially, these are going to be this way because we're going to paint this side. But I'm just trying to get an idea of size of all these. I'm going to take the thicker ones and place them. Okay. Okay. I wanted to go right against here. I want this to go all the way around. And we kind of want to spread out these thicker ones. Okay. And we have that one. I think we need a few more thicker ones. And I like that so much. I'm going to use it again. So do another one of those. Provide a base for us then. We've got a thicker one here. Ticker one here. I'm going to do one more only because I love this material so much. You can do as many as you want with one material. No one's saying you can't. I won't tell Okay. Here's our other one. Put one here, put one here. I like that, and I'm going to do one more in this just because just because I super love it, superve the vibrancy of that material. My scrap pile is going down. We're doing good scraping projects here, you guys. My scraps are going down. I'm going to have to go thrifting again. Habitat for humanity? Any of those stores, the restores are great sources for material and stuff too. Especially larger pieces of aholsry or furniture, covering or window treatment, that type of thing. So we have we have a base. Well we have enough? Let's put some more in here. We've got that put these wanky pieces in, see if they look sunflowery Again, we're testing this out because we're going to actually paint all these and put them on which I think that'll be fun. This is what I'll go on the back. Just remember, I'm only doing this so I can get a view of it. The printed side will go on the back and you'll actually see the flip side. These will all be yellow. If any of that's confusing, I will show you in a second. It's easier once it's easier just to see it this way. So I have them laid out this way. And I'm just trying to get an idea of if I have enough for placement. Got that cute little girl. I want to put maybe right on top. Do I have enough. I feel like I do. I got enough. We put her aside. I have my scraps. I have my original palette on this palette, I have added dium yellow in regular body acrylic and titanium white, and this titanium is a heavy body. We might need the heavier body for some of these pieces. I'm going to play it by ear, but we have our pieces and here's the side with the pattern. We're going to flip it over because what we want to paint is the rough side. I'm going to put a little bit of that heavy body acrylic on there to start just to give it some heft and allow that yellow paint to settle on there. It kind of smooths out the pattern and everything. They look nice together, that white and yellow, and we're just going to paint each piece. Then do that, put aside to dry. Make sure we get the edges. Okay. Here's the front. I'm going to flip it over. A little bit of that heavy body on there. We're not worried about, you know, I'm not worried about covering up every bit of the pattern with the white. I'm just using that white because it gives that yellow a really nice base to go on and it adds a little bit off to the piece of material. So that's what we're using it for. So another one. And just go and paint all of them. Keep the pattern on the one side, flip it over and paint the back. When you've got them all painted, just set them aside, let them dry. They need to be fully dry before we work on them next. 7. Sunflower Art Doll Part 5A: Sewing the Petals on Your Doll: Okay. Got my sewing machine here. And got my sunflower gal. As far as how I'm positioning this I am sewing on top of all this. So I am sewing with the pins on top so I can take them out. Starting at one side. I'm going to try and catch all of them. If I don't, I'm going to have to improvise. And so don't worry if you don't. As far as the thread, I'm using kind of a brown thread, kind of like it's kind of a gold, I guess, thread. Okay. Okay. Lots of different thread choices. I mean, you could do white, you could do yellow. It's what I had already kind of, you know, near, so I decided to go with it. So I'm starting my sewing just below where the first petal is and I'm just going along the edge. So I'm not going way in just enough to kind of secure it there. And I'm going slow. Turning. As I get near a pen, I take it out and go slow. And going slow to turn it, you know, this is a rounded head. We've got pins. We just want to make sure we catch everything. I want to make sure we catch these petals that we've got kind of on the edge here. So your time. Of course, these pins are in the opposite way. There we go. I got to make it challenging for myself. Take that last pin out, holding it while I so. Okay. Now let's take a look. Sniff these straps. So that's what it looks like all along this edge. And what we really want to see is that everything is secure in the back. And every pedal is down securely. And it is. What I'm going to do now that it is securely down is snip all my little threads, and I'm going to go around one more time just to secure everything. And then that time, you know, I'll still be going slow because it's a rounded surface, but I can go a little bit quicker because I don't have the pins. But I think this is an easy way to kind of secure everything to begin with, and then you know, go back over. If you missed anything, if it's not totally secure, this is your chance to go for it. I'm going to start a little bit lower than I did before. And I'm going to position it so I can catch this little rogue pedal. And I'm just going all the way around the rest. Just to secure it. Okay. And finish off. Take another look. So we've got some sewing on there. I think it looks great. It's all most importantly secure on this back. Normally, you would snip things like this, these little edges. We won't need to, and I'll show you when we put the back on, we'll just leave them as is. So I think she's ready for her next step. 8. Sunflower Art Doll Part 5B: Placing the Frontside Embellishments: Okay. So this gal is ready for her close up. When I finished all of this stuff last night, I dug through my scrap pile again because I was really using quite a bit of scraps, which is awesome. I found a few more. I've got a few more of these random scraps, real small pieces here and there. There were these pieces I had used on a previous project, which I love the color of. They're very wrinkled, of course, because I haven't ironed them, but I think we can find a use for them. The one thing I want to do is add some eyebrows. I've got these as placeholders and they're lovely. But I want to add some more eyebrows. So we've got some options here, and I want to look at these new ones that I pulled out. We can do real colorful, you know, eyebrows like that, something out of that material, something out of this material, which seems it's folded over, cut them. So something like that. So we could cut that onto that, that would be interesting. We've also got these. That would be interesting. And we've got this little cheek area that I thought would be fun to put a piece of fabric on. So you know, we could do that this way. We could have little brown cheeks, you know. This is a little sunflower girl. Why couldn't she have brown cheeks, I think that would be so fun. Or we could have some eyebrows like this. These are our options. These are things we can think about. I love the idea. Since we're going to have some color down here, I love the idea of putting some color up here. Now, let's see, I have a couple of them. I have, which I think might be too dark. I like the brightness here. I love this material and this material and this one. I'm trying to think wouldn't that be fun with her red lipstick and maybe a little bit of this flower. If we can get that in there somehow. That would be fun. Let's see. Cut out. Let's cut out a piece of fabric and try it out. I am going to again, just kind of actually, let me let me here so I can get an idea of size. Of course, our neighbor has decided to cut a tree down while I'm doing this. Just now he decided that, isn't that great? Yeah. Okay. So we've got this. Let me cut it out. Let me see what it looks like. I got a little bit of pencil on there. I think that's fine. Your pencil really comes in for these types of things. All right. And put that aside. Here's one thing. I think that's super fun. Let's see if we can do this one. I wanted to get part of this orange in there. What I'm going to do is use this one as a guide, and I'm going to just hold it over. The other one. Okay. Just go like that. Let's see. So we can cut using that as a guide doesn't have to be exact same size, but gives us a nice idea of what will work. So we keep cutting a little edge on there. Okay. So for an eyebrow and that for an eyebrow. What do you think? Now that I have this orange, I don't like it. I still like this. So I'm going to look for another piece of fabric though, because I like Now, I can always do matching eyebrows, but that's kind of boring, right? I want to do matching. I do like the blue. Let me try it with the blue. These are just a little scraps anyway, and I'm okay with cutting a few pieces out and just trying them. Of course, we could also use one of these other scraps or something we used before. Oh, what is this? Hold on. Hold the phone. I just saw this in my scrap pile. Mm hm. Let me try this. That might be would it be nice here or here. Let me try it, you guys. Hold the phoned cutting, I change directions because I happen to see this lovely piece of my scrap pile. And goes with all that too. Hm. Okay. Think you'll find when you start gathering scraps and everything like this that it really is, it's like paint. You pick and choose and you really go for the colors you like. That's why I think you have these happy little accidents of Oh, I wanted an orange piece because I have orange here and this is orange because you loved the color. Let me look at that. I got. Now I like that and this together. Now I want to see if I can find actually, I think what I'll do is keep this piece and Because I did like the orange, but not with that other later one. This little guy, I like the pattern, but it just looks weird to me. I'm going to flip this over this one. Cut out another piece and try it. Essentially, what I'm doing here is cutting that piece. Let's give it a whirl. What do you think? Let's try it out. All you can do is try and these are really little scraps. You know, It's not a big deal to cut a few out. And if you can reuse them fine and if you can't, they're already scrap pieces, so that's fine. Look at that. What do you think of that? Let's get these. I'm loving. I do think they're a little bit thick. I'm going to thin down her eyebrows a little bit. Give her some contouring. Okay. Lovely. So you can make different expressions, you know, I kind of like these. I like these too. So I am going to pin them, actually, so they stay in place because we want to cover you know that exact spot. We don't want it to move. So let me pin that in place. Okay. And let's think about the rest here. Okay. Okay. 9. Sunflower Art Doll Part 6A: Adding Additional Embellishment Scraps to the Front: I've got this little neck area. I still have some lace that, of course, I haven't used on this side at all. I've got, you know, that pink stuff that I used before that I love, but I think this is too big. I think that's just too big for this. I have this little piece that's just sitting out. I really like that. I really like that. Not sure if we'll use it. I have this little pink piece, which looks really sweet actually, and it's colle looking. You don't see the X O though that I have on here, which I really love. I don't know. Let me take a look at this little scrap. Got green. I do like the green. It's a little dark, perhaps. What about this piece. That piece is a little weird looking. Let's see what I'll do that. Let's keep digging. This is really cute. I like that for colors because the color it just gives it a little pop. I really like that. Piece of that off and keep it aside. Let me dig through the rest of my scraps here. I mean, you talk in scraps that scraps. Oh, look at this red. How pretty exact. This red is lovely. We could cut it, so it would be kind of like rounded. But I kind of like that just because it's different. That's that's the winner. I'm choosing it. All right. Let's put that aside for a second. And what I want to do is just give her a little collar. So that's what I'm going to pin on. Okay. And should I pin it first and then cut? No, of course, I'm going to cut first and then pin. I'm going to do whatever is the most difficult path. It. Okay. So her neck line, here's where I'm measuring. I'm putting this little piece on here. This is one of these pieces of lace that already has this curve. Okay. We want to cut it to where the edge of her neck area is. So now that I cut that edge, actually, I will pin it because now we know where we're starting. I'm going right there. Right there. Then we're going to go right here to the other edge. This gives her a little bit of a collar. I like that because you can still see the XO that we had put on there. I like that. What else can we put on here? I love the scrap. Now, we do have it up here, so I don't know if we really want it very much down here because we do have other orange, but I'm loving the orange. There's that. Let's see. Let's just test it out, shall Test, put it like a little piece there. That might be fun. Actually date that. Now I've done it, so I will pin it. Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's see what other else we have here, scrap wise. I've got these scraps, which kind of go with that a little bit. You know, I think those could be fun in different spots. I like that this has blue and that kind of goes with that. I put that aside for a second. And you know he still have our other scraps, like this type of stuff. And this fun piece that we've used a couple of times. And I do like this, actually. So I think I'm going to pick a piece of it. Okay. It's just a piece to play with here. And you know, this has a little heart has some flowers. We won't be able to put the whole thing down. I mean, we could, but I like that we still have some paint and stuff on here. So I like the idea of putting a heart here, especially because there's one right there. So I might do that. I think what I'm going to do is just fold it and cut like this. Okay. And cut a heart. Brings you back to your grade school days where you cut hearts and everything on a construction paper. Look how cute that is like that. Put that over that, place at different spots. Aside for now. I like it right there actually. I think that's good. I want to go to the pin it. A couple of pins in there. And then that still has that heart. I'm going to spot. I got a lot of paint on it. We have that stuff going on, which is very cool. I just love the idea of incorporating this on here somehow. I might just wondering if I want to do a straight piece like that. All of these are rounded and I've got that little straight piece, but I am going to do a little rounded piece. Let's take a look. Let's just see what it looks like. So this edge that fit there? Of course it could. I like that. I don't know if I'm liking the green for the front here. Let's see what else I have. I have this little brown piece, which I do like because, you know, I've used this brown throughout different areas on these projects. So I kind of like the idea of doing a little brown piece. And as I'm doing this, it's very much like painting. It's just, you know, determining color and shape. So I kind of like this right there randomly. Okay. 10. Sunflower Art Doll Part 6B: Pinning Fabric Scraps to the Front of the Doll: Let's see what else we got. I have this blue. It's very dark. But that could work. This little piece of blue I like has some red in it. It's very weird looking compared to the other ones are more vibrant. I think what I'm going to do though, just cut this kind of rounded piece just for fun. See where we could put that. I could put it right there. I will. I'm put right there. Right on the edge. So we're essentially painting with fabric right now, decorating. We don't have to cover everything. We can do whatever we want. We can keep going, we can stop. I feel like what this needs is another piece of lace though. On this bottom. I keep thinking about this piece that I pulled out randomly and didn't like up here. But would I like it down here somewhere? Think I could this little piece, maybe on the edge. Let's see. I put that over this. Kind of like it. I use it. And that. Okay. Anything else? Fabric? Lace. That's a pretty piece of lace, isn't it? I love this pink lace that is on the back. I almost think maybe go underneath his heart. Because, you know, this piece is on the back it's on this. It's on the back that'll go behind this. So it would kind of tie the two pieces together and I love it. I love the color. I feel like it has to be used. You love it and you love the color. Is there any other question then? I ask you. Okay. I'm going to unpin this heart. And put it on this piece of lace. I just want to see how I want the lace to go. I like the idea of it being that way and maybe the heart coming off a little. Yeah, I do like that. I'm going to trim this piece, keep it can always use it for something. I'm going to pin these two together to start with and I like this curve, but I just wanted to continue. I'm going to trim that Now we've got something like this. And trim that down. See how we like that. I like that. Like it. Now, let's take this pin, pin them all to our girl. Put a pin over here. Okay. So we've got a few places. I know we've got some spots in here, but this can also be filled in with paint or we can leave it. So we can decide. What I want to look at before I start getting sewing is these little cheek areas. Because they're just so fun. It's a fun place to put some color with fabric, and I love this fabric. I just think that would be so cool. So I'm going to cut a little piece. And I'm going to make kind of a round cheek. And I'm going to, you know, test it out a little bit. See how I like it. You could also trace something to make it perfectly round. I mean, you don't have to eyeball it. You can the cheek is going to go in there, right? I like that. And then I like this material, which is super groovy has a really groovy pattern on it. All right. I get that. Let's round. Okay. Okay. Let's see what that looks like. Got that little guy. We got that one. I like that here for some reason. For some reason. Just go with it if you feel like that's the case. This has a little sharp edge. Cut that off. What do you think about the cheek placement you put it in? No. I like it over here. And then we can consider size. These round cheeks, I think they are the right size for this girl, so I'm going to pin them. Because I like where they are. I like the size, I like the color, and I'm going to go with it. Te careful, don't stick yourself as you're getting all these pins in here. Go slow and carefully. Now that we have this, I'm going to secure it all down. M. 11. Sunflower Art Doll Part 7A: Sewing Your Phrase to the Back: Okay. Hi. Back over here. I'm a sewing machine. Here's our girl all pinned up. I'm going to start on her face and get the pins and everything out of there that area. So I'm going to start right here on the eyebrows. I'm going to take this pin out because I am holding it. I'm going to go slow and around every edge of all of these pieces. Little by little Just want to pop in. I'll show you that I've sewed the facial the eyebrows, the cheek area. What I did was I went around and then back and forth just to secure it on both the che same with the eyebrows. Around the perimeter, then just back and forth over the middle. I may add a little bit more paint. I'm going to wait till I get everything sewed on and see. But this is the exciting part about doing a doll like this. You know, we can add embellishments and I really love the little cheeks on there. Next, I'm going to go to all these places we pinned on her dress, and I'm going to start with this collar and I'm just going to go over I'm going to I'm not going to tack the entire thing down. I'm just going to go over this edge to make sure it's secure on there. And I'm going to secure the foot of the machine first just on the tip of that collar. And as I get close to the other pen, I'll take it out. I'm going to secure it. But while I have it in there, I'm going to just flip this around and go over again just to make sure it's secured down. Like that. That's what it looks like for that. Let's continue and all these down in the same way. So this is all secured down. All of the little items. I just went back and forth. Over each piece and secured it down. So I went around the perimeter and then just back and forth. On every little piece, just to make sure they're all tacked down. Now, I am going to put this aside this little galocide and do the back. I had pinned all these. I'm going to go around the edges of each one of these just to tack them down. I'm not going to go over the middle like I did on the girl because of course, we have words here, but I'm just going to go around the edges of all these to tack them down to make sure these words are securely fastened on there. Okay. So again, once I'm holding it and have it secure under the needle, I just place the needle at the edge, hold it, you know, with my finger and just slowly go around the words and turn it. Make sure you stay at the edge of these pieces Okay. And all you want to make sure is that you're tacking it down and that you're not going over the words. Now, I went around once. I love the idea of going around a second time. Just I like the look of it of the double thread, you know, the threads that sometimes are over one another, sometimes not. I just like that look, so I'm going to do that. Get to the edge here. One more turn and secure it. Now, you could if it's close enough, and you feel like you could keep sewing, you could, I'm going to go individually on these. So that's what it looks like. A couple of threads. You know, outlining that. I think that looks nice and I'm going to keep going. Okay. I'm to the part where I'm going to do this little word face. There's three layers on here. We have the yellow fabric. We have the colored fabric. We have the lace. I'm going to start by securing the fabric around the wording. Ssentially it will go through all three layers, but then I'm going to outline each layer twice, just like I did on here, but I'm going to go here and here and here on that one. Okay. So that went around the word, the layer, the lace. So it's all just secured down. This threading, you know, sewing this way also then is just another artistic element. You know, it's like choosing paint and outlining. So that's what we're doing. I'm going to finish these two pieces. And on this one that says sun I'm going to do it the same way that I did this outline this word, go around this circle, go around the lace. 12. Sunflower Art Doll Part 7B: Adding Paint to the Front and Back: So everything is attached and sew the front and the back. You know, when we put this together, so this will be our back, and put that like that. And then it'll look like that on the back because we have these petals. Love it. Our next thing before we sew though, is to really take a look at the front and back pieces and see if there's anything else we want to add. One thing that I need to add on here is some shading. I am going to look at the parts here to see if there's anything I'd like to add, of course, I see white area. My instinct is to cover white with a color. Okay. But we'll see how that goes. Let me put her aside right now. And let me just focus on this. This is the back. I like the different materials, right? And I like this pattern of material that we have on the back. I feel like it can have just a little bit of paint though and a little bit of paint in different places. So here's what I'm going to do. I have two colors. They're both fluid acrylic, rather, the nicoaogld which I've used throughout this course and transparent red iron oxide. They're right here. I am using these just to add a little bit of something because we've got these nice bright yellow flowers. We have the orange. I'm just looking at places that I could add a little bit of something. I like that this is lace here, but I'm thinking this is an opportunity to put a little bit of color. Okay. I like that there's a little spot here, but again, I'm thinking maybe a heart could go here because we do have a heart in the front. That would be a nice tie in. These are the things I'm thinking through. The Nico Oso gold, if you remember, has that really nice brownish gold appearance, and I'm going to start with that and I'm just going to put a little bit. Again, I'm working just very you know, lightly. And I'm just going to go over this lace a little bit because it kind of highlights the pattern on the lace. I like that. I think that looks great. I might do another edge and that kind of highlights the word face even more. I like that. Okay. Highlight that edge. And these are other areas. You know, we could highlight some of these words. We could, you know, go keep and since this is highlighted to the sun and do it that way, you know, there's a lot of different ways we can do it. I like the idea of putting some operon around this word keep. We've got the stitching here, which is nice. But I like I just like to add paint to things, you guys. It's a good thing that I'm a painter, right? If that's the thing you like to do. Liking how that looked, and now I feel like I want to do it on this to the. Again, I'm going to do it right on the edge because we've already got this nice stitching Okay. And we're adding just a little bit. So it's a light touch. And what I think I'll do is just go like that, a little bit of extra outlining. I like that. This word sun, I feel I could get a little bit of paint as well. For that, I think I'm going to use this transparent red iron oxide, which is what this is. I'm just going to go around the sun. Now, initially, when I put the word sun down, what I thought about was these rays coming out, and I'm still thinking about that. That's what I'm going to do. All the way around. Son rays around the word sun. So all this you can see is a really light touch. I'm not putting a lot of paint on. I'm I'm not like painting a whole new picture or anything like that. I'm just adding some touches. And these little touches can to me, incorporate the front and the back and make them one coherent piece. These common pieces that we're putting on. Okay. I like that. Now that I've added this, I actually don't want to put anything here. I thought about it. But I'm thinking that might be too much. No, it's not. I changed my mind again. Now that we added all this, I do want to put a heart there. But I want to make it a vibrant orange. We've got orange on here, but I've got this craft paint orange. And I think it'll look nice on there. I want to put that on there. I heart. Okay. I put it right here. Just a small little heart that again, we'll kind of incorporate the two pieces together because I do have the heart on the front of the doll. Subtle little heart there and to keep it kind of going with the rest, I kind think that I'm going to use that quinoperdone, Nico Azol here and just do another outline. Which I think sets it off. Simple touches, I think that's enough for all of this and that's good. So I'm going to leave this. I'm going to leave this aside. This is all just light paint on here, so it should dry quickly, but I'm still going to put it aside to dry and we'll make sure it's dry before we sew it. We've got this crazy gal. I'm just in love with all these pieces that she has on. I want to go and place this quinocroon around the edge. I've got a small brush right now. I think it I'm debating whether to put a larger brush because I feel like that small brush is not going to work. I'm going to take a bigger brush. It might be too big of a brush. Given the history that I have of using too big of a brush, it might be. What we're going to see. I'm going to first go around and do some outlining. And when I do this, I'm dabbing. I'm not trying to paint it on more. I'm just trying to dab it on. And I'm coming into the head a little bit just to incorporate the color. My paper brush is fairly dry. That's another thing to take note of. I'm not adding a lot of moisture to this doll. I'm just might be even a little bit too much. I'm to come up on the leaves a bit incorporated a little bit further going down into the che. And again, the cornopod color adds so much vibrancy. Really lovely. A little bit more on there. Shall we go to the edge. Okay. What do we think? I think I need more right around this cheek. I think that. So we've got that in there. The next thing I'm looking at are her eyebrows. So while I love the eyebrows, I think I just need a little bit of outline and I'm going to go to this transparent red iron oxide and do that I'm thinking about it a little bit because I'm wondering if the transparent red iron oxide will be too close to this NicosoGld but we'll see. We will see what it looks like. If you use a light touch, can you have some options then to continue, and this is a fluid acrylic, so it's very light using a small brush. Incorporating that way. I like that touch. I'm going to add a little bit more to this side going up on the edge of the fabric to incorporate that in. And I like that, and I want to do it the same thing around the cheek. And I'm going on the edge of the fabric. So This way. Mm hm. 13. Sunflower Art Doll Part 8A: Sewing the Front and Back Sides Together: Now, here's some options. Still, we've got room on the forehead where I could put some wording in smaller letters, maybe. I like that idea. We could leave it, we could put a design there. There's lots of things we could do. I love the idea of putting some words here. I have my alphabet stamps. I took out the letters that would spell sun kissed because I think that would be fun. She's kissed by the sun. I'm going to put the sun and kissed like this using the black. Start with Sn, or should I start with kiss. Probably start with kiss. Second one, so I can fit it over. And I'm going to start with the end of the word to make sure that I can fit it all on. Okay. This is where all our spelling comes in handy. Kissed and how do we want? Do we want it here around here? I like the idea of putting it here. So let's do that. You Okay. Sun kissed. I like that. Now, we need to just let all that dry. I also have this rolling stamp. This stamp does a heart pattern. I'm going to roll it a couple of times in my ink pad, same ink pad, and I'm going to roll it right here where it looks like I have a little bit of space. I'm going to roll it right over the fabric, just like that. Subtle. But it adds a little bit of heart design, which I think goes nice next to this heart. It also complements the fact that we've got ink up there. Okay. Now, let me give you a tip. Let's say you're at the end of your project like this, and you stamp out a word and you make a mistake. You spell it wrong, you hit the same letter twice, something, get interrupted, the kids are calling you, whatever it is. Trust me, whatever it is. It has happened to me. Don't freak out because here's the thing. We do have paint on here and you can go over it and you can embellish and if you needed to cover this up, put a flower there, put paint over it, you could do all those things. So if that happens to you, don't worry, it's always fixable, okay. So I'm going to look at what else I have down here because as long as I have my paint out and we're kind of doing some designs and stuff, I'm going to take a look and see what I can do in this area. So let me get these same two paint brushes that I had before for up here and I'm going to do this Nico Azo gold again and just kind of fill in where I have a white space. Okay. And I'm even putting it over this brown piece. I'm kind of bringing it up, incorporating it in like that. Thank you sure it's dry. Just covering a little bit these edges. Add a heart. Do you have the orange heart in the back? I'm thinking this area might work with an orange heart. We can go for multiple surfaces. Just something fun. Little bit more paint and color and interest. So that's fun and then I'm going to outline it. So that's ref. You can keep doing this type of stuff. You can keep adding paint. You could go around the paint with your thread as you sew. If there's any more things you want to add on here, you can do them. You can keep adding until you have something that feels you like it and like it's yours and you want to go forward. I feel like I'm at that point. Okay. So I'm going to give this just a moment to dry and then I'm going to sew together. When I sew, what I'm going to do is I'm leaving the bottom open to stuff. From this edge, go up, sew around her head, come down, leave this open, and then I've got a way that we're going to finish the bottom. Hi. Here's our girl. She's pinned all the way around. So I just pinned pinned around her head. So it's pinned front and back. And what you want to just notice I pinned this from the front. So if you see any spots on the back that aren't really pinned, like right here, I see a spot that is not secured down. So I'm going to go through the front and rep So I pinned over here, so that kind of alerts me to the fact that in here. This guy needs to be pinned. I've got to edge down here that I purposely did not add a lot of pins to, I think it'll be okay because it goes over. But what we're going to do is do one round around and then take the pins out and assess where we are. If we want we can do some more pinning, some more sewing rather. Now, here's the thing. So we have this is the back, this is the front. Notice that I've put these raw edges together. So it's back to backs as we're sewing. In a normal Doll project, you would put fronts to fronts, you could turn it inside out. I'm just reminding you, I've mentioned this before, but we're going to keep these edges, Ross. We're not turning this inside out. Put the backs to the backs when you're working on it. I'm going about a quarter inch to one half inch in just to secure everything. I just wanted to be able to hold the stuffing. Be careful around the petals, make sure you don't sew the pedal down. You make sure they're all facing up in the right way. Okay. Okay. Okay. So now you just need to look and see how it is. We've got just to make sure everything is secured down. If it looks fine in the front, not seeing anything noticeable in the front. When I look on the back though, I've got that one weird edge that I still need to catch this edge right here. Because if I put stuffing in at this point, this little tiny piece, the stuffing will come out right there because it's not secured and right down here. So what I'm going to do is go over those two areas. You know, I've got a single thread going down on most of the sides and the rest of them, I've done with like a double thread. So I'm going to go around again and just add another thread. It'll be easier. We won't have pins it time. I'm just going to add that second layer just for a static look. And now we're all secured. Now it's time to give her some depth and stuff. 14. Sunflower Art Doll Part 8B: Stuffing and Finishing Your Doll: I've got my art doll. I have this big bag of stuffing. I won't need that much. So just pull out a little bit to get going. And I'm just pulling out little bits, and I'm going to stuff this to where I feel like it's a good heft for a little art doll, and then I'm going to pin the bottom. But I'm going to add a twist. So let's get her stuff first and then I'll show you the final piece of this. We just want to make sure we get stuffing up in the head area here. Face a little bit of dimension. Okay. This is also one why you want to make sure you know, all of those edges are secured down. Now, if you're stuffing and you happen to notice something sticking out, it can happen. You've missed it when you're sewed, however, you didn't see it, you didn't realize it was a weak spot and it's sticking out, you know, it's not a big deal because you can then go back over, and sew it, you know, add a few stitches on your sewing machine if you're able to okay. Now, as we're doing this, I want to make sure it's the right heft. I want her to have a little bit of, you know, roundedness. But I don't want. I don't want this big ball on the top. I think that would look funny. So kind of get it all in there, but then keep note of also sometimes it's easier to get a paint brush or something to stuff these long pieces. Make sure the paint brush is dry if you ever if you do that method. Can be especially helpful if you have a neck area or something and you can't get your arm all the way up there. Put a little bit more in there. Let's see how that works. Take your time with stuffing the head. The body comes together really fast once you do that, but The head, you know, you just want to get it so it's the right thickness so it shows the right personality. I mean, our little doll has some personality, you know? And he heft on this bottom piece. And as you're stuffing, leave you know, about half an inch down here because we're going to secure it closed, but I'm also going to add one more thing. To it. So we need a little bit of room for that. So we're going to secure this down with pins. So you want it to be flat on the bottom. We're going to sew it, but we're also going to add something to it. I want to sew it first because you'll see Y in a second. Okay. So we got that came down. So what we're going to do is so along this edge and finish it. However, once we do that, we're going to come back and add this lovely tool of this green tool, which was so pretty and I got this big thing from my friend, and I just love the idea of putting this down as a skirt on the bottom and to have it go all the way around. But I want to secure this closed before I do that. Okay. And this little gal is all stuffed. She's all good. She's got her ragged little petals, I'm loving those. Now, what I want to do is give her her dress. Now, here's another thing you can do before you do that. I'm seeing some ragged edges that are not beautiful and I'm going to snip those off. Do you see anything like that? Now's the time to do it. If it's ragged and you like the raggedss then leave it. A couple of edges needed to be snipped in my opinion. Okay. So I've got this tool. I'm going to pin all the way around, and I'm going to bunch it up so that we can put a little edge on her edge on the dress. I'm going to take the edge of that tool and put it on one side. And this is why I went down once across here because I'm going to go all the way around again. So this will be nice and secure. Okay. And I'm going to pin. What I'm doing is I'm just gathering. You know, it's very light tool. If you don't gather enough, it won't really show the color. You want to make sure you gather it and bunch it up and have it look really cool. Bunch up little skirt on this sunflower doll. I'm just taking a whole bunch bunching it up. Don't stab yourself with a needle. And you will have to be careful when you're taking out the needles. I'm going to tell you that right now. So go slow the first time you do this, so you can get them out without poking your finger or without hurting your machine. This can also be hand sewed. Now, I'm not going to cut this yet. I'm just going to sew it and then keep going because I want it to be one piece. But if I put needles on the front and back, it'll be too difficult to sew it. It'll just be too many obstacles to getting that completed then. I've got this on the edge. The tool is still attached over here, just a big long piece that's hanging off, and I'm going to go forward, secure it, and then go forward. Forward and back just like I would normally feel for the pins. I've got one right here. Go slowly and take them out. Okay hold on here. Because we're bunching up this tool, you know, the pins are kind of in there, so be careful and slow as you pull them out. And then snip off your edge with snip off the thread. Don't snip your tool yet. It's ideal. I think if you can do one piece with the tool, but if you can't, that's fine too, don't worry about it. So Snipping threads Snipping this thread. Okay. I should have one more thread. Where are you at? Okay? So this is all crazy on there, right? Now I'm going to go around and do the same thing on the other side. I'm going to snip the tool now that excess away. So I've got this all pinned and I'm going to sew it. Okay, I'm back. This tool is all secured with the machine, but I wanted to go over certain pieces again and just add a second layer of fluff. And I know I'm not going to be able to do that with the machine because it's you can we've got stuffing here and tool, you can only put so much through the machine. I wanted to finish by just doing this by hand. It's not a big deal because we've already got everything tacked down. This is more like a top layer of sewing. I have just a regular needle and thread, the same thread that I used for my sewing project. I'm just hand sewing the tool down and just giving it another bit at the end here. The effect tool has when it's bunched together, is just so pretty and lovely, and I think the more you can get on there, the better, but sometimes it's better to do it by hand at the end and that's chosen to do. The machine tacks it down really securely and nice out. But hand sewing then allows you to get through these layers. Be careful when you're doing it that you don't jab yourself. As I do sometimes. I'm using this bigger size sewing needle too. I'm not using a small needle for this. Using regular thread, but I want to be able to see that needle as soon as it comes through, so I'm using a larger one. I'm doing the same kind of thing. I'm just as I go bunching up a little spot tacking it down with my needle and thread. Pulling it through tight too. That's the other thing about tool, I bunches up so you can lift that thread up so you want to make sure it's pulled tight. I still have the same piece. I haven't cut it off yet for this hand sewing project. But I will soon already. And when I flip it over, I just love the look of that tool in the front. So I am very happy with that. That's it. Our little gal is done, isn't she cute. Remember, keep your face to the sun. 15. Sunflower Art Doll Conclusion: So how did you find this project? I had so much fun working on her and really adding little elements like these little cheeks and the eyebrows, her message on the front, these little bits, hearts and lace on her dress, and then the message on the back. I found it really fun to personalize this. I hope that you were able to use your scraps and to really just make this personal to you. You could put your own phrase on here. You can use your own scraps. I just use what I have, if you have does that would work on here. If you have pieces of material that are meaningful to you, that would work on here and you can personalize it even more. I hope you enjoyed this project and I hope that you will show me your versions of this little art doll and I'll see you on the next project. M.