Artdoll Bird by Lesley

New goodies in the shop peeps! And trust me......they are fabarooni!

Helen sent me a cool shrine kit this month.....as usual, the piece i was working on got abandoned in favour of this cool item! I could have played safe with it......but where's the fun in that?
So, with a pair of metal bird legs and one of the twins dolls......the shrine kit became Artdoll Bird!

Pretty ugly huh?

The shrine was painted with black gesso, and then a layer of crackle glaze over the top. I then glued it together, and rubbed in some rusty looking paint into the cracks. 

The dolls torso was covered in newsprint tissue paper and then painted with various colours to keep it rusty looking. I glued her onto a gessoed cotton reel and wrapped rusty wire around it. She looked a little naked, so i gave her a rusty bolt necklace, and how could i not give her boob tassels? Every art doll deserves boob tassels! 

The head was super fun to do! Again, i painted it black, adding some copper metallic wax to highlight her features. I drilled her eyes out and glued in two small screws and bolts. And then went a tad crazy with a metal scourer for her hair!

Obviously the scourer was silver coloured.......so i painted that as well. Before i glued her head to the box, i heat embossed a wooden cog with rusty embossing powder, then glued that to a cool rusty metal circle i found in a skip the other day. 

I'm completely in love with her hair........needed to stop myself adding more!!

The final thing to do was to give her some legs. This were a royal pain in the butt to secure. The shrine was a tad to heavy for the spindly bird legs......but i love them, so had to use them. They were painted with rust coloured paint and heat embossed. and i added some more cogs to the ankles. I drilled two holes into the base of the box, added some rusty nuts and two more embossed cogs. A few hours later, a lot of glue and swearing.......and she finally stood up!

I think the grief it took to get the legs to stay put was worth it. 

This was the bestest fun to make.......there will definitely be more artdolls being made in my gaff. 

I just need to find where the twins have hidden their dolls. ;)

Thanks for reading.

L.xx

Ingredients used.

Wooden Cogs

Shrine Kit