So I haven’t been around for a while- I was with my sister in the hospital for the weekend because she just had her first baby! Welcome to the world, Cherry Valentine! Speaking of babies, my friend is having a baby girl soon, so I wanted to make her a little decoration to match her Russian Doll theme.
What a cute little babushka. I wanted to make a nice garland, and that is what I did- so I’ll let ya know how I made it!
First I made a pattern out of card stock, using a fabric design I found on my friends Facebook Page. She makes awesome cloth diapers with some really unique patterns!
Next I traced the pattern onto 3 layers of card stock. I repeated this with 3 more colors:
I’ll take your fifty and raise you a matryoshka doll.
For the faces, I just punched 1 inch circles from off-white paper. And for the hair, I punched circles out of brown and ‘blond’ paper.
I cut the hair circles in half and then cut them into this kind of shape…
…which also happens to resemble a mustache!
Aaaaand, I got distracted. Moving on…
I cut out some little neck tie thingers, and then got to work on the aprons. To ensure the aprons would fit properly, I made this little pattern by tracing around one of the gals bodies:
And I added nostrils because it looked like a duck bill.
I traced 12 of them onto some cream-colored paper, and added some ruffles before I cut them out.
I wanted to add some detail, so I used watercolor pencils to draw a cute little flowery pattern.
Then I painted over that with some water.
Rinse and repeat x12.
I drew on some pretty little faces…
Organized my assembly line…
And put the dolls together!
Then I got violent with a hole punch. Right through the head.
And I strung those gals onto a bright, pretty ribbon!
And here is what they looked like hanging up! So cute! But something was missing…
That’s better. You know there are 12 gals for every guy in Russia right? Well Aleksandr the Russian plumber was definitely in heaven.
Well, I hope this tutorial has inspired you to make any kind of garland! They are so fun and you can turn pretty much anything into a great decoration!
Happy crafting!
~Dot