Quality dresses for your small
dolls available to order soon.

Good news!  Nelly Valentino and her sister Maritza are working on some fine heirloom quality dresses which will be available to purchase or made to order. Here is a sample dress shown with the lace bib collar.

Little Darling Head #3 holding Itty Bitty

Wig Styling

The Liza wig is a favorite of mine because it can be styled so many ways.  In fact the Liza wig requires styling because it looks a bit odd as it is.  It was really made to be styled.  This is Portrait 5 wearing an un-styled Liza wig.

Here she is after I styled the wig.  

Before I cut the curls wound them around a marker taking 2 curls and making them into one so there were less curls and they were thicker.  I did a bit of extra shaping by containing the curls in a hairnet and applying some steam with a garment steamer so that the curls hugged the head.  A steamer is a good piece of equipment to have for styling acrylic wigs.  Or you can use a teapot on the stove.  

Here's another style I like to do with the Liza wig.  
See portrait  9 before styling.  

I just tied the hair into to pigtails and trimmed.  I start by cutting some of the long  curls to form more bangs and tendrils around the face.

Bonnie also got  a new hairdo using the Liz wig.

I loosely tied the hair up of her head and pulled tendrils out to
fill out the bangs and create soft curls around her face.  

The 11 inch Molly also has a wig that is  a Liza restyled.  
This time I  reset the curls on straws and after it was all set
placed in a steamer on the stove to set the curls.

For curlers I use sections of plastic straws secured with little claw type hair clips. Sometimes I anchor them to the wig with straight pins at the top and a clip at the bottom. Then I set curls with steam.

Then I put the wig on the doll, carefully removed the straw curlers
and trimmed the curls to the length I wanted.  I put a hair net on
the wig so that the curls hugged the face and gave the wig
another steaming with the Esteam garment steamer.

 

About Steamers:  This is the only steamer I know of on the market that works.  Compared to the steamers I used to get it is a bit expensive (Around $75)  and kind of big and awkward but it works well enough and I wouldn't be without a steamer.  Most of the garment steamers available now don't get hot enough to curl the hair.  

Hearty Clay!  Yay!

Hearty Clay is back!  I just ordered my first shipment and will have it available from Expressions soon. The color Flesh Is now available.  You will probably want to add white and maybe a touch of other colors to get the shade of flesh you want.

Watch instructional videos on Expressions web site.

Doll Crafters on Ning:

Go to dollcrafters.ning.com to join our social network. Then you can join the new Doll Dreamers Guild Forum for porcelain doll makers or the Reborn Revolution to learn to paint Realistic eyes and more in air dry paint.  No firing required.  View over 7 hours of video instruction by the artist.  

 Send me a message on the site or an Email and I will invite you.

Watch instructional videos on Expressions web site.

Very Important Note

Please sign up for our newsletter on Expressions web site so you can continue to get our newsletter as we will be using the new form of newletter in the future and we need you to sign up for that.  When you sign up please don't forget to hit the "Yes I want to join!" link in the email that you get after you enter your email address. You aren't officially in our new emailing list until you
click the "Yes I want to join!" link in this email.