ACCESSORIES FOR A PEDDLER DOLL (Part one: Bottles) If you are like me, you are reading this column because you care about the total look of your doll. And you are hoping to find some little tidbit that will help you put the finishing touch on your work. But at least once in each dollmaker's career there comes a time when you make the doll just so you can make the fun accessories that she will need. That is precisely what led me to make the Old Peddler Woman. I always loved the pictures of antique peddler dolls that would sometimes appear in doll magazines. And when I went browsing in antique shops and flea markets, yard sales and thrift stores, I often found little objects that suggested such a doll be made for them. When I stumbled across a series of tiny baskets at one flea market, I knew I finally had the beginnings of my Peddler Woman. All that was left to do was fill the baskets with the magical items that made peddler dolls such a delight to look at and play with. One thing that always caught my eye on these old dolls was the tiny blue or green glass bottles they held. I would imagine all sorts of ingredients for them to hold. Remember the Persian peddler in "Oklahoma!" who sells Laurie a bottle of magic elixir to make her dream of the one she loves? That's the kind of thing I would envision for these tiny bottles to hold. For my little bottles I used transparent Fimo (it never really gets transparent, just translucent) and mixed in a little acrylic paint to make the colored glass. All you need is a tiny drop of paint for a teaspoon sized piece of Fimo. First, knead the plastic clay until it is warm and pliable. Press it into a flat shape and add the acrylic paint to the middle. Then fold it and squash it flat over and over to knead the color into the clay. (You could stop before the color is totally blended to get a good imitation of marble.) Then roll the clay between your hands to get a long round shape. Press each end against a flat surface to make the bottom and top flat, and roll the top between your fingers to make the mouth. Use your imagination to decide the shape the bottle. It can be flattened out like a bottle of Mateus wine, or it can be hourglass shaped like a bottle of Coke. It can be short and round like a jar of cold cream, or tiny and fluted like a bottle of perfume. Use your fingers or toothpicks or sculpting tools to shape the bottles to your liking. For a really good presentation you will need more than one bottle. But once you get started, I guarantee you will not want to stop at just one! Before baking these bottles you might want to make a hole in the top so a stopper will fit into it. Just insert a toothpick carefully to a depth of about 1/2". Then mix up some clay in the same or a different color and make a stopper for it. Bake in a toaster oven at about 250 degrees for 10 - 15 minutes. Use the oven tray (lined with foil) and a foil tent to protect the clay from the top elements in the oven. Once it is hardened, use fine sandpaper to shape the stopper to make it fit exactly into the bottle. . You may even enlarge the mouth of the bottle with a small rattail file, if you have one. The next step is to make a label for your bottle. I just go through old home-and-garden or art-and-antique magazines and look for tiny designs and things. You will find ads for expensive liqueurs, ads for china, etc. All sorts of ads with scaled down pictures of their products will give you small-scaled print (for labels that need words on them). Just cut these out carefully and glue them onto your bottle. If you use your imagination the possibilities are endless. You may want to have more than one of the same bottle. You can always copy the design on a photocopier and use the duplicates for your bottles. The final step is to coat the bottle and the label to make them shine and protect them from wear. You can use clear nail polish, polyurethane, acrylic varnish, or the varnishes that Fimo and Sculpey make for their products. Just be careful not to use anything that will dry tacky. Otherwise the bottles will stick to each other. Also, while you are going through the magazines you might find other images that can be used in your peddler's basket, such as an unframed print, the face of a clock or a pretty pattern for a paper fan. Just try to keep two things in mind when selecting images: the time period of your doll, and the scale of your doll. Keep these consistent and you can't go wrong. ...In part two we will make leather-bound books for your doll! Back to Workbook Forward to next Article URL:peddleracc.html