Tag Archives: #mermaiddolls

April 14, 2021 · 9:38 pm

Charlotte Mermaid

Last month, I posted about Bedelia Mermaid, whom I carved from a very hard old piece of wood that was upcycled from a very old and fallen apart bed. LINK

Her sister, poor thing, languished in the freezer for several weeks, because I needed to force some moisture into the rock hard wood.

Bedelia thought that I was being rather harsh with her poor sister!

I named her ‘Frozen Charlotte’, which is actually a kind of doll that doesn’t have moveable arms and legs, but in this case, it was because she spent so much time in sub-zero temperatures.

Freezing the moistened wood made a world of difference!

When I tried carving Charlotte’s arm, I was delighted- carving the wood was now possible without my knife going instantly dull.

So, I moved on to carving the rest of her:

Bedelia kept her sister company:

And, when Charlotte was finally done, they sat and enjoyed finally being together after poor Charlotte’s dreadful time in the freezer.

Bedelia told Charlotte about some more sweet mermaids that have joined the flutter of memaids in the studio and wanted to introduce her to them.

Charlotte is rather shy, perhaps because of the time in the freezer – it takes her time to warm up to new people.

But when she met the sweet Bunnymaids, she wasn’t shy at all, and she whispered to Bedelia that she likes them very much.

Baby Bunnymaid held Charlotte’s hand, and they all sang a small song and decided that they were happy to be in such fine company.

Unfortunately, Charlotte is still feeling very cold, so I think that I will have to do something about that!

SCRAP HAPPY- Once a month, a group of bloggers who are into upcycling all post on the 15th of the month, sharing what they have created with upcycled bits of this and that in the past month. Charlotte’s introduction is my contribution to Scrap Happy for this month.

Here are the other Scrap Happy bloggers- I always love seeing what they have been up to!

Kate , Gun, Eva, Sue, Lynn, Lynda,
Birthe, Turid, Susan, Cathy, Tracy, Jill,
Claire, Jan, Moira, Sandra, Chris, Alys,
Kerry, Claire, Jean, Jon, Hayley, Dawn,
Gwen, Bekki, Sue L, Sunny, Kjerstin,
Vera, Nanette, Ann, Nancy, Dawn 2, Noreen,
Bear, Carol, Preeti and Edith

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Filed under carving wood, doll & dolls & dollmaking & doll making, eco crafts & green projects, mermaid, wooden dolls, woodwork

Tagged as #carvedupcycledwood, #carvedwoodendoll, #mermaiddolls, #woodcarving, #woodcarvingart, #woodworkingart, carved wooden dolls, carving, mermaid doll, Scrap Happy, upcycling

March 15, 2021 · 1:00 am

Bedelia the Mermaid and where she came from

Once upon a time, there was a very, very old wooden bed frame.

It was so old that parts of it broke, and so it was taken apart and about to be thrown in the trash, when someone thought… wait… we know someone who makes things come to life again….

They gave the broken old bed frame to my son, who offered a piece of it to me:

It was very heavy old wood, which soon revealed itself to be exceedingly HARD… and I mean H.A.R.D wood!

I cut out 2 little mermaids from the former bed frame, wiggling around to try to deal with long notches, deep channels and bored out holes that large screws had once lived in.

I sanded the varnish off one set of mermaid blanks, and then remembered to take a picture of the ‘under construction’ stage… some of those scraps of wood are not useable for carving because they have hardware embedded.

Oh my word! Carving the old hardwood was incredibly challenging, and there were a couple of nights when I was carving until the wee small hours.

I was so happy to finish carving Bedelia, but the incredible hardness and knife dulling properties of the wood made it oh so NOT fun to carve.

So, I am conducting an experiment:

Bedelia’s sister had a long lovely soak, which I hope will make the wood more carving friendly.

And now, oh, poor little mermaid!

She’s in the freezer, waiting for me to have enough time to carve her!

My fingers are crossed that I haven’t destroyed the wood with the soaking and the freezing,

and that I will be able to release the latent mermaid from her cryogenic state soon and more easily than Bedelia!

The next stage of bringing Bedelia to life was to burn and paint her Mermaid scales:

And then assemble her, making all her joints function:

Bedelia wanted to have some Mermaidly fun, so she went for a swim:

Which was a lot of fun, but very tiring, so she came back and relaxed in the studio.

Tottie Tomato went and made Bedelia a lovely cup of tea.

But she was still cold from the wild waves, so I went rummaging through the box of threads that I inherited from my Mother.

And crocheted a lace shawl for Bedelia.

She’s very happy and is looking forward to meeting all the other dolls in the studio.

She is hopeful that I will get to carving her poor icy sister, very soon!

I hope so, too… but the studio has been a busy place lately, the icy mermaid will have to fit in with the other magic that is being stirred up!

I am so pleased to now be part of a lovely blogging group: Scrap Happy, that was begun 6 years ago by Kate Chiconi and her friend, Gun, in Sweden.

The Scrap Happy bloggers all post once a month on the 15th about the wonderful things that they are creating from scraps of this and that, and none of it new….

please check out their blog posts, too. 😀

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Filed under carving wood, doll & dolls & dollmaking & doll making, eco crafts & green projects, lace making, mermaid, Tottie Tomato Loves, Uncategorized, upcycling, wooden dolls, woodwork

Tagged as #carvedupcycledwood, #carvedwoodendoll, #mermaiddolls, #woodcarving, #woodcarvingart, #woodworkingart, carved wooden dolls, carving, mermaid doll, Scrap Happy, upcycling, wood carving

September 17, 2020 · 8:24 pm

How to Make a Tutu for Dolls Using Upcycled Cloth Tea Bags

For links to video on how to upcycle cloth tea bags into Teabag Yarn, and how to weave triangles with it, please go to: LINK

I love finding fun and unique ways to upcycle things, and so I have had so much fun turning cloth tea bags into yarn and weaving with it, to make tutus for the Merrie Sunshine and Mermaid Minnie Moonbeam dolls.

For the main page about Merrie Sunshine and Minnie Moonbeam dolls, please go to: LINK

Here is the video that shows how to make the Upcycled Tea Bag Tutu:

How to Make Simple Doll Clothes from Woven Triangles

Here is a video tutorial about how to make sweet and simple doll clothes using triangles that are woven on small triangle or pin or potholder looms.

The video shows the doll clothes being modeled by the Merrie Sunshine and Minnie Moonbeam Mermaid wooden dolls, but the clothes will fit other dolls that are around 8 inches/20 cm tall.

For more information about the Merrie Sunshine and Mermaid Minnie Moonbeam dolls, please go to L I N K

HERE ARE A WHOLE BUNCH OF VIDEOS ABOUT HOW TO WEAVE TRIANGLES ON SMALL LOOMS:

This video shows how to weave triangles on 2 inch pin looms, but the technique is the same on any size square pin loom:

Here are 2 videos that show how to weave a triangle on the Potholder loom using yarn:

and

and here is how to weave a triangle on small triangle looms:

And how to weave a triangle on a Weave-It style pin loom: Note that you will need to weave 2 triangles and stitch them together to make them large enough to make the doll clothes in the video:

Here’s how to weave a triangle on the Martha Stewart loom:

No matter what loom you weave your little triangles on, I hope that you will find delight in using them to make simple doll clothes!

Happy Weaving and Happy Doll Making! ❤

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Filed under doll & dolls & dollmaking & doll making, Loom & looms & small loom weaving, mermaid, Merrie Sunshine & Minnie Moonbeam Wooden Dolls, pin loom, potholder loom, triangle loom, Triangle loom weaving, tutorial & how to, video tutorial, weaving & handwoven, wooden dolls, Zoom Loom

Tagged as #mermaiddolls, #merriesunshinedoll, #potholderloom, #triangleloom, #triangleweaving, #weavingfordolls, #wovendollclothes, doll clothes, how to weave doll clothes, how to weave triangles, Martha Stewart Looms, Merrie Sunshine Doll, potholder loom, triangle weaving, Weave-it looms

March 29, 2020 · 8:38 am

How to Make a Simple Mermaid Doll with Yarn

Mermaids are a beautiful metaphor for staying afloat, no matter how hard the waves may crash upon the rocks.

This video tutorial shows how I took the idea of Yarn Baby (Tassle) dolls and created Mermaids with a little bit of yarn, a whole lot of love and a little bit of head scratching.

Oh, yes, also a few sneezes are included with love from our aged rescued Chihuahua mystery mix dear old dog who seems to respond to the making of video by coming into the studio and sneezing loudly whenever the video camera is turned on. Why? Who knows?

Anyhow, I hope that you will enjoy making Yarn Dolly Mermaids!

Here’s the video tutorial:

Mermaids mermaids Noreen makes mermaids

One of the members of the Peg Loom weaving group on facebook just asked what people were weaving on their Peg looms, and my response was ‘Mermaids!’- which is a very normal response for me.

In fact, recently, a friend introduced me to her sister’s kids, saying- This is Noreen- she makes mermaids. Indeed I do!

I love to weave mermaids and to carve them in wood.

Here’s a video of a ‘swoop’ (I just made that up as a way of describing a group of mermaids) of new mermaids that I have woven up using a pattern that I designed for my etsy shop.