I Had To Change Her Face

Back in July of 2014 I was taking my 5th class at Artful Gathering. The class was ART-S2-307 The Imaginarium: Anthologies of an Art Doll and was being taught by Mary Jane Chadbourne.   It was a delightful mixed media art doll class that I loved.

I'd been anxiously awaiting the start of this class as I have never created mixed media art dolls so it was going to be an adventure for me. And, adventure it was. I never realized how much fun mixed media was, how much work was involved in creating mixed media art dolls and all the different supplies you would need.  I know now and have been addicted to mixed media ever since.

For this class Mary Jane class Mary Jane's husband had created wood doll kits that you could buy from her Etsy shop.  I had decided to buy one of the art doll wood kits as it contained all the wood I would need to make the 3 different art dolls taught in the class.

The dolls pictured above were the three art dolls I made back in 2014. The one on the left took the longest amount of time to make as I couldn't decide on the different papers and fabrics I would use for her outfit and what other embellishments I was going to add. Her message was "to listen is to learn, and to understand is to inspire" so I named her "Compassion."

The doll in the middle was the 2nd doll I made. She had beautiful blue eyes so I decided to make her outfit a combination of darker blue papers and fabrics. Her message was "believe in possibilities" and "begin with yes" so I named her Melody.

The doll on the right was the 3rd doll I made.  She had a small body, but a large head. I had found a wonderful dark, whimsical graphic to use for the face but when looking at the finished doll back then I thought her face could have been a little smaller and the face was too dark for the rest of the doll.

I had decided that this doll would be a whimsical angel of sorts so I added a green and white checkered paper bow to her back to serve as wings. Her sides and backs I embossed with a flower design which gave it a three dimensional look.

I had decided to use the message "Trust Your Heart Song" and had found a whimsical green frog playing a violin that I wanted to incorporate in her design. As the frog was green I decided to make her outfit a combination of green, peach and black/white papers and fabrics. To this I added white outlining and black raised painted dots. I named her Ophelia.

Well years later, truth be told - I wasn't happy with her face back then and have been wanting to change her ever since.  So, when I was buying the wood doll kits for my Artful Gathering 2019 Session 2 "Beyond the Imaginarium: A Compendium of Holiday Merriment" Class taught by Mary Jane Chadbourne I decided to buy more of her The Imaginarium: Anthologies of an Art Doll wood kits.  I told her I just wanted to "play."

Well, after playing with my new doll kits I got inspired and decided to finally take the plunge and change Ophelia's face.  I couldn't remove the existing face as it would probably ruin the doll so I looked for a graphic I could glue over her existing face and found one I thought would work.

I was hesitant to replace her face as I didn't want to ruin the doll and was pleasantly pleased that it went as well as it did.  I think her new face suits her better and hope you would agree.

I think she still looks like an Ophelia so while I'm not keeping her original face I am going to keep her name.