Santa Leo - My New Handmade Mixed Media Santa Art Doll

As you're well aware from my previous posts I've been creating three mixed media Santa art dolls and have already finished two of them.

As you also know years ago my mother was replacing her living room coffee table and end tables and throwing her old ones away.  They had a lot of lovely spindles on them and I thought it would be a waste to throw them away as they would make good pedestals for doll bases. Why throw something useful away when it can be re-purposed -  especially for dolls.

So, I asked my brother if he would take the tables apart and save the spindles, which he did.  I also asked him if her could add round wood bases to the spindles to create doll pedestals which he also did.

I also wanted him to drill holes in the tops so I could insert dowels to attach my doll bodies or heads.  Unfortunately the original spindles had metal pieces in the tops of some of them which made drilling new holes a little difficult.  He had to remove the metals first,

The base of the pedestal my brother made had 3"round wood circles that were 1" high.  I wanted to create a basket of sorts on the bottom of the Santa's to add Christmas miniature trees and decorations so I decided to use some thick scrapbook paper strips to do this.  After painting the pedestal bases and inserting the dolls heads and bodies I figured I would double the strips and glue them together so each side was finished and then glue them around the circle.  They would be perfect for what I wanted to do with these Santa's.

I had been saving the unfinished wood pedestals for several years now and thought this might be a good time to put my mother's old coffee table spindle pedestals to good use for the three mixed media Santa art dolls I had wanted to make now.

Santa Leo stands 13" tall. He is the epitome of the jolly old St. Nick. The Christmas holiday season is his favorite time of the year and he looks forward to it every year.  He loves the hustle and bustle of the season and thoroughly enjoys making all the toys for all the good girls and boys.

His body is comprised of a sponge painted wood pedestal, Styrofoam oval belly covered with scrapbook collage papers painted with metallic Christmas color paints and paper-clay sculpted and painted head.

I sculptured his head out of paper-clay and painted his face with a combination of acrylic paints and watercolor paints.  I sculpted his eyebrows, beard and mustache out of modeling paste and then painted each.

I used wire to form his eyeglasses and glued these to the sides of his head before adding his hair, which is made of alpaca roving from my sister's Rock Garden Alpacas Farm.

His hat is sewed with red wool felt.  A white pompom and white fur trim was added around the edge of his Santa hat as well.

His body is made from a Styrofoam oval ball that I added scrapbook collage papers to and then sponge painted them with Christmas metallic paint colors.

His arms are made of wire with red felt shirt sleeves, black felt gloves, and modeling paste fur on the tips of his shirt sleeves.

I cut a vest out of green felt and put it on him so the front had two lapels and there were two miniature buttons to fasten it.  The two red buttons were embellished with white metallic puffy paint.

Ruffled red hard lace trim and mixed media fibers were wrapped around the bottom of his belly.

I wanted this Santa to be a little different than the other two mixed media Santa's I had made.  This Santa was going to have miniature Christmas trees, presents, and toy decorations instead of potpourri.

Also, instead of holding a Christmas gift tag he was going to hold a light bulb ornament garland for decorating the Christmas tree in his hands.

As mentioned above the base of the pedestal my brother made had 3"round wood circles that were 1" high.  I wanted to create a basket of sorts on the bottom of the Santa's to add potpourri and other Christmas decorations so I decided to use some thick scrapbook paper strips about 3" tall to do this.

I painted the unfinished wood pedestal my brother had made with Christmas metallic paints.  Then I doubled  the scrapbook paper strips I had cut,  turned them right sides out and glued them to each other, then wrapped them around the bottom of the base and glued the ends.  They were perfect to hold the potpourri I wanted to use on the bottom of the Santa.

I glued braided Christmas trim around the the bottom of the base and a scrapbook paper Christmas saying strip along the top of the base.  Then I glued braided Christmas trim on the top edge of the base.  Decorative Christmas ribbon was wrapped around the base under the scrapbook paper Christmas saying strip and tied in a bow in the front of the base.

I added the Christmas trees, presents, and toy decorations to the basket around his pedestal and glued them to hold them in place.

I was really pleased with the way my Santa Leo came out.  It's his favorite time of the year and he can hardly wait to get started.

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