Santa Sam - 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.

Here's what I've told you so far:

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 potpourri and other Christmas 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 also love combining dried floral potpourri with some of my creations as I'm  always looking for ways to salvage dried potpourri so it doesn't go to waste once it's lost its' smell.

Five years ago I wrote a Linda's Blog post entitled "A Great Way To Use Up Old Potpourri" outlining my attempts to do so.

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.

Meet Santa Sam who stands 13" tall.

He a little different for a jolly old Santa.  He's extremely organized, punctual, and when it comes to the elves can be a bit demanding.  After all he has a lot to do and has to be sure it all gets done.  So, if he has to be a little less jolly and stricter with the elves so be it.  There was work to be done and toys to deliver to 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 green 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'm always looking for different media that can be used to embellish my doll and craft creations. Well, close to ten years while shopping at BJ's I found a set of adorable 3D type paper Christmas gift tags.  One of those was a Christmas "Naughty or Nice" chalkboard tag.

Instead of using this set as gift tags I had decided to save them and use them for my craft purposes.  They were really adorable and you just never know what you are going to use when crafting.  So, I've been holding on to them and the gift tag seemed perfect for my Santa to hold in his arms.

Luckily there were three of the Christmas "Naughty or Nice" chalkboard tags in the box set.  I wanted to use two tags turned right side out and glued together so they would appear finished when looking at the front of the Santa and when looking at the back of the Santa. Before gluing them to his hands I added Christmas braided trim around the edge of the glued tags and then glued red ribbon bows to the front and back top center of the tags.

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 gold mixed media fiber tree 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 as well as under the scrapbook paper Christmas saying strip.  Everything was now sturdy enough to hold the potpourri like in a basket.

I added the Christmas potpourri and Christmas floral decorations to the basket around his pedestal and glued them to hold them in place.

The picture above is a close-up of his back embellishments.

The picture above is a close-up of his right side and bottom.

The picture above is a close-up of his left side and bottom.

I was really pleased with the way my Santa Sam came out.  He might be demanding but he has good reason for being so.  There's a lot to do - toys to be made and presents to deliver and his good name is on the line.

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