Trying Out Fabrics

I painted the boudoir doll's face, that I sculpted in paperclay.  And added hair.  Now I am picking out her colors for her outfit!

I think she is looking good in linen, dark plum (that's what the dark feather is), rose, pale pink, and blue greens!

A Boudoir Doll in Progress

After working on cleaning the Ebay Keen-Eye boudoir doll, I felt like making an art-boudoir doll of my own.  So here is a work-in-progress shot; I am trying fabrics on her, to see how she does with either pink and old lace, or  blue satin with red polyester lace that I have a lot of.

 It's great fun to try the fabrics with the doll at this stage and see how they match with the doll's expression.

One thing I do that really helps with sculpting, is I tilt the doll head under a bright light, and see how the shadows form as I tilt the head downward.  If the shadows fall evenly, I know I have an even sculpt.  I will illustrate it in a future post, but basically I look at the shadows and see if they are even, at each stage while I tilt the doll head. 

So with this doll I like her now, I think;  just a little bit of sanding to do.  Have to decide on which fabric. 

Vintage Compacts - Reflections of History

I recently got involved with collecting vintage ladies' compacts.  It is kind of a fascinating hobby, because they are like bits of history in your hand.  There is the influence of style, and advances in American manufacturing are reflected in each decade's worth of compacts.  

I never really thought about compacts, or even makeup much, until this summer.  Maybe the boudoir doll got me interested in them somehow... it was her influence.

Here is a Thirties vanity I am starting to arrange, with two bullet boudoir lamps and some vintage enamel compacts... plus, movie star pictures and the head of the boudoir doll, looming on the right in the background. 

Here are some Seventies and Sixties compacts I purchased and cleaned last week:

They harbored fifty year-old powder...which I have no intention of wearing, smelling or breathing.   I always wear a respirator when I work on cleaning out compacts.  I also wear cheap latex gloves, and plastic goggles, and throw my clothing in the washing machine afterward.  AND take a shower.  

The way I clean out pressed powder compact such as these is:  I use a bent-out end of a heavy duty paper clip to push the powder cake pan out of the compact - there is a little hole on the back of the compact, where you can insert a paper clip wire or some other thick wire to push it out.  Then I put the powder pan inside a thicker-type clear plastic bag, such as a freezer bag.  Keeping the bag as closed as I can, to control the powder, I reach inside the bag with a stick or paintbrush end, and start pressing down on the powder until it breaks up.  The powder breaks up under pressure, but it is under control because I am breaking it up inside the bag.  I turn the pan over to dump powder into the bag, take the pan out and  put it into another bag I have ready, and ziplock shut the first bag.

Then I might have to scrape the pan quite a bit with a plastic end of a paintbrush to get the powder off of the bottom of the pan.  I do this inside the second bag.  I couldn't have done it all inside the first bag because there was so much powder in it, I wouldn't have been able to see what I was doing and it was a mess.  The chisel-end plastic ends of paintbrushes work well, they don't seem to scratch the paint off the aluminim trays (a blue chisel end is pictured above). This takes several minutes.  Then I turn the pan over of course to dump out any more powder into the bag, take out the pan and ziplock the bag shut. Toss the bags but don't put them in the bottom of your garbage can or you could have a powder explosion when a big bag drops on them! 

Then with most of the powder gone, I clean the pan more, wiping it off several times with 7th generation cleaner or some kind of mild cleaner.  Then the pan can be put back in the compact, which has been wiped with the spray cleaner.  I never have problems with a mild cleaner discoloring the plastic.  Sometimes if there is a lingering perfumey odor from the powder, I put the compact in hot sun in the backyard to bake off the odor. That works sometimes to take the smell away.

Brooding Over a Boudoir Doll

Here is a boudoir doll that I bid for and won recently on Ebay.

I had to bid on her, liking her gold satin dress, and the floppy satin hat.   I'd been thinking about buying a Boudoir doll, and this one hooked me.

Her eyes, though, are missing paint and she is missing some paint on her lips.  When I looked directly into her face for the first time, I actually jumped up and said "Ah!  She's scarey!" 
"Put her away, you're making me scared," my husband said. 

I went and researched more online about these dolls.  They were quite a fad.  After reading about them, I had swirling in my mind the elongated limbs and neon-eyes of the artist-illustrator Tamara de Lempicka.  And the elongated women whom I never liked, by the illustrator Erte.  And Hollywood's golden age, the flapper movement, decadence.  All these trends were swirling around and so these dolls were mass produced, and various designs and construction patented to capitalize on the trend.  The dolls petered out by WWII.
I wonder why I got this doll.  I guess I wanted to see what one is actually like in person.  As in, how does its presence feel.  I don't see them ever at the local doll shows.  They are not expensive (yet) to buy. 

This particular doll, I am pretty sure from the marking on the back, is a "Keeneye."  The satin of her costume is a blend of pink - gold - green.  I cleaned it (above are her leggings, cleaned and below is the skirt, cleaned) and it has that satiny feel now, and wonderful sheen: 

Then I tried to draw boudoir eyes on cloth, using a little abandoned doll of mine I had sitting around.

This looks odd but I guess that is how I feel so far about the boudoir doll.