Books and Dolls

My two favorite hobbies are reading and crafting. If I'm not doing one I am usually doing the other. Last month I came across an article about the 16 books to read before they hit theaters this year. Most of them held no interest to me but one did peek my interest...Vampire Academy by Richelle Mead. I started reading about vampires back when Ann Rice first started writing about them. Richelle Mead has a writing style that I enjoy. She brings you into the world at a nice pace. Not too slow so that you get bored and have to force yourself to keep reading and not so fast that you don't get the chance to figure a few things out yourself. I enjoyed reading the six books in the VA series so much that I moved onto the spin off series Bloodlines and managed to read all four books in that series. Now I have to wait until July to read the next book in the series. One of the great things about coming to a series late is that all or most of the books are out in print so there is little to no waiting for the next book.

Since I read 10 books in the last four or so weeks I really haven't gotten much else done. I have been working on an order of 7 dolls for a little girls birthday in July. These have been taking me awhile because I get easily bored and sidetracked when I am making the same things over and over.

I am using the BB dolls pattern by Vanja Grundmann but I changed the head so it looks a bit more like the Lalaloopsie dolls that the birthday girl loves. I decided to make all the dolls at once. I made all the heads, then the arms and then the dresses, etc. Not sure if this was a good way or not but I'm finally at the sewing the pieces together part. I've been working on these for a couple weeks and it's good to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Of course the last part is always the hardest for me...the faces. I have the hardest time getting everything all even and having an expression that doesn't look like they were attacked by a pack of wild dogs. Maybe I should just make zombie dolls since their faces look like they have been ripped off.  This is a fun pattern though. I like how the legs and body are made from the feet up and how the dresses fit over the neck without actually being part of the body.

Just in case you think I can't count to seven, this is my test model. She still needs a ribbon in her hair and some pink felt cheeks.