Little Pink Studio

Dolls

Dolls have been on my mind A LOT lately. I purchased the adorable dolls above for my nieces for Christmas.  (from Pottery Barn kids ) I was inspired to buy them after watching this video for the hundredth time. These dolls are really the next best thing to a handmade rag doll. They're wonderful. (I may just buy myself one now that they're on clearance! :)

Click here to watch the video.--It will make your day, I promise. The video is a collection of photos the very talented photographer took of her daughter and her beloved doll, Cocoa, on a trip to Paris. 

The doll in the video was made by this incredible doll designer. 

Gah! Don't you just love those sweet rag dolls? Look at their dresses! I'm so inspired!

Love the pink haired doll by the same designer here! 

What you don't know about me, is that many years ago, when my girls were little, I used to make dolls. Mostly folksy/country holiday dolls. (Santas and snowmen were my specialty) I spent every spare moment I could muster with two little toddlers running about to make dolls. (my girls are only 22 months apart, good thing I had them very young!) I sold my Santas and snowmen at holiday open houses in my own home and was happy with that. (in the days before etsy, and easily maintained websites!) I started out with patterns and eventually began creating my own. Tea staining was something I did on a daily basis, and I was thrilled when I discovered a technique to turn regular old jute twine into curly doll hair!  My love for dolls never really passed, but has been mostly replaced over the past several years with love of paper, however, I've been having a little nagging feeling as of late...and I'm thinking I want to try my hand at dolls again. We're supposed to follow our muses, right? So, I'm going to give it a try. I'll let you know if I can make a doll again that might be worth sharing with you here. :) 

Enjoy your day, and hopefully, you're creating something that makes you happy right now. 

Cerri xo

I edited this post to fix the link to Jess Brown, she is the amazing doll designer of all of the dolls shown in this post besides the Pottery Barn dolls. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I know this is a day late, and that I have just disappeared all of the sudden. My sony laptop had been dying a slow death, and so I finally purchased a MAC. I am liking the MAC, but importing all of the images and converting files and learning a whole new system all in the middle of the holiday rush threw me for a loop. I'm borrowing my daughter's laptop to do a little blogging today.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and are enjoying this weekend with your friends and loved ones!

We had a white Christmas, which was the first time in 18 years in my part of TN! I love the snow, we usually get so very little of it in TN, and Christmas lights sparkeling through the snow is such a happy thing to me!

I have much to share with you, handmade gifts, holiday traditions and more...I just need to get the photo thing figured out for my new MAC.

In the meantime, stay warm, cozy up to a fire, and spend time with your loved ones enjoying this magical time of year!

Much love to you all!

Merry Christmas.

Cerri xoxo

Pretty, old things

  
Hello! I hope you had a lovely weekend! We had snow, which was nice, but my daughter was making the journey home from college and it made me quite nervous for her to travel in it. She did just fine though, and made it home just before the worst of the storm hit. She'll be home for almost a month! My Gram is doing better, and hoping to get to leave the hospital soon. Thank you for her well wishes.

So today I thought I would share with you some of my recent finds that are sitting patiently in the studio waiting to either be made into something else or used in decorating. Don't you love these sweet little angels? They're a little chipped, and show some age, but I really love them. I was thinking of using them in a little assemblage piece. We'll see what becomes of them.

This sweet doll is another wonderful find. She is a petite 8", antique doll. She is currently missing some clothes and is sitting in the studio in her undergarments.

She is holding a tiny, tattered cocktail umbrella though. I'm thinking of turning her into an antique lace covered angel...I have some ideas. :)

And, here is one more teeny tiny lovely just waiting patiently for me. I may turn her into a necklace...or she may just continue to sit right where she is at.

What projects are you working on right now? Are you finished with your shopping? Are you making Christmas cards? I would love to see what you're doing. Link to your latest projects in the comments, will you?

Cerri xoxo

I've been playing with old lace again...

Hello! My Grandma is in the hospital, and while I was waiting to hear something last night I needed something to keep my busy. I pulled out some lace and wooden ornament shapes and occupied myself. She is doing much better today and looks like things are going to be ok. She's a tough lady. If you've been reading my blog for very long you know we've had some big ups and downs with my Gram! Anyway, so these are the things I came up with last night while waiting to hear from my Mom.

I made this ornament from a basic wooden wreath, and just kept layering vintage lace on top until I was happy with it. Because it's wood, I couldn't really stitch the lace on, so I just used The Ultimate Glue and glued all of the lace pieces on.

I let the lace pieces wrap around to the back so that the sides were also finished. I glued the silhouette image and bottle brush tree to the back of the ornament. (just pop off the little wooden stand that the trees come on and you have a wire that will allow you to glue it to things) I added some seam binding, posies spritzed with glimmer mist, and some tiny pinecones purchased last year from Julie Collings.

I finished everything off with some dots of Platinum Stickles. By the way, for the little tree, I just scrubbed all that fake snow stuff off of it. I don't really like all of that on there, and it comes off pretty easily. Just need to add a little ribbon from the top so I can hang it on the tree.

I also made this mittne ornament using layers of vintage lace and a wooden mitten.  I added the sweet vintage imae purchased here, and more tiny pinecones embellished with Stickles glitter glue.

I added several layeers of the vintage crochet trim to the top so that it would look like a ruffled mitten.The mitten shapes have predilled holes at the top, so I could easily add some wire to the top of this to hang it. I was also thinking of cutting some mitten shaped pages and turning this into a little book. Wouldn't that be sweet? 

Then I moved on to embellishing gift bags. I just used the blank burlap bags from my shop, and then layered, layered, and layered vintage lace and another beautiful image purchased here.I think I'll fill this bag full of aged and tattered tags and more bits of lace and give it as a little gift.

What are you working on?

Have you been visiting the Where Women Create blog this month? They have been hosting a 12 days of Christmas traditions along with daily give aways. Today, I am honored to be included on the 10th day of Christmas. Please visit, and leave a comment on any of the days so that you might win! I'm giving away one of my Snow Princess kits.

I wanted to make a quick note that I have marked the remaining Christmas items down 20%, and if you're needing any last minute gifts or supplies now is the time to get them. I will be closing up shop early next week for the rest of the year so that I may spend some time with my family during this holiday season.

Much love, Cerri xo

For the children on your list

Christmas is around the corner. That also means that Christmas vacation is around the corner and your children will be home from school for a couple of weeks. These adorable projects make wonderful quiet time activities or special crafting time with your child. With projects as low as $6.99 they also make wonderful stocking stuffers, angel tree gifts, and just sweet little projects to tuck away for those "too cold to play outside days".  You can find them all right here.

We've tested them all, and they're great fun to make!

Cerri xoxo

Pretty Christmas images for you

Hello! Here are some of my favorite Christmas images for you today. I hope that you will enjoy them!

To save to your computer, just double click to make them larger, right click and save.

Have a wonderful day!

xoox, Cerri

Making ornaments

Hello! I hope you had a lovely weekend! I missed my pretty, old things post this week, but we were celebrating my daughter's 19th birthday all weekend, plus I've been crazy swamped. (like the rest of you, I'm sure!) But, I did play with some pretty, old lace and trims, combined with some super cheap snowflake ornaments from Target, and this is what I came up with. (click on the images so you can see the lovely details)

I'll warn you, these little ornaments are quite addictive to make, but if you would like to see how I made them, join me on Joli Paquet today. My Mom came down for a slumber party this weekend and we stayed up all night making ornaments and other things. (I'll share the "other things" soon) Such good times during this busy holiday season.

Cerri xoxo

A Frosty Little Christmas

Hello! This sweet little kit is my offerings for Joli Paquet this season. Lots of little vintage pieces used here, and the best thing is, you can decide if you want your little frosty Christmas scene to be an ornament, or to sit on the stand in one of your Christmas vignettes! (all pieces are included)

I basically couldn't make up my mind how I liked it, so I decided to just leave it up to you and include all of the parts. :) The tiny church is vintage and will arive to you in it's original colors, you could leave it like it is, or paint it however you would like.

The litttle plastic flowers are also vintage, and tiny deer is a vintage reproduction. You will receive everything you need to create this sweet little scene except your paints and glue.

This is my 4th kit this season, and probably the last one for the year. -I say probably because I really did have an idea for one more, but I'm just not sure if I have the energy to put together one more kit. LOL

This sweet little kit will be available tomorrow morning in my shop. And, don't worry, if you already have an order waiting to go out I'll be happy to just add it to that order. (speaking of orders, I'm working as fast as I possibly can to get all orders out in a timely manner)

Be sure to stop by Joli Paquet and see what the rest of the girls have to offer. There is something for everyone, as all of the kits are unique and fun.

I completely forgot that today was Wednesday, so I don't have your postcard images for you today, but I'll have them up tomorrow. The whole month will be Christmas themed images. :)

xo, Cerri