Eloise
Eloise is a well to do young woman living in her family home Paris in about 1908. Art Nouveau has taken the world by storm and her stylish home reflects her love of this movement. She is getting ready for a night at the opera, she has her purse and is now just looking for her fan…
I didn’t take a lot of progress pics of unfortunately I guess I was in the zone – however for more detail on how I dress these dolls your can read about Lady Anastasia here
I always start with researching the period and finding images that I like from the period. Pinterest is where I keep all my research images. Then I sketch out the elements that I most liked from different images and start combing through my stash seeing what I have that would work. I wanted her in pink and gray/gold so she stood out in her blue room (and the bedroom mural has pink accents lol)
Last year I was fortunate to buy a bunch of beautiful trims and ribbons from a fellow miniaturist that was retiring (Thank you Mary!) So between that and my fabric and trim stash I didn’t need to source anything new for Eloise
I used a pretty cotton embroidered ribbon for the bodice and the front dress panel, gluing on some trim, beads and fringe.
The skirt was made from simple pink satin with a 2 part lace overlay. I glue the fabric directly to the dolls body since I don’t want to change her outfit and in my experience it looks more real in 1:12 scale. Once the skirt was glued in place I glued on her bodice, made the overlay from a single piece of lace then tied a satin ribbon around her waist. The only other embellishment I added to the dress were a trio of flowers right at the mid point of the train. These came from a nail art kit.
Now she was decent, I turned to her hair. Phicen dolls just come with long straight hair so I have to be a mini hairdresser for this part LOL
TBH this was the tricky part on this particular doll, I typically just twist and coil pieces into place and secure with a little glue that I hide with flowers or ribbon. For some reason, Eloise’s hair refused to be tamed, so it ended up messier than I would like. I just added a bunch of nail art butterflies and decided we can all pretend they are fabulous enameled Lalique hair combs 🙂 Problem solved!
Then I moved onto the shoes. These dolls come with two sets of feet one for high heels and ones for flats so I swap out the feet and again glue the “shoes” directly on her feet.
The soles are made from mat board and a tiny piece of carved wood for the heel that I paint. The uppers were scraps of the same pink satin from her dress with some tiny bric a brac trim and a couple of those nail art butterflies on the toes.
The purse is piece of embroidered ribbon I just trimmed the fringe to size, glued on a couple pieces of jewelry findings and added a tiny chain.
Her fan is a scrap of the pink satin that I folded into a fan shape and glued together between two pieces of jewelry findings – then pulled out the threads to make a “fringe” I think it looks a little like fine ostrich feathers. I added a tiny tassel and bead and called it done
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