A Feminist Doll Makeover - Craftivism Inspiration

You might have already heard about Tree Change Dolls - reclaimed dolls with a more realistic makeover - but I only recently stumbled upon the work of Sonja Singh.  She takes previously-loved dolls with unnatural, overly made up painted faces and turns them into natural looking dolls!

Here's an example of the incredible transformation:

The makeunders are quite labor intensive: Sonja first removes the painted faces, cleans and sometimes repairs the dolls, re-styles the hair (sometimes actually thinning out unnaturally thick hair), repaints more realistic faces, and then her Mom knits and sews wholesome garments.  Sonja even makes new shoes and accessories for the dolls, which are more eco-friendly than their former plastic duds.  In her pursuit of realism and authenticity, she even adds skin imperfections to her dolls and mixes up a natural looking shade of white for the eyes.

Unsurprisingly, every time she lists a batch of these transformed dolls in her Etsy shop, she sells out immediately!  

Because, as she points out, she isn't the first person to re-paint the faces on dolls, she generously shares videos of her process.  That's right - even though she relies on these dolls to make a living, she shows others how to do it themselves!  She has a video tutorial for how to remove painted faces from dolls, another video sharing tips for restyling doll hair, and even a video that demonstrates how she re-paints more natural faces on her dolls. 

Sonja is a feminist inspiration because not only is she working to change the way children grow to understand social constructions of beauty, she doesn't safeguard her techniques and instead encourages individual people to give dolls makeunders themselves.  As an avid thrifter and lover of second-hand finds, that these dolls are reclaimed and repaired makes me love this enterprise even more.

The next time I hit the thrifts, I'm keeping my eyes peeled for an obnoxiously overdone doll to breathe new life into for one of the littles in my family, although I definitely do not posses the face painting skills Sonja has mastered!   

Reading her story and pouring over photos of her incredible doll makeovers just made my day because it's just so amazing to read about people changing the world with their talent.  I see feminist implications for her work, and I feel inspired and uplifted.  I wanted to pass on the good vibes in case you hadn't heard of Tree Change Dolls either!

Check out Sonja's Tree Change Dolls on Etsy, Instagram, Facebook , Twitter, or Tumblr.

Our DIY Painted Bowls + A Gift Idea for a Kid Who Has Everything

My city is currently renovating the marina and, while the reactions to the development are mixed, I really like the Arts Centre building that was built there.  It's housed in a renovated, historic freight shed and overlooks Lake Superior. 

They offer various classes and last month Hubs and I took our niece to a "paint a pot" workshop.  We were provided handmade bowls, glazes, brushes, etc., and given two hours to work our magic.  The centre has amazing light and we spent a blissfully peaceful afternoon painting.

Want to see the fruits of our labour?

This one is, quite obviously, my bowl.  I set myself up to fail by choosing an aqua glaze that happened to dry super quickly and I overworked it, so that's why it's weirdly patchy.  I haven't done anything pottery related since I was a kid myself!

You might not be able to tell, but I actually glazed the entire outside of the bowl with white because the natural colour was sort of ecru.

Handy Hubby made an adorable bowl.  He struggled with the glazes too, because some went on smoothly but some were chunky and uncooperative.  I had joked before the class that if his bowl didn't look good it would be a "work bowl" for him to use at the office.  With each defeated brush stroke, he'd mutter dejectedly, "yeah, this isn't working, this is going to be my work bowl".

When we were driving to the waterfront to attend the class, I kept teasing our niece about what we were doing because we'd kept it a secret.  Among my tall tales, one really resonated: I told her we were going to shovel grain (our waterfront has a lot of grain elevators) and this bizarrely piqued her interest, so I explained how we'd get paid $5.00 an hour to shovel dusty grain all day, with no breaks to use the bathroom.  I described in great detail what dusty, terrible work it would be and she believed every fib.  When we arrived at the paint a pot class, I said, "Surprise! We're painting pottery bowls!!! (insert jazz hands here).  Well, the tall tales blew up in my face because at first she was totally bummed that we weren't going to be shoveling grain.  After a few minutes she got more interested in the pottery and was eventually totally engrossed - although still deeply disappointed to miss out on $5.00 an hour doing manual labour.  I was so impressed with her focus; I think she could have worked on her bowl all day.

Our bowls were fired and ready to be picked up about a week or so later.  Although mine turned out a little wonkier than I hoped, Hubby's is cute enough to be a home bowl and our niece was thrilled with hers.  I'd definitely go to another class with a kiddo and I decided to share our experience in case anyone is struggling to find a gift for a kid who has every toy under the sun.  A gift certificate for something like this - a one day, crafty class - would be so much fun for kids.  It cost $75 for the three of us to attend this class, but it was better than buying a toy, I think, because we spent an afternoon together, making memories.

Next time I have a much cheaper outing in mind: shoveling grain it is!

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