Painting eye whites

Julie's work table - almost cleaned up

Hi Doll makers!  Today I am straightening up the sewing table. My machine is in the shop for it's yearly cleaning and it's a good time to dust and clean the spot.  I'm finding all sorts of ufo's!

So as I go, I organize for what I'm going to do next while I wait for the sewing machine to return.  One thing I found is that several heads are suspended in their process waiting for eye whites to be painted on. I like to do my heads in alkyd oils and eye whites need to go on and dry before the rest of the face can be painted.  I like to give them a few days of drying time, so if I have to pull off some iris color, I can use my filbert with a touch of turp without pulling off any eye white. 
For me, the first step in painting is to find that spot where I can leave things to dry.  I have six heads to paint the eye whites (3 hitties for Thursday's doll class and 3 MYO dolls).  I happened to be dusting one of my spool pincushions and thought, hey - why not this for drying eye whites?

You can secure them if you slip a square of paper towel into the shoulder area loosely. Then the dowel will hold it in. Don't try to wad a big bunch of toweling, or the pressure of the paper against the dowel against the inside of the head might break the head. For the wooden Hitty head, use a tall spool of thread that fits the head dowel. They can move, just not so the movement spoils the painting of the eye white.

The doll heads may touch each other, so do not use to dry hair or even skin paint. 

And they touch the pincushion,  so make sure the hair is super dry before you load them onto the spool dowels.

Well, guess I better quit fooling around on the blog and get back to cleaning! 

Thanks for stopping by and have some doll fun today! - Julie

ps - I got the wooden spool pincushion from Gail Wilson at a retreat.

http://www.gailwilsondesigns.com/catalog/oldfashdrygoods.html 

Visit the website above for her vintage pincushion kits.