They're back

The Party Gang dolls are back in stock on Folksy.

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Evie & Rex Paper Dolls

A few weeks ago we were approached by the lovely people at Folksy's blog to contribute to their summer holiday children's craft tutorials. The little foxes and I had had such a good time last school holidays making paper dolls from Sweet Paul's website, that I fancied designing a paper doll for Mrs Fox's.

So here are Evie & Rex in paper:

Their design is a mash up of Evie and Rex our handmade dolls that we sell on Folksy, my beautiful little girl Una May and her dog Bea. If you'd like to make your own you can download the template from Folksy, paint cut out and play.  Super simple to make, great for the school holidays.

All You Will Need is:

paper & card

scissors

glue

paint, coloured pencils or pens

1.  Download the PDF (2 pages; Evie & Rex and one page of her clothes) print onto white paper.

2.  Colour Evie, her friend Rex the dog and her clothes however you wish.

3.  To make Evie and Rex stand up, glue then onto card - you can use an old cereal box it’s the right thickness.  Leave a strip of card about 3cm wide at the bottom that you can fold into a stand - see below:

TIP:  I cut Evie out roughly first, leaving 1/2cm of white paper around the edge.  Then I glued her to the card.  Once she'd dried I cut her out again, this time trimming right up to the edge of the doll. 

4.  Cut out Evie’s clothes and fold the tabs over the edge of the doll to dress her.  Have fun designing and making your own outfits for Evie.

Making the paper Evie has also fed into the design process of the party gang cloth dolls which are about to go through a bit of a makeover.  Just as soon the school holidays are over!

All our designs are entirely our own so please leave a comment below if you do decide to download them - we just love a little love!

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Coffee & A Good Read

Here are Evie & Rex in this month's Mollie Makes.

Mrs Fox's Dolls Evie & Rex available from Mrs Fox's Handmade on Folksy.com

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Darling, Won't you join me for one...

I took a quick picture of my latest doll today sitting on the counter in the kitchen, only now have I noticed the sloe gin bottle in the background, making her look like an escapee from prohibition.  Still it suits The Great Gatsby styling I guess.

Our Jumble and Pearls special edition art doll is £45 and her little needle felted dog is £25, the two together can be purchased for £60 +p&p (UK-£4.50).  Email info@mrsfoxs.com if you would like her to join you for a sloe gin!

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I Make Dolls - Buy a Kid a Doll for Christmas

Mrs Fox's has allowed us the freedom to start making things again.  It's silly really, I shouldn't have needed to start a small business to have this freedom, but somehow I did.  And it has taken two years for me to start making these dolls, because I was not sure what they would look like.   I'm still not sure, but the above picture is of my first 4; "The Party Gang".

I've always made things, I loved art at school, I just wanted to make things all the time.  I watch my daughter's absorbed, intent, crafting of hedgehog houses and wooden peg dolls (this week) with complete understanding. And when I was little I loved making things for my dolls. Playing with them was all about creating their world: Their clothes, gardens, suitcases, cars, animals, furniture, tents, houses, horses, boats, gypsy caravans, farm, horse drawn carriages, boyfriends... to name but a few of the remembered projects, the list is endless.  I made their world, and that is only part of what is wonderful about dolls.

My mother in law always tells me proudly that she was not a 'girly girl' and never played with dolls.  I always reply that, I am not, and was not, a girly girl but that I loved dolls and played with them a lot. And my son likes to play with dolls too.  My children have beautiful dolls, often ones that I, or someone else, have hand-made. There is a story to every one they have and they are special.

I am still working through what it is that I think is so special about dolls.  I know many people will not agree with me.  That they are often seen as a bit boring, babyish and the culprits of gender stereotyping.  They are not of course, it's people who gender stereotype.  Even Barbie, who I despise, in the hands of a little girl can do all sorts of amazing things.  My daughter's Barbie has been known to fight in intergalactic battles and clearly has super powers of some kind.  (And also pink fairy wings!)

I make dolls - buy a kid a doll for Christmas - one made by hand.  It doesn't have to be one of mine, there are some far more beautiful dolls out there.  But, I think they are misunderstood and I think they can be the agents of enormous creativity.  I make dolls with love and to be loved.  I really do.  For me, they are the repository of memories and emotions and they can be the agents of change and creativity.  They can be comfort and they can help work out problems.  Dolls are wonderful, wonderful toys.

I'm crafting 4 dolls at the moment for a little girl and her cousins:

Dog steals leg...

And from this point on it is mostly hand stitching... so I had better get back to it.

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Today - I am mostly, all over the place...

I am working on some lovely projects at the moment, but I feel, all over the place:

Mrs Fox's new handmade dolls, The Party Gang - need to go up on our  Folksy store asap

New bread maker to get used to.

Just joined Twitter and am all of a flutter

User testing biscuit recipes for the November Christmas Crafty Box

And a wonderful, colourful party for a little girl who loves books

Oh, and I have to paint 4 paper lanterns peach and 24 toilet rolls red, I had an idea you see...

And then, there are the Christmas Crafty boxes of course:

Post by Mrs Fox's.

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The Princess And The Pea

One of Little Una Fox's favourite fairy tales is The Princess And The Pea and her favourite version is the one by Lauren Child and Polly Borland.

"'What a beautiful bed', gasped the girl.  'Oh, I am sure I will sleep like a real princess in this bed.'  And up the ladder she climbed. We'll see, thought the queen"

Lauren Child's text is, of course, great but it is her and Polly Borland's illustrations that I really admire.  They remind me of my favourite Fairytale book from my own childhood, which my mother unfortunately did not keep.

Each page was illustrated with posed dolls in 3 dimensional sets.  This is an idea that I keep thinking I would like to try my hand at.  If I ever get around to making the dolls, the sets and taking the pictures it will be a miracle but I am not ruling it out altogether.




Because this is our favourite it was natural, when Mrs Fox's was asked by a friend for a princess themed party for their daughter's 4th birthday, to turn to this tale.  Mrs Fox's created a Hunt the Pea party game, (we made felt peas and pea pods), place mats with the missive; "Give peas a chance" and one of my favourite Mrs Fox's crafts, our Make your Own Sleeping Princess.  This is a craft activity for the party that doubles as a party bag for the little guests to take home, along with a packet of sweet pea seeds.

For the make-your-own sleeping princess craft I attached a patchwork pocket to the front of a natural cotton bag.  Our princess was a blank rag doll each made up with a different hairstyle.  The patchwork pocket on each bag is for the dolls to 'sleep' in.  At the party the children designed their own sleeping princess, with fabric pens.  It was a huge success, and you can see what an impressive party bag it was too.

I made Una her own sleeping princess doll for Christmas that year, you can see her at the top of this post.  I make each of the little foxes at least one Christmas gift each year.

This weekend I was working on updating the, very simple, instructions for this craft as we intend to sell it on our website as one of our crafty boxes.  We even have long-term plans to make two versions, one for children that can sew and could make the patchwork pocket themselves.

While I worked and as we chatted about my old fairytale book and the pictures I remembered from it.  And the usefulness of shoe boxes when creating a four poster bed.  Una began fashioning various items for her own sleeping princess pictured above.  Who seems to have a rather severe case of jaundice!

I just couldn't keep out of it.  I was soon, secateurs in hand, fashioning a ladder and we were picking fabrics to make bedding.  I admit this is a rather niche craft, but, this is how we made the Princess Bed for our sleeping princess.  Just in case you ever have need of such an item!

YOU WILL NEED:

First we decorated the shoe box and it's lid with patterned paper and paint.  While it dried...

We measured the bottom of the box and cut out two rectangles of each of our fabrics to these dimensions.  We used other scraps of fabric as the wadding for our mattresses.  With the wadding between each piece of fabric we sewed round the edges.

The lid of the box is the bed's headboard and to this we attached some netting (off cuts of old net curtains from granny's house) I sewed these onto the lid, you could glue or staple them.

To make the ladder I cut up a thin bamboo cane and tied the steps on with garden twine.

The pea is a green felted ball.  You could just use green felt rolled into a ball or paper scrunched up and painted green.

Our Sleeping Princess Crafty Box is available on our website for a very special price at the moment only £6 +p&p (£4.50). Each Sleeping Princess is unique, with their hairstyles and the patchwork pocket on the bag hand-sewn and so each different from the next.

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Louis and Freddie - One boy and his doll

My little boy Louis is 3 and he adores his big sister, Una, who is 6.  We recently had a little incident when Louis took Una's pink purse and one of her favourite toys, "Peanut the little monkey", out on one of our daily dog walks by the lakes.  The pink purse with Peanut inside it was lost for 48 hours.  While disaster was averted (I spotted the purse in the long grass 2 walks later; with no help from the dogs I might add!) my son and I have not told his sister about Peanut's adventure, and Louis clearly understands that this is how it should remain.

Louis loves his sister's toys, particularly her favourite doll, Kiki.  Kiki is made from a Clothkit doll kit designed by the fabulous Jane Foster, and sewn together by yours truly.  Since this incident I no longer have to argue/explain to Louis that he cannot take Kiki out of the house with us as she is far too important to his sister.  I simply say; "Remember what happened to Peanut..."  

So, Louis switched his tactics.  Now he wanted a doll of his own.  I got back in touch with the wonderful gang at Clothkit and Freddie has joined the family.

Louis is very pleased with his new toy.  He takes Freddie to bed, where he joins little white bear, POP the rabbit and little dinosaur every night.  There is never any argument about taking Freddie out of the house.

So, how do we feel about boys and dolls?  

When I had my daughter I was always very clear that I did not want her dressed from head to toe in pink, she is not all "sugar and spice" and fairies are wonderful but they do not need to adorn every book, bag, toy, item of clothing etc.  I want my daughter to be happy, healthy, independent and free of gender stereotyping.  I actually didn't think about it that much in regards to my son until now.

I do also have to admit that whatever I may believe and hope for my children, gender differences clearly exist and become apparent so much earlier than I expected.  I like the idea that Harrods has gone to the trouble of creating it's first gender neutral toy department.

Harrods gender-neutral toy department, designed by London and Singapore-based interior architects Shed

But I also think that toys are gender neutral in themselves, it is us who load and apply all the gender meanings to them.  Louis loves football and cooking, cars and handbags, blue and pink, dinosaurs and now Freddie his doll.

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