My daughter and I displayed some dolls for a recent Girl Scout event to celebrate 100 Years of Girl Scouts.
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| American Girl dolls as GS leader, junior GS new (scrounged) outfit, Junior GS older (ebay) outfit, official Paradise Gallery GS doll and AG doll wearing the old brownie (ebay) outfit. Zoarzoar (left), Heather (2nd from left) and Kirsten (farthest right) are all ebay rescue dolls. Kirsten still needs some work. Her "plastic surgery" will be a future post. |
It's easy to make your own GS style outfit if you can sew. Here is a close up for the 3 "junior GS" dolls and you can see the differences. Heather with homemade outfit, Kit with ebay outfit and Lili (Paradise Galleries) licensed "official" GS doll.
Heather (left) is wearing a white long sleeve t-shirt and tan pants from AG outfits that we already had. The new GS uniform is a white shirt and khaki pants, so no need to sew or buy them if you already have some. She is also wearing a vest I made. I traced a doll clothes vest pattern that I already had. I cut the seam allowance off the arm holes and outside edges of the vest. I picked some green fabric I had and some green bias binding I had that is close in color. I sewed the shoulders and sides of the vest. Instead of making a lining, I used the bias binding around the edges. This is fast and much easier sewing than a lined vest. Next I used fine point permanent markers to draw a troop crest (cardinal) and the GS idenitifiers on white felt. I made a pin tab from felt and bought real GS miniature membership pin and WAGGGS pin. They are about $5 each, so you could save some money if you drew them too. I really wanted the real pins, so I bought them. Here are close up shots of the items on the vest and Heather wearing the vest. She looks very cute!
This vest may not look perfect, but the felt is sewed on (not a picture like the ebay vest) and the pins are real. It was fun to do this and someday I might make some interest patches for Heather's vest too. It wouldn't be too hard and I could make badges that my troop really worked on when they were juniors.
My "fun" item for our GS celebration was to dress ZoarZoar, my first ebay rescue doll, like a GS leader instead of a girl. She is wearing a GS vest that also came with the doll from Paradise Galleries (most leaders don't wear vests.. they are not the official adult uniform). Zoarzoar is carrying two huge totes to the GS meeting. This is what most leaders look like going to meetings. They don't really sell miniatures of the things a leader would carry, so I got creative. I made the minature magazine by finding GS books and magazines for sale on the GSUSA web site. (These are copyrighted images so you cannot sell them or use them to make a profit. I'm only making them for personal use and will not make any money from showing them to you, so it's okay). From my last blog I told you that a typical magazine scaled to 1/3 life size will be 2.5 inches wide and 3-3.5 inches high making it doll sized. My photo program didn't have that size so I printed both wallet size and contact sheet size and picked the ones that looked better. To make them thicker, I glued craft foam on the back. YOu can see the sizes from the measurements on the cutting mat.
I put these in a small tote bag I had that came with a stuffed animal in it. Things like tote bags come in all kinds of sizes, so just look around. There are many that will work and craft stores sell little tote bags to decorate. Sometimes you can even find things like that at a "dollar store" that will work. I added some other things to the tote bag... small felt shapes I had, some thin embroidery yarn that would look like string or regular yarn, and a small sized American Flag (the kind they give out for 4th of July). I stuffed the bag with tissue paper almost to the top. I didn't want to waste time making things that would be in the bottom of the bag and wouldn't show. I put the items on top and even I pulled some of the books up so it looked like they were almost falling out. I think that makes it look like Zoarzoar has a lot of supplies stuffed into her bag.
The GS leader always needs snacks for the meeting. I used a tiny shopping bag from American Girl Place. (They give you a tiny bag like this if you buy doll earnings or something small). I found some doll sized drink containers we had around the house. I think these came with a set of baby doll dishes. The labels looked pretty fake, so I just pushed them down further into the bag. They look okay. I used a real "lunch box size" bag of snack chips that looks like a big bag for the dolls and a bag of Kiwanis peanuts (the kind you get if you donate to Kiwanis fund drive during peanut days in the fall). I don't think it is as convincing as the tote bag, but it looks pretty good. When you see them with ZoarZoar, the effect is pretty realistic.
ZoarZoar is a very creative GS leader who makes her own jewelry. In the next post I'll talk about making doll jewelry either from the American Girl kit available from AG and Michaels, or by using your own jewelry supplies. Come and see the next post and tell your friends about my blog.
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