Do you love old postcards like I do? If you answered Yes to this question, you might be interested in this DIY (I hope so). We will make a small toy on a Christmas tree in a mixed technique.

First, let's get inspiration from a large number of postcards, try to find the one that your heart will set on.

Today, my inspiration is this little girl in red.

Prepare the materials:

• Floral wire (thickness — 1 mm);
• Porcelain doll's head;
• Foil;
• Cotton wool;
• White glue;
• Transparent gel superglue;
• Cotton pads;
• Disposable textile wipes;
• Lace;
• Pins;
• Acrylic paints;
• Brushes of different sizes;
• Scissors;
• Aerosol lacquer.

1. The carcass.
I printed out the drawing for clarity, so that I can see how tall the doll will be. Put the head on the drawing and determine that the doll will be 5 heads high.

Then, take two wires for the legs and bend them in half to form a neat loop for a foot, twist each wire. After that, determine the length of the legs and twist our wires near the neck of the doll.

Make a loop in the head area, twist down the remaining length of the wire.

Take another wire and fix it between the wires of the main carcass in the hands area, make the desired position of each wire, make a loop at the tips and twist the wire. Put the remains of the wire to the main carcass.

For the final step of the «Carcass» stage we have to wrap the whole skeleton with foil. Take a foil ribbon and tightly and gradually wrap all the wire.

2. The cotton wool body.
Prepare the materials:

Cover the surface of the legs with white glue, let the glue dry a little, then apply neat little flakes of cotton wool to the legs, forming the first layer, spread the white glue on top of them and let it dry. Thus form layers of cotton wool until the thickness of the leg coincides with the thickness of the legs in the sketch.
(It is very important to press the cotton wool tightly, trying to hold and form the desired relief of the leg)

When legs get dry wrap the hips in the same way.

Form the arms, pay attention to the gloves — the small pieces of cotton wool soaked in glue like in plasticine, form the shape of the gloves and the thumb, as in the sketch. Let the doll dry.

Finish the workpiece, spread glue across the entire surface of the body and form the doll's breast and the little bottom, let them dry.

While the doll was drying, the feet dried up and the surface became not smooth, use cotton pads to smoothen it.
You do not need the whole cotton pad, it's too thick, so tear the disk in half, apply to the leg and mark the zone that you want to smooth out. Cut this area of the cotton pad with scissors and glue it with white glue. Spread the white glue across it to secure the result.

3. The outfit.
Now there are disposable textile wipes for sale, they are sold in rolls, like paper towels and similar to thin fleece. We will use them for making the doll's clothing. Let's start with the skirt. Take off measurements from the sketch and transfer them to fleece. Cut 3 rectangles with a size of 6x15 cm.

Draw lines on every part from both sides (opposite to each other) with superglue and let them dry a little. Then make pleats on the rectangles to add volume to the skirt.

Apply glue to the waistband of the skirt and to the doll, let the glue dry a little and connect the parts :)

Coat the entire skirt with white glue and set the direction of the fabric with pins, remove the pins after drying.

Make the apron — calculate the necessary size and prepare the materials.

Cut out the apron, glue lace on it and cinch it to make it volume across the entire width. Glue the apron back with superglue, penetrate its surface with white glue, form the pleats with pins, set the direction (as in the sketch) and let it dry.

While the apron dries you can paint the doll's head. You will need:
1) Acrylic paints.

2) A thin and a thick brush (synthetic).

3) Water.

4) Lacquer for covering.

For flesh color, we take 3 types of paint — white (main volume), red (on the tip of a brush), orange (on the tip of a brush). (It is important to know that the acrylic darkens after drying, so you need to make the tone brighter). Mix the paints and cover the face of the doll. Take pure brown paint and cover the hair (as in the sketch).

Use the same brown acrylic to draw eyebrows and mark the eyes.

Take the desired color for the eyes (optional, I'll take turquoise) and make the iris. After drying of the iris put a black dot in the center (the pupil). When the pupil is dried put a highlight with white acrylic and paint the corners at the edges of the eye.

Add more red to our solid color and draw lips. Take a pastel of a brick color and grind it into flour, then use a cotton swab to apply it on cheeks, nose, root zone of the hair, and neck to make a light blush.

Apply lacquer on the head. (In this case, I use transparent nail polish, it is very thickly placed on the surface, creating the effect of icing).

Our body has dried up and now you can connect it with the head using superglue.

To make the picture complete we only need a jacket. Make a pattern for a jacket and cut it of fleece (unfortunately, each doll will have its own pattern, so the sizes may not be the same). Cut thin fleece ribbons of 5 mm for joining the parts (I had 3 ribbons,15 cm each).

And start to connect the parts.
Glue the ruffles (as we did with the skirt) on the hem of the jacket.

Join the parts of the hood with the help of a fleece strip and superglue.

Join the parts of the sleeves in the same way, pay attention to what parts have glue.

And glue the ribbon for the cuffs this way.

We have this set :)

Spread glue on the shoulder of the doll and put on the sleeve, apply glue to the middle of the forearm and pull the sleeve to this place. Wrap this place with the cuff and cut off. Do the same with the second hand.

Apply glue to the upper part of the jacket and "dress" our doll.

Do the same with the collar.

Glue on the hood the remaining cuff strip, cut the cuff part from two sides with a 45 degree angle till the beginning of the hood and make slim ties at the ends. Apply glue on the hood and glue and tie the strings of the hood.

Now you only have to spread white glue over the entire surface of the jacket, give it some movement and let it dry.

4. Painting.

Prepare:

• Acrylic paints (black, brown, white, red);
• A thin and a thick brush (synthetic);
• Water;
• Aerosol lacquer.

Starting from the bottom, gently paint the elements of our girl's wardrobe. Let the previous layer dry before proceeding to the next layer. Close the previous layers from the drops of other paint with polyethylene, if it happens anyway, gently remove the drop and paint again.

After drying, apply paints as a decor element with a thin brush, thus all the things will be in one color composition.

Now we have to glue snowballs to the doll :)
Make 4 small balls of cotton wool and glue. Cover them with white acrylic and powder them a bit with pearl lacquer.

Attach snowballs with superglue and cover the doll with lacquer.

And voila!

Thanks for watching :)