My Santos doll – completed!

I finished her!!! My first Santos doll! A few months ago I signed up for Jennifer Rizzo’s class to learn to make Santos Dolls. 

Prior to this I hadn’t heard much about Santos Dolls, but I had seen a few here and there in antique shops and around the web. I am intrigued by them. When I saw the class advertised, I couldn’t wait to sign up and learn how to make them myself.

It took me a little bit to gather the supplies… the craft stores that I go to (Michaels and Craft Warehouse) did not have the three main ingredients… paper mache eggs, paper mache mannequin, or paperclay. It took some searching online to find the eggs and the right size mannequins. I was really surprised at that. Creative Paperclay was readily available online. When I finally found them,  I accidently ordered 24 eggs, heeheehee!


Jennifer did a really good job of walking us through sculpting the face. She went step-by-step and broke down each part of the face into it’s very simplest form. Even though my face is a ‘bit’ off, I felt successful because it is actually a face and not some weirdly deformed mass of clay.

Through this class I also found the courage to experiment with mixing my acrylic paints to create the exact color I wanted for skin tones and the dress. Speaking of the dress, the first layer is book pages and the second layer is 7 Gypsies tissue paper. They I made a glaze of the dress color to go over it. I’ll be trying the cage design next.

The necklace features a piece from my molton lava stash. More about that here. I felt the little cross was perfect in size and concept given the religious connotation of the doll. 

Now that she is finished, I’ve brought her out of my studio. She looks lovely in my living room. I am excited to start the next doll. Perhaps I’ll create a series – designed around the major holidays or seasons.

Thanks for stopping by to take a peek!

Have a great day!
Desiree