Up-cycled Dolly
Nothing should stand in the way of strong girls with bold dreams
-Barack Obama
This project was created and inspired by the amazing work of Brooklyn-based artist, Erin Robinson. I reached out to Erin to ask if I could create an up-cycled doll inspired by her work to feature in my International Women’s Day SHEro/artist tribute series. Erin graciously said, “yes!”. Then the flu hit our house (not once, not twice but three times), the delayed projects and obligations started to pile up, and I have been in a state of catch-up ever since. I am so excited that TODAY IS THE DAY that I finally get to share our up-cycled dolly with you AND most importantly, the artist who inspired her. YAY!
I was first introduced to Erin’s artwork when Obama was getting ready to leave the white house. Erin created a series of illustrations for a Washington Post article (Obama’s Legacy -A special commemorative section on the 44th president of the United States). One of the illustrations was a family portrait in silhouette depicting The Obamas standing hand in hand walking forward and away from a faded out White House. The portrait captured the end of an era in such a profound and moving way that it quickly began popping up all over social media paired with heavy hearted and personal good bye posts. The image is iconic and beautiful, the lack of artist credit..was not as pretty. I did a quick google search, found the artist behind the work and then began tagging Erin (@brooklyndolly) on every post I could find. This portrait was my introduction to Erin’s work and it was definitely love at first sight.
Illustration by, Erin Robinson for the Washington Post. Obama’s Legacy - a special commemorative section on the 44th president of the United States
You can find these prints and more in Erin’s Etsy shop. Click the image to visit her shop.
How dreamy are her illustrations? The color, the texture, the overlays. Erin is a Fashion Designer by trade but received a foundation in fine art from Parsons School of Design and the Corcoran School of Art. Her work is inspired by “travel, color, texture, the feminine shape and the many shades and coifs of Brooklyn. She works in a variety of mediums; watercolor, ink, markers, charcoal, stencil, collage as well as digital artistry.”
The quote + text is from Erin’s Artist feature on the Framebridge site. The Queen of Thrones artwork was found on her Instagram feed.
I wanted to create a tribute project that was up-cycled and sculptural, with a generous nod to Erin’s roots in fashion and design. I also wanted the DIY to be open ended enough that little artists could really make them their own. I hope that I have inspired you to go do a deep dive into Erin’s work. Follow her on IG here. Peruse her Etsy shop here. Find her website here (full site coming soon).
Materials:
plastic Bottle. We drink a lot of almond milk in our house so that is what we used.
acrylic craft paint
lace ribbon and fabric for details
bright pom poms
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Find a bottle with good curves. If your bottle has a wrapper or label you want to to remove that before you start to wrap the surface with string.
Paint a liberal coat of mod podge on your clean recycled bottle and begin to wrap your string. Add the mod podge in 3” sections as you wind your way down the bottle.
Keep going until your whole bottle is wrapped
You can use colored string from the get go or you can use a light color and paint designs on your string like we did. We created a striped bib inspired by some design details we found in Erin’s work but you might want to create a print or design of your own.
To create the stacked bun we rolled tin foil in 3 balls (S, M and L) and wrapped each tin-ball with yarn. This cuts down on the amount of yarn you need to use to achieve a full bun shape.
We stacked and attached each section of the bun with hot glue. Including the first bun that is glued directly to the lip of the bottle.
We traced and cut a circle shape out of kraft colored tag board. Sketched our hair and facial features and then started adding color to the face with white, pink, and black paint pen. We rubbed a little oil pastel on the face and cheek to create texture and visual interest. Erin’s work is beautifully layered and textured. The last step was gluing on a few pieces of yarn on top of the hair part that framed our doll’s face.
We drew inspiration from Erin’s Manushka Dolls and decided to add pom poms to our doll’s buns and a layer of lace applique to the top and bottom of our dolls “dress”.
