Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Crafty Dolls and Jane Bull Canadian Tour

9781465419576HCrafty Dolls
Jane Bull Canadian Tour
Published at DK Canada

About the bookimage

With a few hours and simple materials, even beginner crafters can make darling dolls with Jane Bull's help. In Crafty Dolls, Jane offers up original designs for dolls of all kinds that can be customized in hundreds of different ways. The Lottie Doll, a simple rag doll, can be adapted, dressed up, and accessorized to accommodate the hobbies and tastes of kids of all ages (what better holiday or birthday gift than a homemade doll!). The book also includes patterns for topsy-turvy dolls, tiny dolls, even a mermaid with glorious rainbow-yarn hair.

For crafters, sewers, and knitters, Crafty Dolls offers inspiration along with gorgeous and quirky doll projects that are fun to make, dress, and accessorize.

Who is Jane Bull?

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By seeing the world through a child's eyes, Jane Bull's fresh, original, and energetic designs inspire children to get crafty. Since joining DK in 1982, she has been coming up with fresh, original, and energetic ideas to inspire children to get crafty. Her books for DK include Make It,Made by Me and Stitch by Stitch among many others. Jane lives in London and has three children of her own to practice her crafty ideas on.

IMG_1288My Thoughts

We hosted Jane Bull the doll from June 3rd to June 9th, 2014.  She arrived safely via FedEx and immediately won the heart of my sweet daughter, Jasmine.

The week was packed with final planning for a Comic Book Fundraising Sale for CHEO we were doing on Saturday.  But we brought Jane to swimming and told her that it was voting time in Ontario. 

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On Saturday morning, we still didn’t know what to expect for the fundraising sale we were having.

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Jane helped as much as she could early in the morning with helping Jasmine coloring an easel to announce the sale and serving lemonade.   She even got a huge hug from the CHEO Bear.

 

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But all good thing come to an end and Jane has to travel to another destination this week.   So she sat with me and together we wrote the blog post about her new book.

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I will be honest with you.   I have a nice list of dolls to make for Jasmine right now.   She looked dutifully in this book and told me which ones she really liked.  She even told me that I needed to do a camera as well for the dolls just like the one in the book.  So far, she requested the Lottie doll, the ballerina with the fairy wings, Shelly the Mermaid, and the double doll Cinders/Cinderella.  When she looked at the knitted dolls, I stopped her because you see I don’t know how to knit and honestly I don’t have the time or the patience to learn.  I would love to be able to do that but I must be honest with myself.  It’s just not a good time to start that kind of learning.

I like the fact that there is a wide variety of ideas included in this book.  It is packed with simple steps to sew and/or knit the cutest dolls I have ever seen.   Templates are also incorporated through the pages of this book.  The projects are explained in easy terms with clear step-by-step instructions.  Fabulous photos can be found at the instructions levels or to show the final product. You will find a wide variety of dolls in this book from ballerina to superhero as well as topsy-turvy dolls or tiny pocket dolls.   Accessories instructions like handbags hats, shoes camera and more are also explained.

I also find that you can adapt some of the smaller crafts for something else.  For example the Handy dolls which were originally created to be covers for scissors or key rings could also make an original book marker as well.   In the last section of the book, Jane Bull is showing you the step-by-step instructions on how to sew, knit or stitch.  I know I will refer to this quite often when I tackle the requests of my daughter.  

I am quite excited to have a new project to do this summer in making these sweet dolls for a sweet girl.    With over 30 variations included in the book I know that there is something for any kind of crafter out there.  These dolls could make fun gifts for your kids and/or grandkids at birthdays or Christmas. 

All good things come to an end unfortunately.   Jane Bull the doll has to fly to another destination.  I wish I would have had the time to bring her see the parliament but it just wasn’t possible.   Follow the adventures of Jane Bull on Canadian soil and her tweets by clicking on the image below.  You can also discover the various hosts she will be staying at by checking her Canadian Tour schedule and by checking out all the books written by her.

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Crafty Dolls is available at your favourite bookstore, even amazon.ca and amazon.com.

  

Disclaimer: Thanks to DK Canada for sending me the above mentioned title for review purposes. I was not monetarily compensated for this review. Please note that the review was not influenced by the Sponsor in any way. All opinions expressed here are only my own.

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