DIY Project: Peg Dolls

I participated in a peg doll nativity swap and it got inspired to order some wooden peg dolls of my own and paint them as a present for Rose's birthday! Part of the reason I wanted to make some for Rose is that I think I would have looooved to have hand painted dolls like these as a kid. I loved imaginative games and pretty things so these would have been right up little Alicia's alley.

I ordered the peg dolls through Stockade. There are lots of great sites that have great prices but unfortunately charge a lot for shipping to Canada. Stockade was the only one I found that had pretty good shipping rates for Canada. I know you can also order unfinished peg dolls through Etsy, but again, the companies in the States usually charge quite a bit to ship to Canada so it's best to find a store that sells them within Canada (the option to search stores only in Canada is on the left-hand side of the page). I think for only making a few peg dolls, Michaels is probably the best bet (although they didn't have the exact size/shape I was looking for, I'm too picky). I wanted to order quite a few because I really like painting them - I think my next project will be saint peg dolls.

For paints, I did notice that I like Americana paints better than the Craft Smart ones, but really, for just painting a few peg dolls it doesn't make too much difference. I used this Mod Podge to seal them after because otherwise the paint chips and gets all marked up. For the eyes, I first tried a paint pen, but that would bleed a little bit into the wood so I switched to black paint and a toothpick and that worked really well. Also, I found sandpaper worked well for mistakes on the wood if it wasn't right in a crevice!

Drawing everything on beforehand with pencil is super helpful as well. I tried skipping this step and it didn't go so well.

Rose loves playing with them already, mainly just for the purpose of banging them together and hiding them under the couch cushions :) She calls them "baybay" or some variation of baby, and it is so sweet!