Felt Doll Family DIY

We are big fans of felt dolls around here.  Poesy and Hope have quite the collection of store bought and handmade felt dolls and accessories, and we have this nifty board that Rachel made a while back.  We decided it would be funny and fun to make some very personalized dolls for the collection.  Today I'm teaming up with Canon USA to show you how to make your own personalized felt doll family at home!


Alright, first things first:  I wasn't sure if this DIY was even going to work, because I wasn't printing on paper like I normally would.  I bought the extra rigid felt sheets from the craft store (regular felt probably won't work because it's too soft) and put it in my PIXMA iP8720 printer, just as if the felt sheets were paper.  I chose my images for print and resized them in Photoshop.  Then, I held my breath. It took a little bit of helping, but the felt went through the printer just as paper would.  Whew.


This is what the images look like all printed out.  Obviously they aren't as sharp as they would be on paper, but they still look good for being printed on a fuzzy piece of fabric.  Success!


The images were bleeding onto my fingers, so I sealed them with a matte sealer.  You can get a sealer at any hobby store.  After everything was dry, I cut the heads from the fabric.


Next, I cut out bodies for the dolls and Hope helped me design and cut out clothes for them.  I used a tiny dab of hot glue on each one to affix the head to the body.

Poesy was pretty tickled with these "Mama, Daddy, Hope, and Poesy" felt dolls, and Hope had a good time designing clothes with me.  All-in-all I'm going to call this one a DIY success.  xo.