Home Crafts How To Give A £1 Charity Shop Dolly A Makeover

How To Give A £1 Charity Shop Dolly A Makeover

by Jessica Amey

We’ve been having a huge toy clear out over the last few months.

It’s been a pretty slow process but anything that hasn’t been played with for over six months, or ever for that matter (about 80% of our toys) have been taken to the charity shop.

I’m not against toys, I’m all for anything that keeps kids entertained and makes life easier but Cherry is very selective about what she likes to play with, in fact this will give you an idea.. the other week she found an empty plastic ball that came apart in the middle (the ones that come out of those £1 toy machines), she spent the next few days clinging onto it and even started to fill it up with ‘treasure’. Her treasure consisted of a ring pull and a squashed bottle cap that she found on the street.

She played with that for longer than she has ever played with any actual toy so I know that she doesn’t really need a lot of them. I’m more than happy to buy her the occasional thing that she really wants but there is no point in her having boxes full of toys that she never plays with, we just don’t have the room.

We do love going into charity shops and if she ever finds something she loves then I buy it for her and then when she gets bored of it give it back again. It means she gets the excitement of new toys without me wasting much money or having toys scattered everywhere.

Tiger is at the age where he has really started enjoying playing with toys, especially tractors / cars / trains / anything with wheels so he has a selection of those.

He also loves dolls, he cuddles them and kisses them which is adorable. I have no idea why dolls are seen as a girl’s toy, surely caring for things is something we want boys to do too?!

I spotted this doll in a charity shop last week for £1 but he was looking a bit worse for wear so I decided to give him a makeover.

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I started by re-stuffing him, you can buy bags of the stuffing in craft shops for next to nothing. I did it by making little cuts in his back and arms then sewing up after.

Then I made him some clothes.

Note that I am a total beginner when it comes to sewing which is why I haven’t put this on my craft blog, I couldn’t give instructions as I literally just cut around the doll then stitched it together fixing mistakes as I went along but it did kind of work so no matter what your sewing skills it is possible to make clothes for dolls!

You could also use plain fabric and add some embroidery designs to it.

I also made him a little cap. I cut the shape out of cardboard then glued the material on and used string to tie it around his head.

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This was my first attempt and I had to hand sew plus I only had a small amount of material so I had to cut it in weird ways.

I’m looking forward to giving it another go when I have my new sewing machine.

It does make me happy to see him looking all doll like again though and Tiger loves his new ‘bubba’.

And next time you see a sad lifeless doll in a charity shop why not take it home and give it a makeover?!

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