Handmade Christmas–Part 4: Hand-painted Rainbow Matryoshka Nesting Dolls

I remember playing with my mom’s Matryoshka dolls (I don’t know where she got them or if there is even a story there – I think one set was the constellations or something, not even people) when I was a kid, and there is something really soothing about the order of the entire process. The nesting, the fact that you can line up the pattern along the “crack” in the doll just perfectly, lining them all up in size-order, etc. I just always really enjoyed them.

So I’ve been looking for a nice set of nesting dolls for Anneliese for a while, but most of the ones I find are crazy-ugly OR crazy-expensive. So I took matters into my own hands. I bought an unfinished set of nesting dolls from etsy.com and planned to paint them. Like… six months ago. But it’s finally happened!

I got a set of 7 because I wanted to paint them in rainbow colors, including indigo.

I started out by sketching some designs onto paper, then drawing the ones I liked onto the dolls directly with pencil. I have to be completely honest – most of the designs were either from or inspired by my awesome “day tripper” bag which I’m pretty much in love with. But if you google imgage search folk art you’ll come up with a lot of different simple/bold/adorable designs you could add to your dolls if that’s the style you’re after.

The first thing I painted was their kercheifs, in the rainbow colors. After that, I painted their bodies a lighter version of the same colors (just added some of the color to white).

The next night, I painted their skin and hair. I decided to make them all different because it’s just more interesting and less creepy than having little clone-dolls pop out of each other.

After that, I was free to paint all of the little details. It took a while and some very very tiny paint brushes. But I have to say that I’m very pleased with the results! I haven’t decided yet whether to seal them or not… I bought a clear acrylic spray sealer to use if I do decide to. It probably wouldn’t be a bad idea, would it?

Here’s the largest lady:

Mrs. Marmalade:

Yellow, green, and blue:

Indigo and violet.

And to give you an idea of scale for these suckers… my hand. The tiniest one is TINY.

Group picture! The whole rainbow of friends.

I think Anneliese will enjoy them. Hopefully she’ll have wonderful memories of playing with them.