The Twelfth Day of Christmas has come and gone, yet gnome fever still persists here!

I found a lovely book, The Gnome’s Winter Journey, written by Ernst Kreidolf in 1924. It was just published in English in 2017. It has simple story about a family of Forest Gnomes going to visit their cousin, the Mountain Gnomes. They were looking forward to a big feast with their beloved Winter Queen and having competitive winter games in the snow.

I decided to make peg dolls of the characters in the book so that a child can act out the story line in the book.

Forest gnomes on the left, Mountain gnomes on the right. Below is a photo of the book cover with some of the dolls in the process of being made. It was so much fun making dolls that they look like the characters in a book. I did change up the mountain gnomes’ outfits….I didn’t have the right brown wool felt for their coats so I used orange instead. (They rather liked them)!

The last photo is of the Snow Fairies. They are really shy! And the Ice Gnome who is grumpy because one the Forest Gnomes were climbing up the icicles and broke one!

I like my peg dolls to have natural wood faces. But there is a tendency for the paint to run with the wood grain of the peg when adding fine details like eyes to the raw wood surface. Nobody wants a runny eye! Acrylic paint seals the wood so fine details can be added without the paint running. I hunted around a found a clear acrylic gesso that is certified to be free of known health hazards. I paint a very thin layer just on the face of the doll. Then when dry, add the facial features.

For more information on making peg dolls, see my post, Peg Dolls, from December 27, 2018.

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