Hands

I think the hands are a critical component to any figure. So often I have seen dolls with beautiful faces, fabulous costumes, and then for me the entire piece is ruined by thick fingers and puffy fat hands. I’m no expert, my hands are not the best to be sure, but they are important to me so I am always working at improving this component in each figure I make. It starts at the very beginning with the drawing of the pattern. For the longest time I was positioning the thumb wrong in the pattern piece- I finally corrected that mistake. Once the hands/arms are sewn and turned I am very careful about the amount of stuffing I place and where it gets placed. I fill each finger with a pipe cleaner only. I bend the tip of the pipe cleaner and wrap the raw edge with white floral tape to keep it from poking out. Otherwise, no stuffing the fingers. As for the hand- very little stuffing. Instead, I fold over the extra fabric in the palm of the hand and sew it to encircle the thumb at the fatty part. The little bit of stuffing that i put into the hands increases at the wrist. I do stuff the wrist firmly and continue up the arm firmly stuffing.

I color the figure using colored pencils. I pencil the hand and arm to the point where the costume will cover. Once I pencil the flesh tone, I rub lightly with an extra piece of skin fabric to blend. This figure’s flesh was penciled using Spectracolor Blush 1442. I then draw in the fingernail outlines using a dark brown pencil (Prismcolor Dark Umber PC947) and highlight the joints and the flesh area between the fingers. I would not have used such a dark outline color on a female figure, but this is a wizard’s hand, and a very old wizard at that. I spray the hands/arms with workable fixative to prevent the pencil from rubbing off. I will spray it a few times. The nice thing about workable fixative is that you can add more pencil work between spraying each coat if needed.

Finally I add the fingernails. I simply paint on coats of Mod Podge. The more coats added the thicker the nail becomes. If you want to have a white nail edge, or colored fingernails, paint it on and then add another coat of Mod Podge to seal.