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Fantasy Dolls by Donna Anne turns your everyday Barbie Dolls into fantastical works of art
More information on how you can earn extra income while staying at home and playing with dolls.
Johnny Depp's swashbuckling trilogy inspired the sextet of female pirates. When
they're finished, the 12-inch dolls will be vamped and fierce they'll wield mini
swords, sport knee-high boots, and don those quintessentially knavish tri-corner
hats with skulls and crossbones. One of them might also flaunt an eye patch.
"I'm debating whether to give another a hook for a hand," Donna Masi said through a chuckle. But, she noted, "Even though they're
pirates, they're going to be gorgeous." Yeah, Masi gets to
play with dolls all day. Even she'll admit that, with a good-natured laugh.
Still, this isn't kid's stuff. Masi is a collectible doll customizer she glams
up Barbie dolls by repainting faces, re-rooting hair, creating fantastical
outfits and adding all manner of accessories. She's customized about 1,000,
12-inch dolls over the past ten years, averaging two or three a week. She offers them along with instructional manuals on CD on her Web site. "It's so
engrossing," Masi said from her seat at a glass-top table, six of
her extravagant dolls arranged around her. "It's just so darn fun."
It takes creativity and ingenuity, she says: She designs all her mini clothing
patterns, and has 14 different methods for creating fairy wings using anything
from tissue paper to clay to feathers. She repaints faces with acrylics and "the
tiniest paintbrush you could possibly imagine."
"There are so many things to know in making these dolls," she asserted. "It was
very hard for me to learn." She was surprised, also, to find an entire community
of doll customizers: Several hundred in the U.S., she estimated. They, in turn,
appeal to the double-digit thousands of adult doll collectors.
Masi has never been much of a doll person, ironically enough. As a kid, she
owned stuffed animals and the occasional 7-inch Dawn Doll. But never a Barbie.
"I wasn't into dolls, I wasn't into fashion," explained Masi, whose other
do-it-yourself business ventures have included making soap and crafting belly
dancing costumes. "But now you can't keep me away from fabric and beading."
Some of her fanciful creations include: A gothic fairy donning a skirt made from
singed spider web fabric, her black, rainbow-streaked hair simulating
dreadlocks. A butterfly tattoo spans her chest; black polish colors her barely
perceptible nails; fishnets cover her itty-bitty forearms. A genie sporting a
cropped top, wispy skirt and beaded headband, holding a decorative genie lamp in
her hand. A mermaid bride, white dress hand-beaded and fins crafted from
applique snipped off a real woman's wedding dress. Masi also creates warrior
chicks in miniature chain mail, gypsies with bandanas and hip shawls, belly
dancers with elaborately beaded ensembles and all manner of fairies.
Clearly, she prefers fantasy. She has no interest, she says, in contemporary
dolls in ball gowns. And "you can really go over the top because it is such a
fantasy," she noted. Indeed her dolls get various tattoos. Eyebrow and lip
piercings. Some wear earrings and necklaces.
Hair is another matter. Masi does miniature braids and boil perms, and re-roots locks by sewing, gluing or manually inserting strands into the doll's
head. Dainty fairies often get lilac, pink or blue do's. Wispy Tibetan mohair,
meanwhile, cascades down the shoulders of gypsies. And, yes, these mini women do
get bad hair days. "She could use a little gel right now," Masi said, flipping
the brown locks of a belly dancer known as "Iona." "She's getting fly-aways."
Oh and Masi makes up all the dolls' names, too. "Azurelle" is a heavily beaded
and jeweled genie; "Sirelle" is a woodland fairy; "Neurysse" is a mermaid. Their
creator goes with whatever sounds good, she said. As long as it's exotic. "You
wouldn't see a mermaid named 'Joan,'" she said, laughing, "would you?"