Tutorial - Design It Yourself Doll Gift for children

When we were little and it was our birthday, our mum would draw up a Breakfast In Bed menu, with everything she could possibly think of, and bring it into our bedroom with a pen. You'd mark off what you wanted for breakfast, and she'd disappear into the kitchen for a bit. Then your chosen breakfast would be presented to you on a tray, with a flower in a vase. It was awesome and we loved it.

This was such a good idea that I stole it for a present for my niece. So I present to you a simple gift idea for kids - DIY (Design It Yourself) Doll gift. I wanted to make a portrait doll of her, but you can make a normal doll instead if you prefer.


You'll need:
Paper, textas and a pen
Blank doll
material, yarn, ribbon ect

Step one: Grab a piece of paper and write out the menu for the doll. You can see mine at the right. But if you can't read it, the options went like this (remember this was for a portrait doll. You can change the options to suit whatever kind of doll you want to make):

(1) My hair colour is:
Blonde
Light brown
brown
Dark brown
Red
Black

(2) My hair length is:
Long
Medium
Short

(3) My eye colour is:
Blue
Green
Light Brown
Dark brown

(4) I would like my doll dressed in:
pants
tshirt
skirt
shorts
dress
tights
hoodie
cardiagan

(5) My dolls shoes should be:
Boots
Runners
Sandals
Other ___________________

(6) Anything else you would like your doll wearing? _____________________________________________________________

(7) My favourite colour is: _______________________________

(8) Another colour I like is: ______________________

(9) Draw what expression you would like your doll to have (here, draw a circle as the face for the child to fill in)

You can decorate the menu any way you like.

Step two: Give the menu to the child and help them fill it in.

Step three: create a doll based on the answers given. There are any number of free doll patterns on the net for you to find, so I wont give another one here.

Step four: Give the DIY doll to the child. Done!

Below is the doll I made for my niece. She likes pink and green as colours, and specified that she would also like her doll wearing ribbons.