Matryoska Doll Card

Sooo, we have a co-worker from Russia named Vladimir. His birthday is Saturday, so I thought I’d try to find something cool to make for him. (I make stuff for my co-workers from time to time and I always try to remember their birthdays.) I made a sign with a pic of Red Square and fireworks but that seemed so blah.

I usually make some kind of papercraft from Toy-of-the-Day or things I find on DeviantART. (I work in IT so I’ve put together plenty of daleks and the like.) For Vlad I thought maybe I could find papercraft Russian Nesting Dolls.

What I found was a Folding Matryoshka Doll Card where the smaller dolls fold up behind the larger dolls on the Zakka Life blog.

I printed the template on red and cream cardstock and cut everything out. I found some colorful fabric and used some craft glue to adhere the fabric to the doll card. While that dried, I made the little faces.

I used quilting adhesive to attach the face circles to a piece of ivory craft felt. I used a disappearing fabric pen to draw the hair outlines then used a tight zig-zag stitch on my BabyLock Elizabeth machine to fill in the hair.

Next I sewed green and pink beads on each face, using clear nylon thread and a super thin beading needle. After attaching the eyes and mouths, I made a little kerchief for each face from a scrap of baby blue felt left over from the Poodle Skirt project.

Finally, I glued each face to its body. Taaa-dah! There you have it – a handcrafted Folding Matryoshka Doll Card. The question now is whether or not I can bear to part with it!