Alice doll by girl child

I can never feel too guilty about working on crafts when girl child is around.  Never mind  that she is the crafty sort herself and I often find myself looking for missing thread and needles among her extensive stash of craft supplies, but she has always been interested in the process of creating.  I know that she would like it best if I spent all my time reading Harry Potter to her, but being around, helping with and learning about the creative processes is an acceptable alternative.

The past few days girl child and I have been working side by side on dolls.  Girl child managed to create with her own doll with only the tiniest bit of help from me with some of the sewing.

Here is girl child's Alice.

Designing the dress was, unsurprisingly to me, her favorite part.  Even as the youngest artist, she has always put the most detail and attention into her stick people's garments.  You should never get her started on shoes in particular.  She can talk for hours about them.  It's completely perplexing to me since my only thought about footwear is how comfortable they feel and that a child of mine should become so absorbed in thinking about shoes makes me wonder if perhaps she is a changeling.

Girl child's least favorite part is the face.  This was the second version, the first ended up being hidden behind Alice's hair.  It's tough to watch my little perfectionist load up a paintbrush with colour, knowing that she'll most likely feel disappointed, no matter what she paints.  It seems she'll never be completely happy with what she has done, even though others see this doll and feel impressed with the talents of an eight year old.  Still, lacking complacency in her art will drive her to continue to improve her skills.  If it doesn't completely discourage her, that is.

I shall share a couple of my own dolls that I've been working on some time soon.  I have two nearly done, one that I feel happy-ish with and the other not so much.  I think the lesson for both girl child and I is that every disappointment is an opportunity to learn something and further attempts will be more successful if the lessons are applied.

That is if we are not completely discouraged by the learning.