It is by mere chance that musical instruments came into my dolls' world. Having made my first dolly guitar I couldn't stop doing string instruments. So, let's start from scratch.
One spring day a friend of mine invited me to participated in a masterclass on musical string instruments for dolls. The invitation came right in time because at that moment I was playing with an idea of making a hippie doll.
Why hippie? I cannot explain it clearly why hippie image is so attractive for me, but in my imagination it has been absolutely irresistible since I was a child. My early childhood dates back to the famous 70s and it was spent in Rome where my family happened to live. You understand where I am driving at, don't you? Of course, that decade is notoriously known as the great era of hippies, beatniks, bohemians or drops-out. There is a vivid scene which I remember: lots of hippies are sitting and lounging at the Spanish Steps, long tangled hair, belt-bottom jeans, coloured tie-dyed blouses, head scarves... They were making some weird jewelry like nail bracelets which they laid carelessly on a shabby mat and sold them right there on the steps.
The image of these bright floral-patterned idle people lazily running their fingers over guitar strings had a powerful impact on my childish mind. While walking up the steps with my parents I examined these happy hipsters with eager curiosity trying to memorise every minor detail of their clothers, hair and make up, every single movement of the graceful untidy bodies, every sound of the hoarse melodious voices... I kept saying: "I want to be a hippie when I grow up". Such statement made my father smile indulgently and my mom alarm seriously. She took some clumsy attempts to prove how vain and futile "modus vivendi" of hippies is, but her words simply couldn't reach my ears. The view of colourful idlers was the way much convincing than any boring preaches.
As I grew up, the romantic flavour of hippie subculture faded but my memory preserved the external artistic beauty of the "flowers' children" look. While making my first dolls and thinking over the image of a young contemporary woman I realised that the childish memory is very strong and it relentlessly pointed out to a hippie girl.
This is how I picked hippie image for my doll. I named her Susan. Here you can see some pictures which inspired me in my work:
As you may notice hippie girls on the last two pictures are holding guitars. Of course, my hippie Susan will be playing guitar. I want the dolly instrument to look rather realistic. How can I make it?
This is the topic for my next post. My "hippie&guitar" saga is to be continued. See you!
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