New alabama Baby Dolls

Here they are. My first attempt at making these Ella Smith Dolls. The first thing I would say about these dolls is they are nothing like the Izannah walker dolls, either in looks, or design. I think I worked on these in a way more than the Izannah's.  They have, in the antique Alabama baby dolls a plaster face mask that is applied to the cloth head, but I deviated from this on these. I did make the plaster face mask, but it was super heavy and thick, because my antique doll I took my mask from is very deep, so I made a cloth face mask for these that has no plaster in it, so they are very light. In the future, I will still use the cloth face mask, but before I smooth the mask to the cloth head, I will pour a little plaster into the mask, as much as I think it needs. Since the dolls do not have a second skin, you have to watch and try not to get paint and stains on the cloth parts of the body, this is harder, as I am  ( super messy ). I could go on quite a while on the mistakes I made on these, but I have that under control on the next batch. Make shorter necks, put in plaster, ears shapes need to be made different.  Ella was very cleaver about the ears. they have no stuffing and have a big ark in the center and are cut so that the ears will curl and get that famous shape they have, of course I messed up on  that the first time around.  All in all, I like the dolls a lot. These are super big and fat, I would say about 22 or 23" tall. soft and squeezy. they should be easy to fit for clothes. I will not cover up their feet, as they are really fat and cute. I also am repairing my antique Alabama baby. She was missing an ear, so I scraped off the remains of the ear and made her a new ear which is glued and stapled to the head and then a small bit of paper clay to cover the staples.  There is not another way to repair this problem, that I can see, also I re glued down some cracked in her face and filled in the cracks with paper clay, her arms and legs will need some attention too. She will never be worth a fortune, and I have tried to do as little as possible to her to get her back to some semblance of what she was when Ella made her. Lastly, the black doll and picture taking, he is dark, it is very hard to see him in the pictures. This is  ( painting the black dolls,  like this one ) a tough problem which will require much experimentation on my part, or a timely  ( happy accident ), which I am hoping for. HaHa  I enjoyed making these dolls. It made me happy to do it and see them sitting on the table after I was done. Hooray