My mom taught me to make worry dolls when I was about 7 and I have been making them ever since. This year, I began teaching my girls how to make them as well and the first thing they wanted to do was turn them into mermaids. Brilliant! Why didn’t I think of that? They are easy to make and use fairly simple supplies that you can pick up at any craft store.
DIY Mermaid Worry Dolls
You will need:
- 1/2 inch round balls
- mini sticks (mine are 2.56 inches long)
- embroidery floss
- a ruler
- scissors
- hot glue
- flower petals (I pulled mine from a lei)
Each worry doll needs five sticks. Two arms, two legs, and a body. The body and the legs can remain the full length but I usually cut about an each off of each of the arms, so they are 1.5 inches long.
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This is what your basic body will look like.
First, glue your legs on. For a mermaid doll, you glue them straight down.
Fold your flower petal in half and then cut off any excess petals so that you are left with four petals folded into two. Add a dab of hot glue and secure the petals at the end of your legs. You will need to add a dab of glue to the front of your dolls legs and press the petals down on to it, to help them face the right way.
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After you have added your fins, complete the tail by taking embroidery floss that matches your tail and wrapping it around all the way up to the top of the legs. If you want to, you can color the bottom part of the stick to match your tail.
Hot glue the arms towards the top of the body and then wrap a second color all around the body and around the arms. If you want a different skintone than the wood, you can wrap the arms at this point as well.
Choose your hair color and then wrap the hair around three fingers 15-20 times.
Add hot glue on one side of the loop and add your head. If you want to change the skin tone of your doll, make sure to wrap the head in your chosen embroidery floss before you add the hair. For a curly haired doll, wrap the embroidery floss around a small wooden dowel and then spray it with a one part liquid starch to three parts water mixture. Spray the dowels with ribbon on with the spray bottle. Bake in the oven at 250 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes. Let the hair cool before putting it on your doll.
Now is the time to add embellishments, such as pearls or shells to their hair!
For this doll, I created her sitting and then hot glued her to a seashell. If you want your doll to be sitting, just glue the legs straight out instead of down. You will also need to cut the arms shorter, to about 1 inch, instead of 1.5 if your doll is sitting down.
We couldn’t help but make an Ariel mermaid!
That is so cool!