14 Jan These Little Pieces of Wood Have Us Pegged!

I have just discovered peg dolls on Pinterest.  I’ve definitively had my share of Pinterest fails, but this is a win for sure!  As a crafty household, I can say with certainty, that these little pieces of wood have us pegged! Can you just imagine the millions of educational ideas, and hours of sheer entertainment for the kids!  I pinned about one million ideas, found a website that sells the unfinished wooden peg for pennies and immediately bought a box full.   From the moment I got them, the kids went crazy.  After quickly realizing I needed to take control or they would be scattered throughout the house in 2 minutes, I allowed them to start with one “family,” consisting of 4 pegs each.  Using markers, they were free do decorate them however they like. This amused my crafty children for the rest of the day.  I put the box up the next day and it has been the subject of begging every since…  but I have plans!

Painting Peg Dolls

We’ve been taking turns being sick and for the last couple of days it’s been my turn.  Tonight, for the first time in forever, I called in sick to work, pulled out my painting supply stash and started painting peg dolls. 

I had read a few tutorials on how to paint peg dolls, none of which told me to wash or sand the unfinished wood.  Maybe that’s supposed to be obvious. These pegs clearly come from the factory and still have some sawdust on them.  I didn’t sand mine because I didn’t have a fine sanding paper and I wasn’t about to go buy one at this point.  I would, however, recommend sanding the pegs before painting them.  It would result in a much neater finish.

The kids had several requests, so I got started on those first…  Ariel, the Little Mermaid and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. 

Painting peg dolls us very simple, but very details. Make sure that you have a very small, good quality paint brush. I used an acrylic paint that you can buy from any craft store. Start by painting the skin or fur color and work out, doing the clothing and details last. 

Getting all of the details on is a little difficult because of the little size of the pegs.  I ended up cutting half the bristles off one of my smallest paint brushes.  This made a world of difference.  Many of the tutorials that I read strongly suggested drawing  each item on before painting it.  I did not find that this was necessary, especially since the acrylic paint dries so fast on this wood.  Corrections are quick and easy. 

Once I got all of the details on, I lined the dolls up on some cardboard in the garage and gave them a good coating of some acrylic sealant that I had. I don’t want the paint peeling off, or being scraped off after all of my efforts!

Peg Doll Accessories

For the dolls that require ears or hair accessories, such as a bun, I bought 10mm round wooden beads.  They already had holes drilled through them and I had some wooden skewers that fit into the hole perfectly.  I first thought that I would apply hot glue to hold them together, but this left an unsightly rim of glue that I wasn’t able to remove. It was also somewhat flimsy. So I instead used a small drill bit to drill a hole into the doll’s head and then connected the bead to the head with the dowel (skewer) using Gorilla Glue as reinforcement. The glue does expand, so I had to clean up around the area applied before it dried. This worked much better.

Here are some of the results of our crafting activities. They’re our firsts – they’ll get better, I’m sure!

Can’t you just imagine the possibilities? Stay tuned because there are going to be a lot more peg dolls in our future!